Michael Stuetzer

• PhD
• Professor at Duale Hochschule Baden-Württemberg Mannheim

Corruption is often seen as one of the root causes of pressing national and global challenges. The persisting stark national differences in corruption levels and their potential causes have thus attracted growing interest from international business scholars. The objective of this study was to reexamine key factors that predict levels of national c...

Since Trump was elected U.S. President in 2016, researchers have sought to explain his support, with some focusing on structural factors (e.g., economics) and others focusing on psychological factors (e.g., negative emotions). We integrate these perspectives in a regional analysis of 18+ structural variables capturing economic, demographic, and hea...

Given that skill variety is widely regarded a key component of entrepreneurial human capital, gender differences in entrepreneurship could be rooted in the formation of such skill variety. Analyzing 12-year longitudinal data following 1,321 Finnish adolescents into adulthood, we study whether gender differences in skill variety open up early in the...

Given that recent research on entrepreneurial behavior and success has established skill variety as a central human capital factor, researchers, educators, and policymakers have turned their interest to a deeper understanding of the formation of skill variety. Based on human capital theory and the competence growth approach in developmental psychol...

Psychological characteristics are significant for various stages of the entrepreneurial process on both individual and group levels. Looking into the ‘psychological context’ in entrepreneurship, we review and define the field, explore the role of regional and country-level entrepreneurial personality and new trends in the geography of entrepreneuri...

Culture matters for regional economic development and is one source of cognitive lock-in that influences path creation and dependency. However, little is known about the sources of regional variation in culture. This study explores the long-term imprinting effect of the Industrial Revolution on cultural practices across local communities in Britain...

Objective: The historical factors and contemporary mechanisms underlying geographical inequalities in obesity levels remain uncertain. In this study we examine whether modern regional variation in obesity is partly a result of the impact of large-scale industry on the personality traits of those living in regions once at the center of the Industria...

Entrepreneurial role models influence decisions to start firms. This effect is even stronger if peers and observers live in the same region. However, most studies remain silent about the role of entrepreneurial failure for the direction of role modeling. Failed role models can trigger a deterrence of entrepreneurship in others of the same region. W...

Recent research has identified regional variation of personality traits within countries but we know little about the underlying drivers of this variation. We propose that the Industrial Revolution, as a key era in the history of industrialized nations, has led to a persistent clustering of well-being outcomes and personality traits associated with...

Recent research has identified regional variation of personality traits within countries but we know little about the underlying drivers of this variation. We propose that the Industrial Revolution, as a key era in the history of industrialized nations, has led to a persistent clustering of well-being outcomes and personality traits associated with...

Two recent electoral results - Donald Trump’s election as US president and the UK’s Brexit vote - have re-ignited debate on the psychological factors underlying voting behavior. Both campaigns promoted themes of fear, lost pride, and loss aversion, which are relevant to the personality dimension of Neuroticism, a construct previously not associated...

The aim of the study in this chapter is to investigate two competing propositions relating to the provision of commercial loans to female-owned new ventures. That is, do banks actively discriminate against women? Or, are women more reluctant (because of the risks involved and the potential to lose control of their ventures) to access bank financing...

Lazear's concept of skill variety has been established in entrepreneurship research and is considered an important extension to human capital theory. The literature on skill variety, its determinants and its effects on entrepreneurial outcomes is growing. But especially the literature on determinants of skill variety as well as the relation between...

Two recent electoral results—Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president and the UK’s Brexit vote—have reignited debate on the psychological factors underlying voting behavior. Both campaigns promoted themes of fear, lost pride, and loss aversion, which are relevant to the personality dimension of neuroticism, a construct previously not associated wi...

The common ground of behavioral economics and entrepreneurship research lies in answering two related questions: What drives economic behavior? And what makes entrepreneurial behavior different from other people’s behavior? Although both behavioral economics and entrepreneurship research start out with different foci, they encounter the same challe...

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the mediating effect of an owner’s growth goal on the relationship between the gender of new venture owners and the growth outcomes of their ventures. Design/methodology/approach This is a quantitative study using a large, national database and structural equation modeling. Findings The findings...

What predicts entry into entrepreneurship? Using a longitudinal sample of 873 adolescents from Finland, we set up a path model investigating the effects of an early variety of interests and activities on the development of skill variety. This developmental approach takes into ac-count an entrepreneurial personality profile (Big Five), a “taste for...

Understanding the psychological nature and development of the individual entrepreneur is at the core of contemporary entrepreneurship research. Since the individual functions as a totality of his or her single characteristics (involving the interplay of biological, psychosocial, and context-related levels), a person-oriented approach focusing on in...

Understanding the psychological nature and development of the individual entrepreneur is at the core of contemporary entrepreneurship research. Since the individual functions as a totality of his or her single characteristics (involving the interplay of biological, psychosocial, and context-related levels), a person-oriented approach focusing on in...

A widespread stereotype holds that the Germans are notorious worriers, an idea captured by the term, German Angst. An analysis of country-level neurotic personality traits (Trait Anxiety, Trait Depression, and Trait Neuroticism; N = 7,210,276) across 109 countries provided mixed support for this idea; Germany ranked 20th, 31st, and 53rd for Depress...

An extensive literature has emerged in regional studies linking organization-based measures of entrepreneurship (e.g., self-employment, new start-ups) to regional economic performance. A limitation of the extant literature is that the measurement of entrepreneurship is not able to incorporate broader conceptual views, such as behavior, of what actu...

