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Narcissistic Rhetoric and Crowdfunding Performance: A Social Role Theory Perspective
Abstract
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 crowdfunding performance. Leveraging social role theory, we explore sex, sexual orientation, and race as potential moderators of this relationship. Moderation tests reveal LGBTQ entrepreneurs generally yield greater performance when using narcissistic rhetoric than heterosexuals while racial minorities underperform Caucasians using narcissistic rhetoric. Our findings suggest successful crowdfunding campaigns must balance narcissistic rhetoric with entrepreneurs’ perceived social roles.
... Yet, these same reputational tendencies should be positively associated with purposefully forming and maintaining relationships that provide outsized utility as a means of getting ahead and, therefore, have a positive relationship with occupying structural holes. Put differently, an egotistical reputation may generally alienate others in one's sphere (and thus reduce the number of relationships; Anglin et al., 2018;Griffin & Lopez, 2005;Kernberg, 1989), yet they may also foster the power and influence that come with occupying structural holes. Although egotistical reputation should be in conflict with network degree centrality, we suggest that it will lead entrepreneurs to obtain social capital and access to resources via their ability to target and maintain strategically useful relationships that provide power, status, and control. ...
... Zhang & Arvey, 2009), criminality (Obschonka et al., 2013), and taking advantage of others (Lundmark & Westelius, 2019), emphasizing their underlying selfish, egotistical motives, and highlighting their influence in entrepreneurship. Similarly, prior research has supported a positive association between entrepreneurship and the Dark Triad traits of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy (Jones & Paulhus, 2014), which capture an amalgamation of darker tendencies including hunger for power, self-centeredness (Anglin et al., 2018), manipulative and amoral actions (Brownell et al., 2021), and disregard for social norms and empathy (Kuyumcu & Dahling, 2014). Thus, we examine entrepreneurs' tendency to be egotistical, displayed via their reputations, by drawing on literature linking these broader tendencies to success in entrepreneurship. ...
... Research linking socially aversive tendencies to beneficial entrepreneurial outcomes (e.g., social aggressiveness, self-centeredness; Brownell et al., 2021;Randolph et al., 2022) suggests that egotistical tendencies may create advantage in entrepreneurship by facilitating a drive to achieve success at all costs (Baumol, 1996) and the willingness to break social norms to do so (Lundmark & Westelius, 2019). For example, moderate use of language reflective of self-centeredness and entitlement can benefit crowdfunding performance (Anglin et al., 2018). In line with this prior research, we theorize that egotistical reputation encourages entrepreneurs to get ahead by occupying structural holes and in doing so facilitates greater venture revenues. ...
... Deeply entangled by institutional barriers, women in almost all corners of the globe grapple with social biases and cultural beliefs [26]. These socio-cultural norms dictate how women should behave, and any disobedience can result in social disapproval or negative repercussions [27]. Therefore, individuals often choose to comply with these expectations and avoid nonconformity [28]. ...
... The digital divide, stemming from varying levels of digital literacy and access to infrastructure, often creates disparities in how women can leverage digital technologies [1]. Additionally, cultural norms and family obligations can limit the time and resources available to them for learning and adopting new technologies [27,32]. Our research findings also revealed that online competition can make market entry more challenging, particularly for women-owned businesses operating in saturated industries. ...
... Enhancing digital literacy forms the bedrock of this system [27]. It empowers women entrepreneurs with improved access to information, resources, and markets. ...
This study investigates the empowering potential of digital technologies for women entrepreneurs , a transformative force that transcends all fields of knowledge. It specifically examines how technology can equip women to overcome socio-cultural and economic barriers, focusing on the case of Iran. The research employs a mixed-methods approach, utilizing a literature review within the qualitative framework to identify key empowerment drivers. Subsequently, a quantitative approach leverages DEMATEL to pinpoint the most impactful drivers. This investigation aims to provide stake-holders with actionable insights, highlighting the critical role of technology in fostering equitable and sustainable economic advancement for women entrepreneurs. Furthermore, the study emphasizes the importance of gathering information from a developing nation like Iran, as its findings can hold significant implications for other countries experiencing similar developmental stages. Ultimately, the research seeks to inform the creation of effective policies, support initiatives, and educational programs. These interventions aim to empower women entrepreneurs to leverage digital tools for sustainable business growth, ultimately contributing to a more equitable and environmentally conscious future.
... Second, our study contributes to the literature on narcissism in entrepreneurship, as well as to the nascent literature on the role of narcissism in crowdfunding. Recent evidence shows that there exists a negative (or inverse U) relationship between narcissism and crowdfunding success (Anglin et al., 2018;Bollaert et al., 2020;Butticé & Rovelli, 2020) and, additionally, that narcissistic entrepreneurs set less ambitious campaign goals and longer durations, in line with an ego-defensive behavior (Bollaert et al., 2020). However, these studies focus on single projects of entrepreneurs. ...
... Among the research on personal traits and entrepreneurial performance, the critical role of narcissism has been highlighted (Chatterjee & Hambrick, 2007;Navis & Ozbek, 2016). Narcissism is often defined as an inflated, although fragile, self-concept of one's importance or influence, characterized by a persistent preoccupation with success, grandiose thinking, and exaggerated perspectives of authority, superiority, and competitiveness (Anglin et al., 2018;Campbell & Foster, 2007;Chatterjee & Hambrick, 2007;Foster & Brennan, 2011;Wales et al., 2013). Previous literature on narcissism in entrepreneurship has linked narcissism to both positive and negative outcomes. ...
... Existing studies show that increased narcissism leads to a higher likelihood of pursuing innovations (Navis & Ozbek, 2016), and more entrepreneurial intentions and attention (Kramer et al., 2011;Hmieleski & Lerner, 2016;Wales et al., 2013), but also more volatile financial performance (Chatterjee & Hambrick, 2007) and worse performance (Haynes et al., 2015;Tucker et al., 2016). In the crowdfunding context, narcissistic entrepreneurs have been recently shown to be less successful than other entrepreneurs (Bollaert et al., 2020;Butticè & Rovelli, 2020), while Anglin et al. (2018) document an inverted-U relationship between narcissistic rhetoric and crowdfunding performance. Narcissism has also been shown to affect campaign design in reward-based crowdfunding, with narcissistic entrepreneurs setting less ambitious goals and longer campaign durations (Bollaert et al., 2020), evidence of ego-defensive behavior. ...
We investigate the narcissists’ response to failure and whether narcissists effectively learn from this negative experience. To address this, we leverage data from a leading crowdfunding platform, and analyze 116,981 failed crowdfunding attempts. Our analysis shows a positive relationship between narcissism and the probability of relaunching which is negatively moderated by the degree of failure. Indeed, due to their fragility, narcissistic entrepreneurs are more likely to engage in ego-defensive behavior, and thus, they are less likely to relaunch following high degrees of failure. Moreover, narcissistic entrepreneurs exhibit poorer performance in their subsequent endeavors. This underperformance is driven by external attribution of failure and lower levels of pro-activity. In fact, following failure, narcissistic entrepreneurs are less likely to change internal factors that might contribute to their previous failure and they are more likely to respond to failure by reattempting in a different context. Managerial and policy implications are discussed.
... (1) We sampled one successful and one unsuccessful ''featured'' project. Such featured projects are usually hand-picked by the platforms such that ''featuring'' can be seen as a strong quality signal (Mollick 2014;Anglin et al. 2018b). In the case of successful projects, these projects were taken from platform categories such as ''successfully funded,'' ''most popular,'' or ''trending.'' ...
... This measure is an ideal fit for our purpose because it allows a standardized comparison of projects with heterogenous funding needs in relation to their funding goals. It is agnostic regarding a platform's funding mechanisms and generalizes well to different platform types (Anglin et al. 2018b;Scheaf et al. 2018). Further, it differentiates between projects that largely exceed their funding goal or that just meet it (Anglin et al. 2018b). ...
... It is agnostic regarding a platform's funding mechanisms and generalizes well to different platform types (Anglin et al. 2018b;Scheaf et al. 2018). Further, it differentiates between projects that largely exceed their funding goal or that just meet it (Anglin et al. 2018b). Finally, the funding ratio is frequently applied as a measure of funding performance such that it can be easily compared to existing research (Zheng et al. 2014;Deng et al. 2022;Chen et al. 2016;Scheaf et al. 2018; Steigenberger and Wilhelm 2018; Giudici et al. 2018). ...
