Table 1 - uploaded by Sharon A. Simmons
Content may be subject to copyright.
Source publication
This article discusses the current and potential application of experimental methods to the study of entrepreneurship phenomena. Drawing on a review of experimental studies in entrepreneurship research, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of experimental research designs for entrepreneurship research as a primer for those interested but not...
Context in source publication
Context 1
... impact and context dimensions of the typology result in four types of manipulations that constitute design choices for entrepreneurship researchers: active participation, passive participation, active role-playing, and passive role-playing. See Table 1 for a depiction of the typology. ...
Similar publications
The arrival of ChatGPT and other generative AI (genAI) tools has ushered in a new era in education and presented significant challenges to academic institutions. It has also delivered new concerns for educators who seek to support, and to certify, students’ learning. In addition, the potential and in some cases the necessity for students to learn t...
Citations
... The second theme is entrepreneurship via experimentation. Scholars argue that when navigating uncertainty, as is typical of entrepreneurship (González-López et al., 2019; Selviaridis et al., 2023), entrepreneurs employ experimentation (Sull, 2004;Hsu et al., 2017), a widely adopted design practice that consists of revealing latent assumptions and empirically testing ideas to reduce uncertainty (Straker et al., 2021). In this way, they see the entrepreneurial experience as characterised by the constant testing of ideas in the real world. ...
Design has become a prominent concept in entrepreneurship research and practice. However, previous literature has offered multiple, often divergent interpretations of the role of design in entrepreneurship. For example, studies have highlighted the benefits of adopting design thinking practices in entrepreneurial endeavours, using design science as a research method for studying entrepreneurship, and treating entrepreneurial opportunities as design artefacts that entrepreneurs can shape. Although this multitude of perspectives reflects the conceptual richness of design, it simultaneously complicates the accumulation of scholarly understanding. To address this issue, we have conducted a systematic literature review, uncovering the philosophical assumptions underpinning different interpretations of design in entrepreneurship: (i) design as ontology (entrepreneurship as design), (ii) design as epistemology (entrepreneurship research as design research), (iii) design as phenomenology (entrepreneurship as a means to design), (iv) design as logic (entrepreneurship by design), and (v) design as methodology (entrepreneurship through design). Further, we have identified five modes of inquiry that can guide future studies of design in entrepreneurship. The resulting interpretive framework contributes to entrepreneurship theory and practice by providing a foundation for more conscious and systematic research on design in entrepreneurship.
... In our experiment, students (n ¼ 203) with no entrepreneurial experience chose a hybrid venture to join its founding team in three conditions: neutral (control group, n ¼ 72), social priming (n ¼ 65) and commercial priming (n ¼ 66). According to Hsu et al. (2017), student samples are likely to be appropriate when students resemble the population of interest, the manipulation is expected to be confounded by students' professional experience, and the experimental design is grounded in a broad theory. Thus, university students following courses in management and entrepreneurship but having no entrepreneurial experience fit to represent first-time founders, the population of interest (see also Frederiks et al., 2019). ...
... Third, participants could not opt out of entrepreneurship. Thus, even if we studied the behavior of potential first-time founders and therefore, university students resemble the population of interest (Gr egoire et al., 2019;Hsu et al., 2017), field studies could further contribute to the examination of the research questions of this explorative study and corroborate the results. ...
Purpose
Due to the different logic of economic or entrepreneurial, and social value creation, hybrid entrepreneurs (entrepreneurs whose organization is committed to create both entrepreneurial and social values) often make compromises at the expense of economic rationality or social value creation. The purpose of this paper is to examine how entrepreneurial social identities interact with the promotion of pro-self and prosocial values to influence hybrid entrepreneurs’ choice of predominant values to create and their entrepreneurial passion.
Design/methodology/approach
To answer the research questions, we designed an experiment using an established priming protocol to temporarily increase the saliency of prosocial and pro-self cultural values. In the experiment, students (n = 203) with no entrepreneurial experience chose a hybrid venture to join its founding team in three conditions: neutral (control group, n = 72), social priming (n = 65) and commercial priming (n = 66).