Acknowledgements: The authors gratefully acknowledge the significant financial support that made this research possible. The CAUSEE/FEDP research is funded by Australian Research Council grants DP0666616 and LP0776845 and contributions by the QUT Business School and two industry partners: the accounting and advisory firm BDO; and the National Austr...

Studies on the influence of entrepreneurial role models (peers) on the decision to start a firm argue that entrepreneurial role models in the local environment (1) provide opportunities to learn about entrepreneurial tasks and capabilities, and (2) signal that entrepreneurship is a favorable career option thereby reducing uncertainty that potential...

Do macropsychological factors predict “hard” economic outcomes like regional economic resilience? Prior approaches to understanding economic resilience have focused on regional economic infrastructure. In contrast, we draw on research highlighting the key role played by psychological factors in economic behaviors. Using large psychological data set...

Do macropsychological factors predict “hard” economic outcomes like regional economic resilience? Prior approaches to understanding economic resilience have focused on regional economic infrastructure. In contrast, we draw on research highlighting the key role played by psychological factors in economic behaviors. Using large psychological data set...

Do macro-psychological factors predict “hard” economic outcomes like regional economic resilience? Prior approaches to understanding economic resilience have focused on regional economic infrastructure. In contrast, we draw on research highlighting the key role played by psychological factors in economic behaviors. Using large psychological dataset...

In recent years, modern economies have shifted away from being based on physical capital and towards being based on new knowledge (e.g., new ideas and inventions). Consequently, contemporary economic theorizing and key public policies have been based on the assumption that resources for generating knowledge (e.g., education, diversity of industries...

In this paper we investigate antecedents and consequences of bricolage in a corporate entrepreneurship (CE) context. Drawing on knowledge and resource literatures, we hypothesize corporate entrepreneurs through bricolage may be able to mobilize, redefine and recombine existing resources available via social connections inside and outside their orga...

This chapter discuss the link between the creative regional environment and entrepreneurial opportunity. Thereby I follow recent theorizing by Davidsson (2012), who delineates a Shane and Venkataraman (2000) opportunity in three related constructs: objective opportunity or condition, opportunity perception and subjective business idea. Building on...

This article seeks to better understand the link between regional characteristics and individual entrepreneurship. We combine individual-level Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data for Western Germany with regional-level data, using multilevel analysis to test our hypotheses. We find no direct link between regional knowledge creation, the economic c...

Applying Lazear's jack-of-all-trades theory, we investigate the formation of entrepreneurial skills in two data sets on innovative new firms. Our results suggest that traditional human capital indicators individually have little or no influence on entrepreneurial skills. However, consistent with Lazear's theory, those entrepreneurs who exhibit a va...

Purpose The question of whether female‐owned firms underperform male‐owned firms has triggered much research and discussion. Klapper and Parker's review concluded that the majority of prior research suggests that female‐owned firms underperform relative to male‐owned firms. However, using performance measures that control for size and risk (and aft...

This paper examines the effects and origins of balanced skills among nascent entrepreneurs. In a first step we apply Lazear's jack-of-all-trades theory to investigate performance effects of a balanced skill set. Second, we investigate potential sources of balanced skills, thereby testing the investment hypothesis against the endowment hypothesis. A...

Applying Lazear's jack-of-all-trades theory we investigate the formation of entrepreneurial skills in two datasets on innovative new firms. Our results suggest that traditional human capital indicators individually have little or no influence on entrepreneurial skills. However, consistent with Lazaer's theory those entrepreneurs who exhibit a varie...

We analyze longitudinal data on innovative start-up projects and apply Lazear’s jack-of-all-trades theory to investigate the effect of nascent entrepreneurs’ balanced skills on their progress in the venture creation process. Our results suggest that those nascent entrepreneurs who exhibit a sufficiently broad set of skills undertake more gestation...

What predicts a person's venture creation success over the course of the career, such as making progress in the venture creation process and multiple successful venture creations? Applying a life span approach of human development, this study examined the effect of early entrepreneurial competence in adolescence, which was gathered retrospectively...

This paper examines the effects and origins of balanced skills among nascent entrepreneurs. In a first step we apply Lazear’s jack-of-all-trades theory to investigate performance effects of a balanced skill set. Second, we investigate potential sources of balanced skills, thereby testing the investment hypothesis against the endowment hypothesis. A...

Previous research on entrepreneurial teams has failed to settle the controversy over whether team heterogeneity helps or hinders new venture performance. Reconciling this inconsistency, this paper suggests a new conceptual approach to disentangle differential effects of team heterogeneity by modeling two separate heterogeneity dimensions, namely kn...

Central questions in entrepreneurship research concern the characteristics of the venture creation process and the factors determining the faith of a start-up project or the success of a new venture. Among other factors discussed social capital seems to play a pivotal role. Social capital is often tested for in entrepreneurship studies; however esp...

There is a general consensus that high-tech start-ups are more often created by groups of people than by individuals (Francis & Sandberg 2000). Moreover, team started businesses account for a disproportionately larger number of fast-growing firms (Bird 1989). Despite its obvious importance to entrepreneurship research, a sizeable gap exists in the...

It has been argued that creativity is an important source of regional growth. This article investigates the geography of people in creative occupation in Germany. The population share of the creative class as well as of bohemians and artists is relatively high in larger cities, but smaller places and rural regions may also have a considerable propo...

Der Beitrag analysiert die räumliche Verteilung verschiedener Kategorien kreativer Personen in Deutschland. Allgemein ist der Anteil der Kreativen in den Städten höher als auf dem Land. Ein etwas abweichendes Standortverhalten zeigen die freiberuflichen Künstler, die auch in einigen ländlichen Regionen stärker vertreten sind. Ein hoher Anteil an Kr...