This study draws on signaling theory to investigate the effect of hedonic signals in crowdfunding projects on funding performance. It compares the effect of hedonic signals across reward-, equity-, and donation-based crowdfunding platforms by combining archival data from 18 platforms and a large-scale panel of 64 experts that rate the strength of hedonic signals in 108 crowdfunding projects. Through the application of mixed linear modeling, the findings indicate a positive influence of stronger hedonic signals on funding performance. However, there are substantial differences across platform types. Increasing the strength of hedonic signals by one standard deviation increases funding performance by 28.9% on reward platforms, while there are no systematic effects on equity and donation platforms. This study contributes to existing crowdfunding research by clarifying the role of hedonic signals in crowdfunding and shedding light on the increasing need to better consider the characteristics of different crowdfunding platforms in crowdfunding research.
... (1) We sampled one successful and one unsuccessful ''featured'' project. Such featured projects are usually hand-picked by the platforms such that ''featuring'' can be seen as a strong quality signal (Mollick 2014;Anglin et al. 2018b). In the case of successful projects, these projects were taken from platform categories such as ''successfully funded,'' ''most popular,'' or ''trending.'' ...
... This measure is an ideal fit for our purpose because it allows a standardized comparison of projects with heterogenous funding needs in relation to their funding goals. It is agnostic regarding a platform's funding mechanisms and generalizes well to different platform types (Anglin et al. 2018b;Scheaf et al. 2018). Further, it differentiates between projects that largely exceed their funding goal or that just meet it (Anglin et al. 2018b). ...
... It is agnostic regarding a platform's funding mechanisms and generalizes well to different platform types (Anglin et al. 2018b;Scheaf et al. 2018). Further, it differentiates between projects that largely exceed their funding goal or that just meet it (Anglin et al. 2018b). Finally, the funding ratio is frequently applied as a measure of funding performance such that it can be easily compared to existing research (Zheng et al. 2014;Deng et al. 2022;Chen et al. 2016;Scheaf et al. 2018; Steigenberger and Wilhelm 2018; Giudici et al. 2018). ...
This study draws on signaling theory to investigate the effect of hedonic signals in crowdfunding projects on funding performance. It compares the effect of hedonic signals across reward-, equity-, and donation-based crowdfunding platforms by combining archival data from 18 platforms and a large-scale panel of 64 experts that rate the strength of hedonic signals in 108 crowdfunding projects. Through the application of mixed linear modeling, the findings indicate a positive influence of stronger hedonic signals on funding performance. However, there are substantial differences across platform types. Increasing the strength of hedonic signals by one standard deviation increases funding performance by 28.9% on reward platforms, while there are no systematic effects on equity and donation platforms. This study contributes to existing crowdfunding research by clarifying the role of hedonic signals in crowdfunding and shedding light on the increasing need to better consider the characteristics of different crowdfunding platforms in crowdfunding research.
... Convergent validity measures the similarity of the construct of interest to a closely related construct or the same measure but operationalised differently (Campbell and Fiske, 1959). We measured the convergent validity of the FFN scale by examining its relationship to the entitlement of narcissistic rhetoric CATA dictionary developed by Anglin et al. (2018). Entitlement is conceptually mirrored by FFN as it captures that speakers feel entitled "to more than others because of their inherent uniqueness" (Anglin et al., 2018, p. 787). ...
... Control for "language reflective of narcissistic characteristics" (Anglin et al., 2018) is required to D. Bendig et al. distinguish between FFN and a narcissistic TMT, which might but does not necessarily need to comprise family members. Again, narcissistic rhetoric is calculated as the share of narcissistic rhetoric keywords (Anglin et al., 2018) among all words in the MD&A section. All control variables except firm age are lagged by one year. ...
Family firm behaviour can be a potential root of innovation in family firms. Building on the theoretical perspectives of socioemotional wealth and narcissistic organisational identification, we introduce a novel concept and new measure for family firm narcissism (FFN). We suggest that FFN influences family firms’ innovation orientation (i.e., strategic innovativeness) and realised innovation outcome (i.e., digital inventiveness). Additionally, we assume that industry IT intensity, as an indicator of environmental pressure regarding digital transformation, moderates these relationships. To test the hypotheses, we investigated a longitudinal cross-industry sample, comprising 1,302 firm-year observations of S&P 500 family firms and analysed it with regression models. The results indicate that FFN is positively related to strategic innovativeness and negatively related to digital inventiveness. We further find that industry IT spending intensity amplifies both linkages. Our study contributes to the discussion on the family innovation agenda by (1) introducing the new concept and measure for FFN and (2) underlining its controversial impact and effectiveness on two central manifestations of innovation under the boundary conditions of digital transformation.
... This implies that individuals whose personal characteristics or roles are incongruent with societal expectations of entrepreneurs may be less likely to engage in entrepreneurial activity. The role of the economic entrepreneur tends to be associated with the characteristics of masculinity, aggressive risk-taking, and overconfidence (Anglin et al., 2018;Balachandra et al., 2019;Estrin et al., 2013;Jonason & Fletcher, 2018), factors which are often attributed to malebased stereotypes. Entrepreneurs that perceive congruity with these characteristics are likely to engage in entrepreneurial action in cultures that reflect these factors. ...
... The male gender role is stereotypically associated with agentic, high-status, and self-oriented behaviors (Anglin et al., 2018;Jonason & Fletcher, 2018). For example, men are viewed as driven by economic and achievement motivations (Ljunggren & Kolvereid, 1996). ...
Scholars tend to evaluate the effects of cultural factors on social entrepreneurial activity based on either cultural values or cultural practices. However, societal inconsistencies between values and practices have the potential to create uncertainty in expected entrepreneurial behaviors. In this paper, we operationalize cultural dissonance as the gap between cultural values and cultural practices and draw on role congruity theory to theorize and test how cultural dissonance influences engagement in social entrepreneurship. Using data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness, and the World Bank datasets (N = 23,828), we show that cultural dissonance can either impede or encourage social entrepreneurial activity and that female entrepreneurs are less sensitive to these effects than male entrepreneurs.
... Given the influence of rhetoric in crowdfunding settings (Allison et al., 2017;Anglin et al., 2018;McSweeney et al., 2022;Steigenberger and Wilhelm, 2018), identifying antecedents, or why microenterprises choose to leverage rhetoric as they do, offers theoretical and pragmatic value. Thus, this study, through the theorised legitimacy spillover effect, offers a novel path towards illuminating this further. ...
... First, we identify a subset of associated mechanisms that point to the origins of hybrid rhetoric. While many studies have identified the influence of rhetoric in crowdfunding settings as an explanatory variable (Allison et al., 2017;Anglin et al., 2018;McSweeney et al., 2022;Steigenberger and Wilhelm, 2018), we have little evidence ...
Microfinance institutions (MFIs) operate in diverse institutional contexts and serve as the backbone for microenterprises typically excluded from traditional financial markets. At the same time, MFIs and the microenterprises they support solve tangible social problems, such as alleviating hunger, lifting people out of poverty and creating more sustainable communities. When appealing for resources, MFIs work with microenterprises to create rhetoric that communicates both the financial needs and the social good that supporting them can do. Building on previous research concerning the hybrid rhetoric of microenterprises and the literature rooted in organisational legitimacy, we take a multi-level approach and assess whether country stability and MFI financial performance influence the hybrid rhetoric of microenterprises.
... As our research focuses on the extent of change in the product offering as a response to performance below aspirations at specific points in time-and because instances of change in the product offering cannot be reconstructed after crowdfunding campaigns have concluded-we could not run a single data scrape, as most previous research using Kickstarter data has done (e.g., Mollick 2014, Anglin et al. 2018. Instead, we needed to collect data on each campaign in real time. ...
... Our study also has methodological implications for crowdfunding research. A large body of crowdfunding research regresses crowdfunding success on the characteristics of a crowdfunding product offering as it was presented at the end of a crowdfunding campaign (e.g., Mollick 2014, Calic and Mosakowski 2016, Anglin et al. 2018. Our results indicate that those studies might have missed an important part of the story: The product offering at the time backers pledged their financial contribution may have been different from the product offering at the end of the campaign. ...