Findings
The results indicate that behavioral choices on the type of the predominant value to create are linked to entrepreneurial social identities. The temporary increase in the saliency of prosocial or pro-self cultural values does not affect the predominant value to create through hybrid entrepreneurial venturing, but influences how passionately entrepreneurs act.
Research limitations/implications
The results are based on the behavior of university students who did not risk losing income because of their behavioral choice and could not opt out of entrepreneurship. Even if university students resemble the population of interest, field studies could contribute to the examination of the research questions of this explorative study and corroborate the results. Future studies should examine if, when and how the promotion of prosocial and pro-self cultural values may change entrepreneurs’ social identities and primary value creation aims.
Originality/value
The entrepreneurship literature rarely takes into consideration that the effects of cultural values might fluctuate along entrepreneurs’ personality traits and identities. This paper examines how entrepreneurial social identities and the temporary promotion of prosocial, and pro-self values interact to influence value creation choices during hybrid entrepreneurial venturing.
... From this perspective, artificiality can be a virtue of true experiments when the objective is to discover "what can happen" theoretically more than "what does happen" in real life (Aronson et al., 1998;Webster & Sell, 2007). Moreover, fictitious stimuli in the forms of hypothetical scenarios, vignettes, simulations, and virtual realities can be useful for studying sensitive, infrequent, and invariant topics (Hsu et al., 2017;Levine et al., 2023). Thus, external validity needs to be considered in light of the above when assessing experiment-based articles. ...
... In line with previous experiments in entrepreneurship research, in which participants in the experimental and control group(s) read different manipulation documents before their intentions or decisions are assessed (Gupta et al., 2008;Stevenson et al., 2019), we manipulate each form of awareness with a slightly different pretested article about an environmental problem, while the control group reads an article that does not raise awareness of the environmental problem. The articles are available in Appendix B. After reading their respective article, participants are asked to summarize it in their own words to check whether they read the article, whether they understand the information correctly (Grégoire et al., 2019), and whether they are alert and engaged (Hsu et al., 2017). 1 Our experiment was pre-registered at AsPredicted.org (2021). ...
... The stimuli were pre-tested to ensure construct validitythat is, to check that each article manipulates the form of awareness it is intended to manipulate (Grégoire et al., 2019;Hsu et al., 2017;Williams et al., 2019). For that pre-test, each of the 547 participants was randomly assigned to read one of the seven articles. ...
... The experiments conducted for this study measure the effect of different forms of awareness on EEI in a controlled setting, which may lead to questions about their external validity. Experiments are useful for examining causality but are not necessarily generalizable to other contexts (Hsu et al., 2017). Measuring the effects of specific forms of awareness and concern demands such an experimental approach, though, as experiments allow us to manipulate and analyze the effects of each form. ...
... Our study employs an online randomized experiment to investigate causal relationships between ESE, entrepreneurial personality, and decisionmaking. We use business students as our sample because they provide an appropriate population for a study on the business decision-making of nascent entrepreneurs (Hsu et al., 2017). Undergraduate business students are an appropriate representation of nascent entrepreneurs' perceptions as they are at the threshold of entrepreneurial activities and possess relevant educational backgrounds without substantial full-time entrepreneurial experience, reducing internal validity threats (Hsu et al., 2017;Stevenson et al., 2019). ...
... We use business students as our sample because they provide an appropriate population for a study on the business decision-making of nascent entrepreneurs (Hsu et al., 2017). Undergraduate business students are an appropriate representation of nascent entrepreneurs' perceptions as they are at the threshold of entrepreneurial activities and possess relevant educational backgrounds without substantial full-time entrepreneurial experience, reducing internal validity threats (Hsu et al., 2017;Stevenson et al., 2019). ...
... To ensure that the random assignment worked, we obtained demographic data. We waited a week before conducting the second session, the online experiment in t 1 , to reduce any carryover effects (Hsu et al., 2017). ...
