Marcus T Wolfe

Marcus T Wolfe
University of North Texas | UNT

Ph.D.

About

89
Publications
32,507
Reads
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2,463
Citations
Additional affiliations
August 2000 - May 2002
University of Wisconsin–Madison
Position
  • Research Assistant

Publications

Publications (89)
Article
Research Summary Distinctiveness is an essential element of crafts. Building on optimal distinctiveness theory, we examine the relationship between craft‐based ventures, distinctiveness, and crowdfunding performance. Using a sample of 10,915 craft campaigns and 429,290 non‐craft campaigns, we find that craft‐based campaigns have higher distinctiven...
Article
Drawing from costless signaling research, we examine the role of virtue language in Airbnb listings. We propose that virtue language espoused by entrepreneurs is beneficial for Airbnb price premiums—but only to a certain extent. Specifically, we argue that virtue language espoused by entrepreneurs has a curvilinear relationship with the price premi...
Article
Leveraging work on role theory and age stereotypes, we deploy a randomized experiment that uses AI to manipulate founder age in fundraising appeals. Broadly, we find that age perceptions matter to investors. Using 949 equity crowdfunding observations, we show that entrepreneurs benefit from appearing older when seeking funding. However, these benef...
Article
Full-text available
Plain English Summary We examine how physical attractiveness and personality attractiveness relate to performance in self-employment. Interestingly, we did not find that either physical attractiveness or personality attractiveness individually had any significant relationship with earnings for self-employed individuals. However, we did find that se...
Article
Full-text available
Social entrepreneurship continues to grow as an impactful phenomenon in the world and as a rich stream of research. Given this exciting growth, there is value in proactively exploring how social entrepreneurship scholarship can thrive and ‘seize the moment’ as it matures. This special issue solicited papers at the intersection of strategy and socia...
Article
The intersection of entrepreneurship and mental health has spurred many novel lines of scholarly inquiry. In this editorial, we summarize 23 such studies that have been published in Journal of Business Venturing Insights over the last seven years. In doing so, we emphasize both the differences and similarities among studies in this emerging body of...
Article
Drawing on reliable financial performance data of 192,855 venture‐year observations, representing a total of 66,174 ventures with 8.13% of the ventures failing (5380 ventures), we find that neither sales‐investment sensitivity nor cash‐flow‐investment sensitivity is associated with venture survival. However, debt‐investment sensitivity lowers the h...
Article
Based on the Arab Spring event in Tunisia and using neighbouring countries as the control group, we test whether the onset of democracy increases entrepreneurial activity in the medium term. In Study 1, our findings show that democracy did not change the overall new business density in Tunisia. In Study 2, we do not find an effect on engagement in...
Article
Complementing recent studies supporting a variety of associations between self-employment and biological outcomes associated with stress, physical wear and tear, and aging, we examine the relationship between self-employment and aging. In a sample of 6088 participants from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data, we find...
Article
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Tattoos reflect an increasingly popular form of creative self-expression and there is an increased prevalence of tattoos among entrepreneurs engaging in crowdfunding. As such, our study is the first to explore how visible displays of tattoos within crowdfunding campaigns relate to campaign performance. Using a creativity perspective, we examine how...
Article
Catastrophic events challenge the resilience of society and require entrepreneurs to act proactively. Government COVID-19 responses forced thousands of businesses to close, resulting in a staggering loss of revenue for small businesses. Many small business entrepreneurs turned to crowdfunding to make public funding appeals. Through the lens of the...
Article
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Entrepreneurship can provide personal fulfillment but is uniquely poised to also provoke emotional suffering. Scholarly attention on negative moods and emotions (affect) in entrepreneurship has gained momentum, yet reviews to date have focused on the consequences of affect while our understanding of its antecedents remains fragmented. This neglect...
Article
Using public administration theory, we examine whether professionalized or closed bureaucracy are associated with individual participation in startups and whether these associations are contingent on the level of economic development of a country. We use a novel cross-national 2015 dataset of bureaucratic structures and a sample of 106,818 individu...
Article
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Building upon Hayek’s seminal work regarding the benefits of market decentralization, in this study, we examine the complementary role of an individual’s secular values in further explaining the association between decentralization of economic affairs, entrepreneurial activity, and self-employment. We argue that studies on Hayek’s notion of decentr...
Article
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We outline the promise of topic modeling as a tool to build knowledge in social entrepreneurship surrounding the role gender plays in prosocial crowdfunding. By leveraging a sample of 340,956 prosocial microfinance campaigns drawn from Kiva, we examine how distinctiveness from the prototypical narrative in men's and women's campaigns relates to cro...
Article
Although recent evidence has found support for the importance of social media in communicating specific messages between venture founders and their target audience, there remains a relative paucity of research regarding how specific temporal elements of social media activity are related to key venture development outcomes. In this context, the curr...