Entrepreneurs need to mobilize funds, but they do so under considerable uncertainty about resource holders’ preferences, leading often to fundraising attempts that perform below entrepreneurs’ aspirations. Past research has offered contrasting theorizing and evidence for why entrepreneurs then make changes to their product offering during such attempts as well as for why entrepreneurs refrain from taking such action. This paper develops and tests behavioral theory to reconcile this tension, explicating when and why entrepreneurs change their product offering during underperforming fundraising attempts. Specifically, we argue that entrepreneurs draw on three sources of information that are inherent to fundraising attempts and that inform the extent of their actions to change their product offering: the degree to which they perform below their own fundraising aspirations, the degree to which they fall below peer fundraising performance, and the time that remains until the deadline for the fundraising attempt. Longitudinal data on 576 fundraising campaigns (6,758 observations) published on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter support our theory. By developing novel behavioral theory on when and why entrepreneurs take action during resource mobilization, we offer contributions to research on entrepreneurial resource mobilization, the crowdfunding literature, and the Behavioral Theory of the Firm.
Funding: This work was supported by KölnAlumni.
Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2020.13803 .
... In entrepreneurship research, especially in crowdfunding, several attempts have been made to explore the relationship between entrepreneurs' narcissism and their performance. For instance, Anglin et al. (2018) found an inverse relationship between narcissism and crowdfunding success. They argued that successful narcissistic entrepreneurs are typically charismatic and confident (e.g., Gupta et al., 2014), affecting their ability to attract funding. ...
... The funding performance of narcissistic entrepreneurs is significantly different from that of non-narcissistic entrepreneurs, and the difference is 0.804%. These results are consistent with prior literature (Anglin et al., 2018;Gruda et al., 2021;Wales et al., 2013) and affirm the upper echelons theory. ...
Unlike other narcissism research, this research uses a narcissism personality inventory (NPI) to capture the effect of startup entrepreneur’s narcissism in determining resource acquisition. Using Indonesian startup founders as the sample, the results demonstrate a positive association between narcissism and funding success, indicating that highly narcissistic startup entrepreneurs have a higher probability of success in their funding acquisition. The findings of this study are different from existing findings of the literature on narcissistic entrepreneurs that use unobtrusive measures and they support the upper-echelon theory. This research practically implies that a grandiose entrepreneur might be bad for the working environment but good for resource acquisition.
... Their study shows an entrepreneur's biological sex has no significant influence on the investment decision, but the gender-stereotypical behaviours do. We therefore call for the inclusion of further genderrelated constructs, such as sexual orientation (e.g., Anglin et al., 2018b), as different funding outcomes are not necessarily attributable to an entrepreneur's biological sex. Table 4 provides a summary of our future research agenda. ...
A growing body of literature explores whether and why female and male entrepreneurs differ in their access to equity financing. This trend has led to an increasing fragmentation of the research field, as many studies analyze various mechanisms and focus on a certain form of equity financing. To advance research on gender differences in equity financing, it is necessary to identify patterns and inconsistent findings in the literature related to these mechanisms. Therefore, we perform a systematic literature review to provide an overview of the current state of knowledge on gender differences in the key forms of entrepreneurial equity financing (venture capital, angel investment, and equity crowdfunding). Based on 75 studies from 2001 to mid-2024, our review indicates that male entrepreneurs have an advantage in raising capital from venture capitalists and business angels, whereas female entrepreneurs are more successful in equity crowdfunding. These gender differences stem from a complex combination of mechanisms, which we categorize into four thematic dimensions that capture entrepreneurs’ characteristics, investors’ characteristics, the ventures’ characteristics and strategies, and contextual factors. We propose specific future research directions for each dimension, and discuss theoretical and methodological research opportunities that are applicable across dimensions to improve our understanding of gender differences in equity financing.
... Traditional signaling theory holds that signals must be costly to prevent inferior ventures from imitating them (Connelly et al., 2011), but modern versions relax this condition and assume that potential fund providers can back unverifiable claims by new ventures (Anglin et al., 2020). In nontraditional fundraising contexts, costless signals may still be required because the environments tend to feature noise and less sophisticated audiences (Anglin et al., 2018;Steigenberger and Wilhelm, 2018). Some researchers have highlighted the importance of credibility in noisy environments (Kleinert, 2024). ...
Purpose
This study explores how information volume affects crowdfunding success and identifies the signals – operational transparency, past crowdfunding experience, perceived project authenticity and perceived product quality – that moderate this relationship. The goal is to provide insights into managing information overload and enhancing the probability of funding success in various information volume contexts.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected from 2,681 Kickstarter campaigns and analyzed using fixed effects logit regression models.
Findings
The study reveals a curved relationship between information volume and funding success, moderated by factors such as operational transparency, crowdfunding experience, project authenticity and product quality.
Practical implications
This study provides fund-seekers with essential insights into disseminating information effectively.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the literature by elucidating the complex dynamics among information volume, signaling types and crowdfunding success, offering a nuanced understanding of how fund-seekers can optimize their campaigns for better outcomes.
... Research to date has been informative on how social roles affect the efficacy and success of entrepreneurial initiatives (Anglin et al., 2022b). Broader society tends to imbue roles onto those in poverty based on race, gender, sexual orientation, and social status, and derives status-oriented judgments in line with these expectations which can help or hinder the entrepreneur (Anglin et al., 2018). Such role-related psychology has also been linked to types of entrepreneurial activity pursued. ...
... In our study, we use the term "narcissistic tendency" to denote varying degrees of NPI without implying clinical narcissism. This perspective aligns with recent insights into how narcissists may succeed in their ecosystems, such as with stakeholders, customers or investors, through effective idea-selling and risk-taking (Anglin et al., 2018). ...
This study aims to investigate the association between narcissistic tendencies, gender and funding success in high-growth start-ups. It aims to bridge a critical research gap by exploring the combined effect of gender and narcissism on start-up funding success. We surveyed 540 founders of high-growth start-ups in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, using the NPI-16 questionnaire to assess narcissistic tendencies. By focusing on high-growth start-ups as opposed to small firms, we enhanced the validity of the sample. This study isolates and analyses the effects of gender and narcissism, providing insights into their individual and combined contributions to start-up funding success. The findings reveal that gender is associated with lower start-up funding and lower narcissistic tendencies. This highlights the intricate relationship between gender, narcissism and funding success within the context of high-growth start-ups. These findings have important implications for investors, policymakers and entrepreneurial educators, suggesting that a nuanced understanding of founders' psychological traits could enhance funding strategies and start-up support mechanisms. This research addresses the critical gap in the literature by examining the joint influence of gender and narcissism on funding success in high-growth start-ups. The study contributes to a nuanced understanding of the factors shaping founder psychology and performance dynamics, offering valuable
insights for future research in gender, narcissism and start-up success.
... This leads to ambiguity on which entrepreneurial communication can, should, or must be considered a signal in the sense of signaling theory. Thus, scholars have introduced terminology such as "costless" (Anglin, Wolfe, et al., 2018), "rhetorical" (Steigenberger & Wilhelm, 2018), or "informational" (Wesley et al., 2022) signals, all of which indicate that a piece of communication should be considered a signal even though it is not costly in the manner outlined by Spence (1973). The baseline idea of such noncostly signals is that relevant information could be considered a signal whenever it is suited to reduce resource-holder uncertainty so that it entices resource holders to provide funding. ...
... The imposed burden on authority and freedom of a NVT can also degrade feedback processes and decision-making quality (cf., Collins et al., 2023), highlighting an important consequence of personality-based behaviors in a lead founder. Next, our findings offer needed granularity to recent conversations concerning the unique functioning of narcissism in the entrepreneurial context (e.g., Anglin et al., 2018;Brownell et al., 2024;Buttice & Rovelli, 2020). Though founder narcissism has been consistently linked with superior performance (Brownell et al., 2021), these positive outcomes may not be a result of, or consistent with, maintaining social harmony within NVTs. ...
Though scholars have explored how the personality composition of a new venture team relates to critical firm-level outcomes, research has not yet accounted for the impact of the lead founder, whose personality likely exerts a unique influence on team processes due to their elevated role. This is particularly critical in light of recent research highlighting the prevalence of the Dark Triad in entrepreneurship. We draw on social exchange theory to theorize and test how lead founder Dark Triad personality traits influence three intra-team processes: autonomy, innovation, and relationship conflict. In a time-lagged field study of nascent founders and their new venture teams (N = 102 intact teams), we found that lead founders who score high on Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy differentially effect these socially motivated team processes. By focusing on the influence that a single individual – the lead founder – can have within a new venture team, our findings offer balance to the literature, which predominantly focuses on team composition.