The two main goals of this paper are to (a) examine how entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) affects decision- making among nascent entrepreneurs and (b) examine the moderating role of entrepreneurial personality. A 2x2 between- subjects online randomized experiment was carried out. A sample of 48 Bangkok-based business school students who functioned as the study’s nascent entrepreneurs’ representatives was used to collect data for two sessions. Multiple linear regression was used to assess the research hypotheses. The findings show that extreme decision-making and nascent entrepreneurs’ ESE are positively correlated; an increase in ESE causes an increase in extreme decision-making. The effect of ESE on decision-making, however, was not found to be positively moderated by entrepreneurial personality. The results of this study have important academic and practical implications for both academic institutions and nascent entrepreneurs. When encouraging ESE and entrepreneurial decision-making, it is important to consider the too-much- of-a-good-thing (TMGT) effect.
... Experiment two then goes deeper by decomposing and isolating start-up decisions. We follow prior experimental designs from scholars such as Hsu et al. (2017) or Malone et al., (2019) to disentangle causality in start-up decisions by analyzing how and to what extent the regulatory components of interest in this study can each drive nascent entrepreneurs' new venture creation decisions. To eliminate carryover effects and participant fatigue, we randomly expose respondents to one of three treatments (see Sect. 3.5.) ...
... Before the experiment, we calibrated and validated all vignettes of experiments 1 and 2 in a pilot test with multiple young business and (public) actors 5 involved in starting an LLC (Hsu et al., 2017). No one could identify the anonymized regulatory country scenarios (i.e., experiment 1) from their home country or could deduce potential policy objectives from the entry reform scenarios (i.e., experiment 2). ...
... Then, respondents' effective decision to start (DTS) always follows by asking whether they would decide to actually start a new business (coded 1 if yes, 0 otherwise) in the institutional settings they are exposed to. In so doing, we follow the literature on entrepreneurship experiments, and, this approach enables us to analyze and determine the consistency of respondents' start-up decisions (Hsu et al., 2017). ...
How and to what extent can entry regulations today still affect start-up decisions across regions and countries before formal new venture creation? This study draws on an overarching institutional framework and conducts two experiments in which we uniquely subject 634 Belgian, Dutch and German nascent entrepreneurs to multiple real regulatory scenarios for starting a new limited liability company. By disentangling how and to what extent different entry regulations and particular components of the regulation of entry can impact start-up decisions across regions, the experiments provide new very granular insights to move beyond existing knowledge about the negative association between entry regulations and new venture creation. Next to this, interestingly, after several robustness analyses, in both experiments, regional and informal institutional factors do not moderate the negative impact of the regulation of entry. In other words, across regions in this study, nascent entrepreneurs do not react significantly differently to the impact of different regulatory start-up conditions. We discuss how these results contribute to the regulatory institutions and entrepreneurship literature and address policy implications.
... A response in itself to the ongoing calls for more experiments in entrepreneurship notwithstanding (e.g. Hsu et al., 2017;Williams et al., 2019;Gr� egoire et al., 2019), the between-subjects randomly assigned priming, its proximal role on morally relativistic cognition, and its subsequent effects on rule-breaking behavior epitomize Wiklund et al. (2019) rousing vision. That is, a 'real' phenomenon discussed in the real world of entrepreneurship (i.e. that there's a rebel-like aspect to being entrepreneurial and this involves breaking rules) but probed with rigorous experimental techniques that can better support theoretically causal claims much more effectively than cross-section self-report survey designs-the norm holding many entrepreneurship outlets back from preeminence (Stevenson and Josefy, 2019). ...
... Vohs et al., 2006). Recently, entrepreneurship research has seen a rise in between-subjects experimental designs (Hsu et al., 2017;Gr� egoire et al., 2019) and suggested that priming techniques are suitable and effective for investigating entrepreneurial phenomena (cf. Baron and Ward, 2004;Gr� egoire and Lambert, 2014;Gupta et al., 2019;Vandor and Franke, 2016). ...
... Finally, cases were removed with incoherent or incomplete written responses. This resulted in a final sample of 139 (50% Female with an average age of 46.7) and is representative of most lab studies in entrepreneurship (Hsu et al., 2017). ...
Purpose
Drawing on covariance attribution theory, this study investigates how and when cross-cultural experience develops the entrepreneurial aptitude for rule-breaking. The authors sought to replicate findings in general psychology that morally relativistic thinking mediates these relationships. Further, extant ideas surrounding rebel-like archetypes of successful entrepreneurs were tested: that is, the more entrepreneurial a person considers themselves to be, the more likely they adopt such modes of thinking.