Article
As ventures around the world begin to resume operations as the COVID-19 pandemic eases, entrepreneurs face new complexities and challenges especially among crowdfunding efforts. In this paper, we offer research-based insights focused on the three stages in a post-crisis recovery (i.e., business resumption, crisis impact analysis, and future evaluat...
Article
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Drawing on Affective Events Theory and a sample of 112 matched manager-employee dyads involved in failed corporate entrepreneurial projects, we develop and test a model of when and how managerial leadership can foster high employee performance in their subsequent endeavors. Through path analysis modeling, we show that perceptions of supportive mana...
Article
We exploit the 20 September 2012 intervention on Kickstarter where projects in the Hardware and Project Design categories, but not in other categories, were prohibited from presenting simulations and renderings in their crowdfunding campaigns. Using a partition-type analysis estimate for 110,258 projects, we find that the intervention lowered the o...
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Building on the recent surge of interest in understanding the influence of entrepreneurship on individual health and well-being, we ask whether county-level creative destruction is associated with county-level health outcomes. Consistent with regional economics and epidemiology literature our unit of analysis is at the regional (i.e., county) level...
Article
Adopting an abductive approach, in this paper we use two studies to examine the relationships between financial worries and well-being amongst the self-employed during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. In Study 1 of 4806 participants from the Understanding Society's COVID-19 survey of the UK population, we find that financial worries were associat...
Article
Drawing on image-based versus concept-based rhetoric research, we test whether concept-based rhetoric—evoking rational, logical, and concrete thinking—could be less useful than image-based rhetoric—evoking more primal, imaginative, and irrational imagery—in driving crowdfunding performance. We further examine how these forms of narrative rhetoric m...
Article
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Anecdotal evidence suggests that entrepreneurs report fewer hours of sleep. However, in samples of 12,086 individuals in the 2012 and 2014 cross-sections of The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), and 47,851 individuals in the 2013-2016 National Health Interview Sample cross-sections, our results indicate that self-employed individu...
Article
Drawing from the dynamic learning perspective of entrepreneurship, this paper investigates how entrepreneurs' learning activities and new venture performance (early sales and employee growth) are impacted by reliance on different network tie partners (strong and weak ties) for learning. Utilizing a sample of early-stage high technology ventures in...
Article
Entrepreneurship research in recent years has developed a meaningful understanding of well-being among self-employed individuals. Moving from the direct and conditional association between self-employment and well-being, we propose a moderated-mediation model based on the mediating effects of wellness beliefs. Wellness beliefs could be an important...
Article
Full-text available
We examine the relationships between oxidative stress (i.e., manifestations of physiological stress), antioxidants, potentially negative health outcomes (i.e., triglyceride levels), and self-employment through two studies. Our results indicate that oxidative stress is associated with higher triglyceride levels and, as hypothesized, this relationshi...
Article
Innovation is of central importance to entrepreneurship research, as independent entrepreneurs account for the most fundamentally novel product offerings. This study investigates how founder human capital and founder coachability relate to exploiting product innovation in new ventures. Drawing on a dyadic sample of founders and startup coaches, we...
Article
Though challenges to female entrepreneurship are widely acknowledged in the settings of developed countries or the context of formal firms, the challenges faced by female informal entrepreneurs in developing markets are less explored. Based on the liabilities of newness and smallness framework in organizational ecology, we draw on a sample of 2,562...
Article
Entrepreneurship research distinguishes between prelaunch learning in the form of customer and technology planning prior to launch and postlaunch learning in the form of product or market pivots after entry. We examine entrepreneurial experience as important to entrepreneurial learning by testing a model connecting entrepreneurial experience with p...
Article
We investigate whether the polygenic risk score (PRS) of subjective well-being (SWB), a weighted combination of multiple genetic variants which captures an individual’s time-invariant genetic predisposition to SWB, influences the choice of self-employment and whether it explains differences in earnings between older self-employed and employed worke...
Article
Background: Self-employment has become an increasingly popular occupational choice, and there are substantial mental health and well-being benefits that can accrue for individuals who remain active and engaged later in life. In this study, we examine the association between reduced depression symptoms and self-employment in aging workers. Methods...
Article
In recent years there has been a growing interest in understanding the relationship between subjective well-being and self-employment. Extending this body of work, we ask whether subjective well-being is associated with financial well-being for self-employed individuals, and whether those with financial skills are better able to leverage subjective...
Article