... Despite the relevance of signaling theory to EE research, its application remains limited (Bafera & Kleinert, 2023). Current entrepreneurship research predominantly applies signaling theory to venture-level activities such as securing start-up financing where several strategical maneuvers from argumentation and business plan comprehensiveness to passion and third-party affiliations are used as signals for entrepreneurial competence (Anglin et al., 2018;Davis et al., 2017;Fisher et al., 2021;Haveman et al., 2012). ...
... Besides the struggles relating to motivations and behavioral aspects of EMEs, this literature also investigates the "between-person" characteristics of the entrepreneur (Boulton et al., 2019). For example, Anglin et al. (2018) investigated the role of narcissism on EMEs' crowdfunding performance. Withstanding the consequences that racially disadvantaged entrepreneurs face, scholars also theorized why and how these individuals chose entrepreneurship as their career (Dheer and Lenartowicz, 2018). ...
Purpose
This study aims to synthesize and conceptualize the highly fragmented yet important literature on racial discrimination in entrepreneurship.
Design/methodology/approach
A bibliometric analysis and literature review were performed that involved 523 articles containing 26,926 references.
Findings
The bibliometric analysis identified three dominant research themes that comprehensively illustrate the state of research in this domain: strategic, sociocultural and individual-level perspectives. The synthesis of extant literature helped in formulating a holistic conceptual model that portrays the genuineness of racial discrimination in entrepreneurship. The sources, factors and impact of racial discrimination faced by entrepreneurs were identified. Based on the review and analysis of keywords, certain fruitful future research directions were formulated that will take the field forward.
Originality/value
This work is the first attempt to review the literature that narrows down the focus to racial discrimination in entrepreneurship (from other discriminations such as gender, cultural and religious discrimination) as one form of discrimination due to its unique origins and consequences.
... We controlled for total words (natural log) during those remarks. From the most recent shareholder letter, we captured: vain speech and negative speech to account for idiosyncratic negativity or humility (Anglin et al., 2018;Hayward & Fitza, 2017); temporal focus as executives' past, present, and future orientation (e.g., Gamache & McNamara, 2019;Nadkarni & Chen, 2014); and regulatory focus via prevention and promotion orientation (e.g., Gamache et al., 2020). We controlled for recent news volume and sentiment about the firm-as both shape firm decisions (Bednar et al., 2013;Titus et al., 2018), using data from RavenPack (Hill et al., 2019). ...
Research Summary
While previous organizational impression management (OIM) research focuses on highlighting firms in a favorable light, we explore CEOs' use of “strategic negativity” to manage expectations. We draw on OIM's psychological roots to predict that despite pressure to “be positive,” when CEOs perceive stakeholders are motivated to raise their expectations and have an opportunity to do so, CEOs strategically use negativity to counteract this anticipated expectation increase. We test our predictions on 7330 quarterly earnings calls from 370 publicly traded firms (2008–2019), examining how the “motive” of a positive material earnings surprise and “opportunity” of a new fiscal year jointly increase CEO negativity in prepared remarks. We elaborate the wide applicability of strategic negativity, the “other side” of the OIM phenomenon.
Managerial Summary
In contrast to the prevailing view that CEOs usually “positively spin” the firm's situation to stakeholders, we investigate how CEOs strategically use negativity to counteract stakeholder optimism, provided CEOs perceive expectations are likely to rocket upward. We argue that positive news represents a “motive” and a chance to reflect represents an “opportunity,” and that together they risk raising expectations. Analyzing 7330 quarterly earnings calls of 370 companies (2008–2019), we specifically examined how both (1) a positive earnings surprise and (2) a new fiscal year force CEOs out of their positivity comfort zone and encourage them to be strategically negative in earnings call remarks, to try to lower stakeholder expectations. Our results support this view and pave the way for future research.
... Their levels of confidence, optimism and drive for success, and the fact that narcissists can be found in leadership positions, point to the positive effects of these traits (Raskin and Terry 1988;Rosenthal and Pittinsky 2006). On the other hand, narcissists with high levels of narcissism can be seen as arrogant, unstable and less competent, as poor listeners and lacking empathy (Anglin et al. 2018;Maccoby 2004). In addition, these high levels of narcissism also can cause participants to perceive these individuals as unattractive, unlikeable or aggressive (Back et al. 2013;Dufner et al. 2013). ...
The media plays a key role in bridging information asymmetries between parties such as CEOs and third-party observers. However, current research suggest that the media is not just a carrier of information but can actively shape the impression of the audience. An open question remains, hence, whether media reporting is affected by certain CEO traits such as narcissism or humility, two key constructs in the literature. For instance, narcissistic CEOs’ belief in their own superiority may spillover to the media, thereby distorting the function as information carrier and favoring directly or indirectly certain CEO traits. Therefore, by drawing on the differential effects that narcissism and humility can have on the impression of an audience, the study employs a computer-aided content analysis of factual narcissistic and humble CEOs, identified via a video metric approach, and their evaluation through three key journalistic intermediaries (New York Times, Washington Post, and Financial Times). The quantitative data suggest that actual CEO narcissism is related negatively to external performance evaluations of CEOs in subsequent years. In addition, the data suggest that narcissism as well as humility scores increase the emotional tone employed depending on the journalistic orientation of the media outlet. Humble CEOs receive on average more media attention than narcissistic CEOs yet this result is insignificant, providing limited evidence for a systematic (i.e., number of articles) bias across and within journalistic outlets towards either narcissistic or humble CEOs. This suggests that widely considered “quality” media outlets resist to portray CEO traits in an overly positive/negative light.
... However, the advantage of mixed-gender fundraisers over male and female ones could be the consequences of having more external social connections; therefore, as Guo et al. (2021) suggested, a higher number of funders. This finding supports the findings of Anglin et al. (2018), meaning that successful crowdfunding campaigns must balance narcissistic rhetoric with the perceived social roles of entrepreneurs. Our results support Cicchiello et al.'s (2021) observation that mixed teams were more likely to obtain financing through equity crowdfunding platforms. ...
Organic production is on the upswing, owing to consumer preferences for safer products manufactured with environmentally friendly methods. It is frequently promoted to achieve economic development, poverty alleviation, and female empowerment. Crowdfunding is considered an ideal mechanism for mobilizing financial resources for people with limited access to traditional sources, such as women. This paper aims to analyze the gender gap in organic farming crowdfun-ding and estimate which characteristics foster the likelihood of crowdfunding success in organic production campaigns. We used a sample of crowdfunding campaigns from the Kickstarter platform and employed a binary logistic regression model to investigate the main research question. Our findings show that the crowd primarily supports gender-mixed teams. We also found that having more information about the campaign and project quality, a more realistic goal, and a shorter campaign duration increases the likelihood of succeeding. This paper contributes to the growing literature and policy initiatives to promote and develop gender equality in crowdfunding.
... Recently, scholars have incorporated insights from the psychology literature to understand individual traits that render entrepreneurs successful (Anglin et al., 2018). Some of these works have focused on the triad of dark personality traitsnarcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy (Bollaert et al., 2020;Butticè and Rovelli, 2020) -and in particular on narcissism, which characterizes individuals who show high levels of overconfidence and self-esteem, and are prone to consider themselves better than others (Judge et al., 2009). ...
Failure and innovation have always been inextricably linked. What matters in today's
complex environment, however, is how companies deal with failure from innovation.
Although recent research indicates that they are often likely to fail, failure still overall
assumes a negative connotation and is thus perceived as something to avoid. By
combining prior research on types of failure (spurious vs traditional learning),
consequences of innovation failure (trauma vs opportunity), and entailing key
influencing factors (e.g., types of learning, dynamic capabilities, time, negative social evaluations), we outline a typology of approaches to innovation failures. We examine and discuss illustrative case studies of companies (Theranos, Space X, IBM, and Pfizer) to demonstrate how they approach the different types and consequences of innovation failures. We also speculate on how their strategies might change over time, how this might affect their learning curve depending on the negative social evaluations they receive, and the role dynamic capabilities play in shaping managerial decisions. These illustrative cases help readers visualize theoretical concepts and recognize the potential benefits and consequences of different types of innovation failures. We outline implications for theory and practice and suggest a future research agenda to improve our understanding of the processes at work when innovation and dealing with failure.
... The focus of the intermediary organisation is to provide a platform to match the researcher and funder and also provide funders with information about the projects and functionalities (Belleflamme et al, 2013;Calic, 2018). Other authors (Anglin et al 2018;Zhao and Shneor, 2020) suggest that the project description, in terms of narrative and visual quality, can make funders consider funding a project. There are several reasons why people fund projects and this is linked to the type of crowdfunding models. ...