Design/methodology/approach
A second-stage moderated mediation model is applied using a novel between-subjects experimental priming design. Participants were recruited to reflect a generalizable sample of prospective entrepreneurs from the United States. Participants engaged in a randomly assigned priming activity to re-active their prior cultural immersion experiences. They then completed a context-adjusted experimental judgment task to assess rule-breaking.
Findings
Results show that reflection on prior cross-cultural experience is positively related to proximal scores in morally relativistic cognition. Moderating effects of entrepreneurial intention provide robust evidence that those high in entrepreneurial intention are more likely to rule-break when morally relativistic thinking is high, but that those low in entrepreneurial intention are not.
Originality/value
A growing research stream suggests cross-cultural experience can uniquely instill a range of entrepreneurial aptitudes. While psychology research has found evidence for “dark side” implications of cross-cultural experience, the authors posit that entrepreneurship scholars in this domain have been reluctant to tackle this due to the ethical grey areas between breaking rules constructively and breaking rules in more nefarious ways. This study provides evidence that morally relativistic cognition is more likely to drive people who consider themselves highly entrepreneurial to engage in rule-breaking tendencies.
... It was therefore surprising to find that rational thinking enhanced the perception but not the utilization of costless cues, especially since we found a preference for experiential processing did not moderate the relationship between any cues and their perception or utilization. As suggested by Hsu et al. (2017), it is essential for researchers to incorporate different study designs and different samples to triangulate study results and enhance empirical rigor. To address the criticism that the significance and nonsignificance findings of Study 1 are attributable to a weakness of study design such as a weak manipulation, we conducted a follow-up experiment using the different manipulations of costly cues and costless cues as well as a different measure of the dependent variable to complement Study 1. ...
... They are considered noise or confounding factors in statistical analyses (Colquitt, 2008;Podsakoff & Podsakoff, 2019). The beauty of a randomized experiment, as we employed in this study, is that random assignment averages out individual differences, noise, and unobserved factors, thereby delivering robust results (Hsu et al., 2017). ...
Most entrepreneurial finance studies have treated funders as a monolithic group and ignored individual differences in tastes. This overlook is complicated by prior studies demonstrating how entrepreneurs would utilize either costly to be acquired cues (e.g. patents) that signal venture quality or costless cues that are easily fabricated (e.g. company name fluency) in their pitches to influence investors. We thus investigate how cognitive styles influence heterogeneous crowdfunding backers’ evaluations of pitches in the presence of costly and costless cues. Based on Cognitive-Experiential Self-Theory, we illustrate that a rational thinking style moderate the contrast effect, i.e. costly cues overpowering costless cues, on pitch evaluations and performance predictions for crowdfunded ventures, while an experiential thinking style will attenuate such contrast effect. Findings from two experiments support the moderating effect of a rational thinking style. We demonstrate backers are not monolithic and call for future studies to understand how heterogeneous backers make decisions.
... Another stream of researchers dealt with quantitative research methods and explored and investigated possible relationships between various concepts in entrepreneurship research. This group was somewhat conservative at the very beginning (Hsu et al., 2017). Therefore, they primarily focused on exploring the characteristic traits of entrepreneurs or using management theories and their logic to define what the entrepreneurship lifestyle looks like or how entrepreneurs act (Bell, 1969). ...
... The best way to empirically rule out alternative explanations and confounding effects is through a randomized experiment (Hsu et al., 2017). Finally, individual-level variables such as gender and prior experience of the CEO were not controlled for in this study, which may affect sustainable innovation performance. ...
Despite extensive research into the factors driving sustainable innovation, there remains a significant gap in understanding the impact of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection. This study delves into how IPR protection influences sustainable innovation performance and explores the mechanism of technology spillover and the condition of absorptive capacity. Analyzing data from 266 firms in Vietnam, our findings indicate a positive correlation between IPR protection and technology spillover. Additionally, we find that technology spillover mediates the relationship between IPR protection and sustainable innovation performance. Interestingly, we show that absorptive capacity bolsters the relationship between technology spillover and sustainable innovation performance. These insights offer valuable additions to the existing literature on IPR protection and sustainable innovation literature. Implications for both theory and practice are discussed in detail.