A quintessential bane in the modern workforce is finding meaningful work, or work that is perceived to meaningfully contribute to society. Given that entrepreneurial undertakings are characterized by both fulfillment and challenges, whether self-employed individuals perceive their work to be more important or useful to society than those who are em...
Article
Despite the influence that industry has on organizational outcomes, there remains a shortage of research regarding the interaction between an entrepreneur's human capital (prior startup experience) and venture credit risk on new venture exit. Using data from the Kauffman firm survey, for ventures in high-tech industries, relative to ventures in low...
Article
Research summary Using a two study approach, we examine the relationship between attractiveness and key aspects of self‐employment. In Study 1, in which individuals rated the attractiveness of participants at the beginning of the interview, our results indicate that self‐employed males are more likely to be attractive and that more attractive self‐...
Article
Self-employment represents work conditions distinct from wage employment. Applying concepts from the Effort-Reward Imbalance model to work characteristics typical to self-employment—autonomy, meaningfulness of work, and physical demands of work—we explore the association between these work conditions and work stress. In a sample of 225 self-employe...
Article
Full-text available
Entrepreneurship research has shown that self-employment is a result of individual, environmental, and social factors, however, there is a limited understanding of whether the extent of coalescence of these factors over time is associated with self-employment. Using Life History Theory, we examine whether a single Super-K factor, encompassing gener...
Article
Despite the assumption that symptoms of hypomania are detrimental, they may prove beneficial within self-employment contexts. Drawing on person-environment (P/E) fit theory and using the first National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol Related Conditions (NESARC 1), our conservative inferences are that for self-employed individuals, hypomania has a p...
Article
Self-employment can be stressful and its long-term effects on individual health could be significant; yet, the physiological outcomes of self-employment related stress remain under-explored. Drawing on allostatic load as a long-term biological consequence of physiological wear-and-tear and an indicator of stress response, we use three different stu...
Article
We test whether self-employed individuals report more short-term psychological distress compared to paid employees. The ability to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams could lead self-employed individuals to experience feelings of positive emotion, autonomy, and confidence that can lower short-term psychological distress. Yet, the significant demand...
Article
Drawing from clinical and organizational narcissism research, we develop a novel measure of narcissistic rhetoric, investigating its prevalence in a sample of 1863 crowdfunding campaigns. An experiment using 1800 observations further validates our measure and confirms our hypothesized inverted-U relationship between narcissistic rhetoric and crowdf...
Article
Full-text available
Business planning is central to entrepreneurship and of immense interest in explaining venture development. This study investigates how planning in different functional domains, and network reliance for domain planning, relate to speed of initial sales success. Drawing from a sample of founders in the high-technology sector, we find differential pl...
Article
Drawing on a sample of 5,238 individuals in the Health and Retirement Study, we examined the relationship between having one's own health insurance and exit from self-employment to employment. Our results indicate that individuals who have health insurance are less likely to exit self-employment. When self-employed individuals have their own health...
Article
There has been a recent growing interest in the relationship between self-employment and life satisfaction. Using an institutional theory lens, in a multilevel model we test the association between shared prosperity and business freedom on life satisfaction reported by self-employed. Specifically, with increasing shared prosperity, self-employed in...
Article
In the context of self-employment, which is characterized by risk and uncertainty, epinephrine could elicit a “fight or flight” response. However, little attention has been given to what factors could differentiate those who ‘fight’ (i.e. pursue self-employment) versus those who ‘fly’ (i.e. forgo pursuing self-employment). Moving from individual an...
Article
Online retailers in Asia are increasingly offering interest paying accounts to their users. Based on temporal discounting theory, however, customers might consider tradeoffs in opportunities to save money (offered yield by the online retailer × the account balance) versus withdrawing money from the account for online purchases. Based on a sample of...
Article
Are individuals with Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD) more likely to be self-employed? Building on recent works on mental health conditions and entrepreneurship, we examine whether the persistent and repetitive habits of individuals with OCPD could increase the odds of self-employment. Based on a sample of participants from the 2001...
Article
Full-text available
Differences in temporal discounting could separate self-employed individuals from employees working for wages. Drawing on a sample of 13,198 individuals, from the 2012-2013 cross-sectional STEP Skills Measurement Survey, we find that higher temporal discounting is more positively associated with the likelihood of self-employment. We further find th...
Article
Entrepreneurial passion has been proposed as a central characteristic of entrepreneurs, theorized to influence a host of entrepreneurial behaviors as well as firm performance. The current study explores one set of pathways leading from developer passion to performance, identifying self-regulatory mode (locomotion and assessment) and grit as signifi...
Article
Full-text available