Over the years, the funding of scientific projects has been the responsibility of traditional research funding institutions, such as government programmes or mainstream trusts. However, there are areas and topics of research which, for a variety of reasons, remain underfunded by traditional programmes. Crowdfunding has provided an alternative means of providing financial support to researchers and projects which ordinarily are not of interest to government funding agencies and other major funders of research. This paper explores the user needs of a nascent crowdfunding channel for Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) research in Europe. The goal of the research was to understand and formalise a set of users' needs that could help in setting up this nascent crowdfunding solution. The users are the SSH researchers who seek financial support on scientific projects and the funders who are motivated to invest in a project. We utilised a mixed method of research design to collect both qualitative and quantitative data about the users and their needs. This included codesigning work and a Europe-wide questionnaire. The outcome of this work was formalised in a set of practical recommendations for the new crowdfunding channel, which might have a broader application for the design of crowdfunding solutions. This research is part of a large European research project, focused on building a discovery platform for SSH, called GoTriple, of which the new crowdfunding channel is one of the services.
We investigate how entrepreneurs communicate with crowdfunding backers during the onset of a societal crisis via a content analysis of campaigns active during the COVID-19 pandemic and a vignette experiment. While effective communication with stakeholders is critical for acquiring resources during societal crises, little is known about what communication strategies entrepreneurs use during these crises or their influence on fundraising. Notably, we find that entrepreneurs’ crisis communication strategies differ along three key dimensions: timing (proactive vs. reactive), target (entrepreneur vs. other), and nature (utilitarian vs. personal), and that proactively addressing other stakeholders’ personal concerns attracts more funding than alternative approaches.
Reward-based crowdfunding is a typical two-sided platform (fundraiser side and backer side) with high information asymmetry. While existing research indicates that signals from fundraisers and backers can impact crowdfunding performance, the interplay among these signals warrants further investigation. Drawing on signaling theory, this study adopts a configurational perspective and utilizes the fsQCA method and linear regression to investigate the combined effects of fundraiser engagement (update and fundraiser comment), third-party endorsement (backer comment and Facebook sharing), and project preparedness (video, image, and description) on crowdfunding performance. Drawing data from the reward-based crowdfunding platform Indiegogo, this research pointed out that these signals cannot generate better crowdfunding performance alone and examined substitution and complementary effects among different signals. Based on the linear regression and fsQCA results, configurations that lead to high crowdfunding performance are identified. We found that project preparedness must work with other signals to produce high crowdfunding performance. Besides, we summarized these configurations into two patterns that may lead to high crowdfunding performance: a fundraiser engagement-driven pattern and a third-party endorsement-driven pattern. This study contributes a configurational perspective and valuable insights into how signals can work together to mitigate information asymmetry in crowdfunding.
Narcissism, as a form of self-awareness of self-importance or self-influence, can be characterized by a constant attention to success and the need for authority, competitiveness, and grandiose, which may be introduced to promote the attractiveness of a project. This study analyzes the effect of textual narcissism on the willingness to back citizen science projects by considering the social roles of the citizen project owners: expert, student, and amateur researchers. This paper uses social role theory to anchor the seven forms of narcissism and proposes 9 dimensions of narcissism, which are then classified into 3 categories: social role advantage, psychological superiority, and identity aspiration. Using a web crawler, 850 citizen science projects are employed as a corpus. Text mining is used to quantify the narratives, and econometric models are applied to estimate the effect of textual narcissism. This study reports that narcissism presents an inverted U-shaped effect. On social role, formal researchers (experts and students) receive lesser degrees of public tolerance to textual narcissism, over amateur researchers. By extending narcissistic influence and social role theory to citizen science, this paper can guide stakeholders and regulators such as scientific experiment platforms in generating suitable text descriptions for better research resource mobilization.
The growing literature at the intersection of executives’ characteristics and stakeholders’ evaluations argues that executives’ characteristics not only have “first-order effects” on their organizations’ actions and outcomes, as in upper echelons theorizing, but also give rise to “second-order effects” or “opportunity structures,” whereby stakeholders evaluate and react to focal executives’ organizations based on those characteristics. Despite many insights from the burgeoning literature on the second-order effects of executives’ characteristics on stakeholders’ evaluations and reactions, the literature lacks a comprehensive framework with core tenets by which stakeholders form evaluations of executives’ characteristics that drive their actions (or, reactions, as it were) based on such characteristics and the ensuing outcomes. In turn, knowledge from the proliferating literature on how stakeholders react on the basis of their evaluations of referent organizations’ executives’ characteristics is fragmented, consisting of a series of disconnected findings and attendant insights scattered across various theoretical and topical domains. We conducted a framework synthesis of the literature to iteratively derive a conceptual framework from extant research—which we call the stakeholder view of upper echelons—that synthesizes knowledge at the intersection of executives’ characteristics and stakeholders’ reactions around this framework. In doing so, we provide the foundation for future research to help extend knowledge in this important domain. We identify several avenues that are important for future work to address and provide practical implications from our framework.
Multiperspective frameworks, such as the social relations model, socioanalytic theory, the realistic accuracy model, the self–other knowledge asymmetry model, and the trait-reputation-identity model, have advanced understanding of personality over the last 40 years. Due to a resurgence of interest in multiperspective research on personality and other constructs in organizational psychology, we conducted an integrative conceptual review of these specific multirater frameworks and their application in work settings. Our review identifies similarities and differences in these frameworks and suggests that they collectively represent an invaluable resource for personality researchers and the broader field of organizational psychology. Through our review, we distinguish multiperspective frameworks from similar approaches (e.g., multirater designs), track the evolution of these frameworks, and leverage current applications of these frameworks to craft a future research agenda. Our review serves as a roadmap to help scholars apply multiperspective logic more thoroughly and systematically in personality research and beyond. We close with a discussion of practical implications.
Firms increasingly express the strategic importance of creating social value in addition to financial and market value in their communications to investors. Yet, it is unclear what a strategic orientation towards social value creation entails and whether it differentiates firms in terms of their sustainability performance. This article provides a conceptualization of strategic social value orientation (SSVO) consisting of three behavioral components (leading the business with purpose, support of stakeholders, focus on consequences) and one shared belief (mutuality). Utilizing a novel linguistic, content-analytic measure of strategic social value orientation, we analyze annual letters to shareholders and sustainability ratings across 1580 firm-year observations, indicating that firms with a stronger strategic social value orientation show greater sustainability performance. The article explores commensurability of strategic attention towards social value creation, suggesting that future research prioritize more fine-grained assessments of social value, sustainability strategies and performance. Our study makes two main contributions. First, we advance theory at the intersection of sustainability and strategic orientation literatures by introducing a new concept of a firm’s strategic orientation toward social value creation (i.e. SSVO). Second, we develop and validate an empirical measure at the firm level for analyzing a firm’s strategic social value orientation making an important contribution to the commensuration of sustainability. Our findings offer guidance to scholars and implications for practitioners.
Crowdfunding campaign narratives function as signalling tools for social entrepreneurs, conveying organisational values to potential backers. In this study, we analyse 18,420 campaigns from 128 countries on the Islamic donation-based crowdfunding platform, Launchgood (2013–2020) through signalling theory. Our findings show that rhetoric emphasising altruistic, stakeholder and market orientations significantly influences Islamic crowdfunding success. These effects vary based on a country’s level of economic freedom, being more pronounced in nations with better government integrity, financial freedom and judicial effectiveness and diminished in those with higher government intervention. These insights guide entrepreneurs in strategically promoting projects through effective signalling rhetoric.
Family firms are typically associated with a respected system of values, yet the impact of such values on shareholder reactions remains to be understood. We examine the presence of humility rhetoric in corporate communications, characterized by language emphasizing modesty and collaboration, and its effect on shareholder reactions for both family and nonfamily firms. Analyzing 2250 shareholder letters from S&P 500 family and nonfamily firms and 1460 shareholder letters from small and medium-sized family and nonfamily firms, this study finds strong evidence supporting the positive impact of humility rhetoric on shareholder reactions for family firms. Further, interesting effects emerge when considering the influence of positive and negative media coverage. We bolster these findings with a sample of small and medium-sized family and nonfamily businesses and find consistent results. Our findings help advance the economic theory of family firms by highlighting the capital market implications of humility rhetoric in these firms and its importance in shaping positive shareholder reactions. Further, from a methodological perspective, this study introduces a measure of humility rhetoric using a computer-aided text-analysis approach, extending its applicability to broader research contexts.
Purpose
The purpose of our study is to study the impact of chief executive officer (CEO) optimism and narcissism on the company's capital structure.
Design/methodology/approach
(1) The authors opt for regression, machine learning and text analysis to explore the impact of narcissism and optimism on the capital structure. (2) We analyze CEO interviews and employ three methods to evaluate narcissism: the dictionary proposed by Anglin, which enabled us to assess the following components: authority, superiority, vanity and exhibitionism; count of first-person singular and plural pronouns and count of CEO photos displayed. Following this approach, we were able to make a more thorough assessment of corporate narcissism. (3) Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) technique helped to find the differences in the corporate rhetoric of narcissistic and non-narcissistic CEOs and to find differences between the topics of interviews and letters provided by narcissistic and non-narcissistic CEOs.
Findings
Our research demonstrates that narcissism has a slight and nonlinear impact on capital structure. However, our findings suggest that there is an impact of pessimism and uncertainty under pandemic conditions when managers predicted doom and completely changed their strategies. We applied various approaches to estimate the gender distribution of CEOs and found that the median values of optimism and narcissism do not depend on sex. Using LDA, we examined the content and key topics of CEO interviews, defined as positive and negative. There are some differences in the topics: narcissistic CEOs are more likely to speak about long-term goals, projects and problems; they often talk about their brand and business processes.
Originality/value
First, we examine the COVID-19 pandemic period and evaluate how CEO optimism and pessimism affect their financial decisions under specific external conditions. The pandemic forced companies to shift the way they worked: either to switch to the remote work model or to interrupt operations; to lose or, on the contrary, attract clients. In addition, during this period, corporate management can have a different outlook on their company’s financial performance and goals. The LDA technique helped to find the differences in the corporate rhetoric of narcissistic and non-narcissistic CEOs. Second, we use three methods to evaluate narcissism. Third, the research is based on a set of advanced methods: machine learning techniques (random forest to reveal a nonlinear impact of CEO optimism and narcissism on capital structure).
Despite a large body of research on donation-based crowdfunding platforms, the ways that people appeal for help, and the impact of different appeal types, remain unclear. In particular, it is not clear the extent to which individuals benefit from a temporal orientation on the past, where they can provide personal background, or the future, where they can explain how they will benefit from donors’ help. Building on a novel dataset of 6,282 fundraising campaigns and 44,757 donor comments gathered from a donation-based crowdfunding platform, this study analyzes donors’ financial contributions and expressions of emotional responses in response to past and future oriented appeals. This analysis combines an instrumental variable approach, propensity score matching, natural language processing, and image analysis. The results indicate that verbal responses are similar for past and future oriented appeals, but that future oriented appeals are more effective for fundraising. The results further suggest that, when lower levels of positive affect are used in past oriented appeals, this combination may be linked with more rapidly diminishing financial contributions over time.
Crowdfunding, or soliciting small contributions from large and dispersed crowds through online platforms, is an increasingly indispensable strategy for established firms, young ventures, and aspiring entrepreneurs alike. Synthesizing research in the fields of management, entrepreneurship, innovation, operations, information systems, and marketing, we conduct an integrative review of the crowdfunding research accumulated over the past decade. We aim to break down disciplinary silos to develop a framework that integrates insights across research communities. We identify three underlying dimensions that differentiate extant research: the goal of the campaigner, the role of the crowd, and the boundary of the crowdfunding event. Scholars have brought two perspectives to bear on these questions: an elemental perspective and a processual perspective. We outline an integrative model that takes account of crowdfunding as a process involving heterogeneous participants with idiosyncratic monetary and non-monetary goals at different stages. Our multidisciplinary review of this expanding body of literature not only integrates dispersed insights but also, more importantly, stimulates a future research agenda that goes beyond the traditional boundaries of crowdfunding research.
Research Summary
This paper examines how reward‐based crowdfunding backers respond to risk disclosures. Combining theoretical frameworks from financial accounting with the risk perception literature, we adopt an abductive research approach to explore various nuances that influence backers' tolerance for risk information. In addition to identifying the general dynamics in backers' risk interpretation, we highlight the complexities introduced by differences in the disclosure's semantic content, expressed feelings, and the discloser's background attributes. Relying on a hierarchical Bayesian mixture model, we first identify a positive curvilinear relationship between risk information quantity and crowdfunding success. We then demonstrate the influences of what is disclosed, how it is disclosed, and who discloses it, while emphasizing the context‐bound specificities of individual project types.
Managerial Summary
Our study aids entrepreneurs to effectively communicate risks in reward‐based crowdfunding campaigns. We consistently find that entrepreneurs provided substantially less risk information than the optimum amount of information, emphasizing the need for more extensive disclosures. On what to disclose, backers favored information on risks that are consequential to them personally and not those that affect the entrepreneur's project. On how to disclose, expressed feelings had little influence on how much risk information backers preferred. However, who provides the disclosure was crucial, as trust‐enhancing factors increased backers' appetite for risk information. Together, our findings show that, while communicating risks, entrepreneurs should be cognizant that online backers undertake calculative evaluations and have material motivations. Furthermore, our category level results aid entrepreneurs in making practical judgments on context‐specific deviations across project types.
Drawing from expectancy violation theory, we investigate how entrepreneurs' language-based expressions of their political ideology influence the performance of their crowdfunding campaigns. We argue that crowdfunding funders expect campaigns to be apolitical, suggesting that entrepreneurs' expressing their political ideologies-regardless of the specific ideology-create a negative expectancy violation that decreases funding performance. As source credibility is a central boundary condition for expectancy violation theory predictions, we also suggest this relationship is mitigated by three indicators of entrepreneurial credibility: prior successful experience, media usage, and third-party endorsements. Using a sample of 19,898 Kickstarter campaigns and a randomized experiment, we find support for our theoretical predictions. Executive summary The role of political ideology has become an important topic in entrepreneurship research (e.g., Maldonado-Bautista et al., 2021; Lewis et al., 2021; Zhou, 2013). Throughout the literature, researchers have generated significant insights showing that entrepreneurs' conservatism and liberalism serve as ideological values that ultimately guide the decisions impacting their new ventures (Chin et al., 2021; Jarrodi et al., 2019). Despite these insights, the current literature informs comparatively less about how entrepreneurs' political ideologies are perceived by others and whether expressing their political ideologies is valued throughout the new venture process. The present research explores these questions by examining how entrepreneurs' expressions of political values shape their ability to attract funding for their new venture via crowdfunding. To develop our conceptual model, we draw from expectancy violations theory (i.e., a perspective that explains how individuals respond to unexpected behavior during communication; Burgoon et al., 2002) and communication research illustrating that discussing politics is seen as unprofessional in business (Gera et al., 2020; Tillman, 2022). Based on this theoretical framework, we suggest that funders in crowdfunding expect entrepreneurs' campaigns to be generally free of political expressions. As such, entrepreneurs hurt their crowdfunding performance by violating this expectation if they express their political ideology-regardless of whether they are expressing a conservative or liberal ideology. We then examine whether the expectation for entrepreneurs to be generally apolitical in their crowdfunding campaigns depends on the credibility of the entrepreneur. Expectancy violations theory suggests that individuals with greater credibility about a topic have 2 greater freedom to violate existing expectations (Burgoon et al., 2002). Following this logic, we also examine three indicators of an entrepreneur's credibility identified in previous crowdfunding research by Courtney et al. (2017) (i.e., entrepreneurial experience, entrepreneurial media usage, third-party endorsements). We contend that these indicators of entrepreneur credibility mitigate the negative influence of political expressions on crowdfunding performance. We test our model using Kickstarter campaigns based in the United States (N = 19,898) and using a randomized experiment (N = 668). Results provide general support for our predictions. Entrepreneurs diminish the amount of funds raised in their crowdfunding campaigns by approximately 9 % and 17 % for every percentage point increase in their expressions of conservatism or liberalism, respectively. The negative influence of political expressions is mitigated when the entrepreneur had more entrepreneurial experience, more media usage in their campaigns, and a third-party endorsement (i.e., Kickstarter's 'Project We Love' badge). We also found strong evidence that funders expect entrepreneurs' crowdfunding campaigns to be apolitical in our randomized experiment and that political expressions lead to perceptions of unprofessionalism among potential funders. The overall results unveil an overlooked reality: in a society in which entrepreneurs are increasingly discussing politics and intertwining it with their businesses (Carothers and O'Donohoue, 2019; Zipkin, 2018), crowdfunding funders expect entrepreneurs to be apolitical. Our study contributes to the literature in three key ways. First, we diverge from the focus on the literature suggesting entrepreneurs' political ideologies serve as values that affect their business decisions and, instead, demonstrate the importance of how entrepreneurs' political ideologies are perceived. Second, we highlight the expectation in crowdfunding that entrepreneurs should generally avoid discussing their political ideologies, but that entrepreneurs with more indications of credibility may be granted greater latitude to discuss their political values. Finally, we contribute back to expectancy violations theory by answering calls to uncover the underlying mechanisms that explain why expectancy violations evoke specific reactions among individuals in certain settings (Bur-goon, 2015) by providing evidence that norms of professionalism form the expectation of apoliticality in crowdfunding campaigns.