Business planning is central to entrepreneurship and of immense interest in explaining venture development. This study investigates how planning in different functional domains, and network reliance for domain planning, relate to speed of initial sales success. Drawing from a sample of founders in the high-technology sector, we find differential pl...
Article
Full-text available
Blending the literatures on grit and self-employment, we propose the role of grit in separating the self-employed from the employed. Based on a sample of 13,210 respondents from nine countries, our results indicate that not only is grit related to self-employment, but also grit is more strongly related to self-employment for risk-takers, females, a...
Article
Does testosterone increase the tendency to engage in self-employment? The results presented to date have been mixed. Using three different studies, we provide additional evidence on the relationship between testosterone and self-employment. Drawing on a cross section of 2,146 individuals (1,178 males and 968 females) from the National Health and Nu...
Book
Full-text available
Learning from Entrepreneurial Failure provides an important counter-weight to the multitude of books that focus on entrepreneurial success. Failure is by far the most common scenario for new businesses and a critical part of the entrepreneurial process is learning from failure and having the motivation to try again. This book examines the various o...
Book
Full-text available
Overall, the book builds on and extends our research over the last decade or so on the topic of learning from failure. Our research on this topic began with Shepherd (2003) and continues to this day (i.e., papers published in 2014 and 2015 and in press). The book covers (1) the failures of projects, businesses, family businesses, and even college f...
Article
Full-text available
Using a multilevel approach, we explore the entrepreneur gender-innovation relationship in new ventures. We investigate individual education, interfirm network ties, and firm regional location using a sample of 4265 new Korean firms. Results show that male entrepreneurs, compared with female, are more likely to complete engineering or natural scien...
Article
Goal setting theory suggests that difficult goals enhance performance on many tasks. When goals are so difficult as to be unattainable, however, they may generate discouragement and reduced motivation, with the result that performance, too, is decreased. Previous research indicates that entrepreneurs are high in self-efficacy and, as a result, may...
Chapter
Failure is a way of life for entrepreneurs, and experiencing failure can lead to varying degrees of grief. In this chapter, we explore the reasons entrepreneurs experience grief as a result of project failure. We then detail why certain projects elicit greater or lesser levels of grief, as a function of the project's role in satisfying the entrepre...
Article
How does entrepreneurial passion moderate key relationships between individual characteristics and overall firm performance? In this paper we examine how passion influences the relationship between goal setting, self- efficacy, and performance. We propose and test a passion-related model of individual influences on entrepreneurial firm performance....
Article
Goal-setting theory suggests that difficult goals enhance performance on many tasks. When goals are so difficult as to be unattainable, however, they generate discouragement and reduced motivation, with the result that performance, too, is decreased. Previous research indicates that entrepreneurs are high in self-efficacy and as a result, may tend...
Article
The current study explores how elements of national culture, perceptions of organizational normalization of failure, and perceived organizational emotional capabilities influence the development of negative emotions as a result of project failure. Building on theoretical perspectives regarding how organizational processes influence individuals’ emo...
Article
The current study explores how the failure of innovative projects and positive organizational performance influence specific content within narratives. Building on theoretical perspectives regarding the sensemaking of failure events and emotions, we develop and test a performance event model of narratives. Using computer-aided text analysis of annu...
Article
The current study explores how failure in the form of the first lost game of a season influences specific content within the narratives that are constructed regarding that loss, and how those narratives might influence subsequent performance. Building on theoretical perspectives regarding sports management, entrepreneurial orientation, emotions, an...
Article
In this study, we explore how failure in the form of the first lost game of the college football season for a team influences specific content within the narratives constructed regarding that loss and how those narratives are associated with subsequent performance. Building on theoretical perspectives regarding sports management, entrepreneurial or...
Article
Full-text available
Project failures are common. We theorized and found that although time heals wounds (reduces the negative emotions from project failure), it heals differently depending on the strength of individuals' specific coping orientations. Further, wounds are shallower for those who perceive that their organization normalizes failure. We conjointly consider...
Article
Full-text available
Substitution of one amino acid for another at the active site of an enzyme usually diminishes or eliminates the activity of the enzyme. In some cases, however, the specificity of the enzyme is changed. In this study, we report that the changing of a metal ligand at the active site of the NiFeS-containing carbon monoxide dehydrogenase (CODH) convert...
Article
Full-text available
The hybrid cluster protein (HCP; formerly termed the prismane protein) has been extensively studied due to its unique spectroscopic properties. Although the structural and spectroscopic characteristics are well defined, its enzymatic function, up to this point, has remained unidentified. While it was proposed that HCP acts in some step of nitrogen...

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