Plain English Summary
Narcissistic workaholics achieve high business performance, unless their families become too involved. Founders wield outsized influence over new venture creation and early development. For example, past research suggests that personality traits of the founder, like narcissism, may boost new venture performance or destroy it. However, there are no consistent results regarding the impact of narcissism on performance. To understand the mechanisms shaping the relationship between narcissism and venture performance, we investigate founder’s workaholism as a possible mediator. At the same time, familial ties and relationships play important roles in many spheres of life, and we argue that family support may be beneficial to firm founders (or not), depending on the type of support and/or personal characteristics of the founder. In our study, we analyzed responses from active business founders about themselves and their businesses. We find that narcissism increases venture performance through workaholism, while family emotional support decreases the positive effect of workaholism. Thus, the main implication of our study for both researchers and practitioners is that workaholism may be a missing link between narcissism and performance. Furthermore, family support may augment the degree to which founders’ addictive desire to work positively impacts venture performance.
We extend the entrepreneurship literature to include positive psychological capital-an individual or organization's level of psychological resources consisting of hope, optimism, resilience , and confidence-as a salient signal in crowdfunding. We draw from the costless signaling literature to argue that positive psychological capital language usage enhances crowdfunding performance. We examine 1726 crowdfunding campaigns from Kickstarter, finding that entrepreneurs conveying positive psychological capital experience superior fundraising performance. Human capital moderates this relationship while social capital does not, suggesting that costly signals may, at times, enhance the influence of costless signals. Post hoc analyses suggest findings generalize across crowdfunding types, but not to IPOs.
This study draws upon the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion (ELM) to develop and test a model of persuasive influence in crowdfunding. To test our hypothesized relationships, we drew upon a sample of 383 ventures taken directly from Kickstarter, coupled with a decision experiment conducted in a simulated crowdfunding context. Results suggest that issue-relevant information, such as entrepreneurs' education, matters most when funders possess greater ability and motivation to make careful evaluations. In contrast, cues, such as adopting a group identity, have their strongest influence among inexperienced, first-time funders, and when requested funding amounts are smaller.
Crowdfunding is an emerging phenomenon that enables entrepreneurs to solicit financial contributions for new projects from mass audiences. Drawing on the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion and emotional contagion theory, the authors examined the importance of displayed entrepreneurial passion when seeking resources in a crowdfunding context. They proposed that entrepreneurs’ displayed passion in the introductory video for a crowdfunding project increases viewers’ experienced enthusiasm about the project (i.e., passion contagion), which then prompts them to contribute financially and to share campaign information via social-media channels. Such sharing further facilitates campaign success. In addition, the authors proposed that perceived project innovativeness strengthens the positive effect of displayed passion on social-media exposure and the funding amount a project garners. They first tested their hypotheses in 2 studies using a combination of survey and archival data from the world’s 2 most popular crowdfunding platforms: Indiegogo (Study 1) and Kickstarter (Study 2). They then conducted an experiment (Study 3) to validate the proposed passion contagion process, and the effect of displayed entrepreneurial passion at the individual level. Findings from these 3 studies significantly supported their hypotheses. The authors discuss the theoretical and practical implications of their findings.
Research generally suggests that, relative to commercial entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs stand at a disadvantage at acquiring resources through traditional financial institutions. Yet interest in social entrepreneurship appears to be at an all-time high. The current paper advances the argument that an innovative institutional form - crowdfunding - has emerged to address the needs of social entrepreneurs and other entrepreneurs with limited access to traditional sources of capital. To examine this, we study whether and how a sustainability orientation affects entrepreneurs' ability to acquire financial resources through crowdfunding and hypothesize that a venture's sustainability orientation will enhance its fundraising capability. We also suggest that project legitimacy and creativity mediate the relationship between a sustainability orientation and funding success. Our analysis produces two key findings: 1) a sustainability orientation positively affects funding success of crowdfunding projects, and 2) this relationship is partially mediated by project creativity and third party endorsements. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and Society for the Advancement of Management Studies.
This paper makes two contributions to research on the new entrepreneurial finance context of equity crowdfunding. First, we compare its regulation around the world and discuss how this impacts the development of markets. Second, we investigate the signaling role played toward external investors by equity retention and social capital. Using a sample of 271 projects listed on the UK platforms Crowdcube and Seedrs in the period 2011–2014, we find that campaigns launched by entrepreneurs (1) who sold smaller fraction of their companies at listing and (2) had more social capital had higher probabilities of success. Our results combine findings in classical entrepreneurial finance settings, like venture capital and IPOs, with evidence from other, non-equity crowdfunding markets.
Earlier evidence predominantly supports that women are more ethical than men. With the replication of such a hypothesis for testing, this study further examined whether feminine gender roles are a better predictor of ethical attitudes, ethical behaviors, and corporate responsibility values than the biological sex. Four hundred ten management students from two technical institutes in eastern India participated in this study. Along with the socio-demographic variables in the questionnaire, inventories were used to assess gender roles, ethical attitudes, ethical behaviors, and corporate responsibility values. The inventories had acceptable reliability and validity. The results suggested that when the confounding effects of age, caste, and rural/urban origin are controlled, women manifest higher corporate responsibility values than men, but they embody similar ethical attitudes and ethical behaviors as men. Furthermore, the feminine roles of the participants were found to be more consistent, potent, and direct predictors of ethical attitudes, ethical behaviors, and corporate responsibility values than the biological sex. Hence, individuals with feminine roles may be better suited for ethical responsibilities.
This study of full-time managers and professionals examined whether variables selected from theories of the psychology of gender as well as identity, boundary, and role theories explained effects of sex on work-to-family conflict and "positive spillover." Women experienced higher positive spillover than men, primarily because they were higher in femininity. Although women did not experience different levels of conflict than men, individuals who scored higher on measured family role salience, which was positively related to femininity, experienced lower levels of conflict. Role segmentation not only reduced conflict but also had the unintended consequence of reducing positive spillover.
Most theoretical frameworks in entrepreneurship emphasize that entrepreneurial passion drives entrepreneurial effort. We hypothesize that the reverse effect is also true, and investigate changes in passion as an outcome of effort. Based on theories of self-regulation and self-perception, we hypothesize that making new venture progress and free choice are two factors that help to explain why and under which conditions entrepreneurial effort affects entrepreneurial passion. We undertook two studies to investigate our hypotheses. First, we conducted a weekly field study with 54 entrepreneurs who reported entrepreneurial effort and passion over 8 weeks (341 observations). The results showed that entrepreneurial effort predicted changes in entrepreneurial passion. Second, we conducted an experiment (n 5 136) to investigate the effect of effort on passion and the underlying psychological processes in a laboratory setting. The results revealed that new venture progress mediated the effect of entrepreneurial effort on passion, and that free choice moderated the mediated effect. Overall, our findings provide a new theoretical perspective on the relationship between entrepreneurial effort and passion.
Narcissists are characterized by a desire to show off and to obtain external validation from others. Research has shown that narcissists are particularly attracted to Facebook, because it allows them to self-promote. But do they receive the attention they crave on Facebook? This study examined Friends’ responsiveness (operationalized as number of comments and “likes”) to Facebook users’ status updates, as a function of the latter’s narcissism. Undergraduates (N = 155) filled out a narcissism scale and offered us access to their profiles, from which we extracted indicators of Friends’ responsiveness. Results show that individuals high in narcissism were less likely to receive comments and “likes” in response to their status updates than individuals low in narcissism. This effect was driven by exploitativeness and entitlement, two components of narcissism. The findings extend understanding of narcissists’ social interactions, an understudied topic, and elucidate some of the psychological factors that drive Facebook interaction.
Despite the widely held belief that men are more narcissistic than women, there has been no systematic review to establish the magnitude, variability across measures and settings, and stability over time of this gender difference. Drawing on the biosocial approach to social role theory, a meta-analysis performed for Study 1 found that men tended to be more narcissistic than women (d = .26; k = 355 studies; N = 470,846). This gender difference remained stable in U.S. college student cohorts over time (from 1990 to 2013) and across different age groups. Study 1 also investigated gender differences in three facets of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) to reveal that the narcissism gender difference is driven by the Exploitative/Entitlement facet (d = .29; k = 44 studies; N = 44,108) and Leadership/Authority facet (d = .20; k = 40 studies; N = 44,739); whereas the gender difference in Grandiose/Exhibitionism (d = .04; k = 39 studies; N = 42,460) was much smaller. We further investigated a less-studied form of narcissism called vulnerable narcissism-which is marked by low self-esteem, neuroticism, and introversion-to find that (in contrast to the more commonly studied form of narcissism found in the DSM and the NPI) men and women did not differ on vulnerable narcissism (d = -.04; k = 42 studies; N = 46,735). Study 2 used item response theory to rule out the possibility that measurement bias accounts for observed gender differences in the three facets of the NPI (N = 19,001). Results revealed that observed gender differences were not explained by measurement bias and thus can be interpreted as true sex differences. Discussion focuses on the implications for the biosocial construction model of gender differences, for the etiology of narcissism, for clinical applications, and for the role of narcissism in helping to explain gender differences in leadership and aggressive behavior. Readers are warned against overapplying small effect sizes to perpetuate gender stereotypes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).
This study builds on insights from both upper echelons and agency perspectives to examine the effects on corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices of CEO’s narcissism. Drawing on prior theory about CEO narcissism, we argue that CSR can be a response to leaders’ personal needs for attention and image reinforcement and hypothesize that CEO narcissism has positive effects on levels and profile of organizational CSR; additionally, CEO narcissism will reduce the effect of CSR on performance. We find support for our ideas with a sample of Fortune 500 CEOs, operationalizing CEO narcissism with a novel media-based measurement technique that uses third-party ratings of CEO characteristics with validated psychometric scales.
In the present work, we investigate the pop cultural idea that people have a sixth sense called “gaydar,” to detect who is gay. We propose that “gaydar” is an alternate label for using social stereotypes to infer orientation (e.g., inferring that fashionable men are gay). According to some recent work, however, people may possess a facial perception process that enables them to identify sexual orientation from the face (Rule et al., 2008). In the present 5 experiments, participants made gay-or-straight judgments about fictional targets that were constructed using experimentally-manipulated stereotypic cues, real gay/straight people’s face cues, or combinations of stereotypic and face cues. This work reveals that orientation is not visible from the face—purportedly “face-based” gaydar arises from a third-variable confound. People do, however, readily infer orientation from stereotypes (e.g., fashion, career choice). Furthermore, the notion of gaydar serves as a legitimizing myth: Compared to a control group, people stereotyped more when led to believe in gaydar, whereas people stereotyped less when told gaydar is an alternate label for stereotyping. Discussion focuses on the implications of the gaydar myth and why, contrary to claims of some prior work, stereotypes are highly unlikely to result in accurate judgments about orientation.
In applying social role theory to account for the content of a wide range of stereotypes, this research tests the proposition that observations of groups' roles determine stereotype content (Eagly & Wood, 2012). In a novel test of how stereotypes can develop from observations, preliminary research collected participants' beliefs about the occupational roles (e.g., lawyer, teacher, fast food worker, chief executive officer, store clerk, manager) in which members of social groups (e.g., Black women, Hispanics, White men, the rich, senior citizens, high school dropouts) are overrepresented relative to their numbers in the general population. These beliefs about groups' typical occupational roles proved to be generally accurate when evaluated in relation to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Then, correlational studies predicted participants' stereotypes of social groups from the attributes ascribed to group members' typical occupational roles (Studies 1a, 1b, and 1c), the behaviors associated with those roles (Study 2), and the occupational interest profile of the roles (Study 3). As predicted by social role theory, beliefs about the attributes of groups' typical roles were strongly related to group stereotypes on both communion and agency/competence. In addition, an experimental study (Study 4) demonstrated that when social groups were described with changes to their typical social roles in the future, their projected stereotypes were more influenced by these future roles than by their current group stereotypes, thus supporting social role theory's predictions about stereotype change. Discussion considers the implications of these findings for stereotype change and the relation of social role theory to other theories of stereotype content. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).
Despite the widespread use of exploratory factor analysis in psychological research, researchers often make questionable decisions when conducting these analyses. This article reviews the major design and analytical decisions that must be made when conducting a factor analysis and notes that each of these decisions has important consequences for the obtained results. Recommendations that have been made in the methodological literature are discussed. Analyses of 3 existing empirical data sets are used to illustrate how questionable decisions in conducting factor analyses can yield problematic results. The article presents a survey of 2 prominent journals that suggests that researchers routinely conduct analyses using such questionable methods. The implications of these practices for psychological research are discussed, and the reasons for current practices are reviewed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
We are in a new era in American history. Showing a remarkable shift in attitudes toward gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, the United States appears to be embracing a new, more inclusive view of family life. With positive action in two landmark Supreme Court cases and a rapidly growing number of state legislatures, the trends are strong toward full legal recognition of marriages of same-sex partners and parenthood by both partners in committed gay couples rearing children. And, the trend is international. Many people are both astonished and cheered by the accelerating pace of change in acceptance of LGBT people. Surveys now show that about 60% of Americans support marriage equality so that gay couples may wed. Less than a decade ago, that proportion of Americans opposed gay weddings. This article looks at what has changed, and why, as well as how social marketing, among other forces, lifted the curtain on these unmistakable trends. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).
Research has established a number of personality features and behaviours associated with business creation and success. The similarities between these traits and narcissism, a concept with roots in clinical psychology and psychiatry, led the authors to conduct this study, which proposes to measure whether entrepreneurs score higher on a narcissism scale than other vocational groups. The second goal of this study is to measure the role of narcissism on intention to start a business. Student entrepreneurs have been compared with non-entrepreneur students, city workers, and employees and managers from a branch of a large financial institution. Then, students filled out measures of general self-efficacy, locus of control and risk propensity as well as a narcissism scale. Results indicate that student entrepreneurs score significantly higher than all other vocational groups on a measure of narcissism. Results also indicate that narcissism is positively correlated with general self-efficacy, locus of control and risk propensity. Moreover, narcissism plays a significant role in explaining entrepreneurial intentions, even after controlling for self-efficacy, locus of control and risk propensity. Overall, these findings shed new light on the underlying personality traits of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial intentions and suggest new directions in the study of entrepreneurs’ personality profile.
Microloans garnered from crowdfunding provide an important source of financial capital for nascent entrepreneurs. Drawing on cognitive evaluation theory, we assess how linguistic cues known to affect underlying motivation can frame entrepreneurial narratives either as a business opportunity or as an opportunity to help others. We examine how this framing affects fundraising outcomes in the context of prosocial lending and conduct our analysis on a sample of microloans made to over 36,000 entrepreneurs in 51 countries via an online crowdfunding platform. We find that lenders respond positively to narratives highlighting the venture as an opportunity to help others, and less positively when the narrative is framed as a business opportunity.
Drawing on entrepreneurial motivation and goal striving literatures, we examined the dynamic relationship between momentary perceived progress, or an ongoing sense of how one is doing in the pursuit of one's venture goal, and entrepreneurial effort intensity among early-stage entrepreneurs who are based in business incubators. We also examined how perceived progress variability over time predicted entrepreneurial effort intensity, and whether venture goal commitment moderated this link. Experience-sampling data collected from over one hundred early-stage entrepreneurs indicated that perceived progress predicted greater effort intensity. Moreover, perceived progress variability over time negatively predicted entrepreneurial effort intensity, and venture goal commitment attenuated this negative relationship. Theoretical and practical implications of our study to entrepreneurial motivation and goal striving research are discussed.
More than a decade ago, scholars formally conceptualized the potential synergy between leadership and entrepreneurship scholarship. Our work highlights research accomplishments occurring at the interface of these two intellectual areas as well as identifying untapped possibilities for continued research. We highlight how recent efforts have witnessed a mutual exchange of ideas that present opportunities benefiting both fields. Drawing from four key domains of entrepreneurship previously proposed to mutually inform future leadership research efforts, we make suggestions for integrating entrepreneurial opportunities, the roles of individual and entrepreneurial teams, the modes of organizing entrepreneurial ventures, and differing entrepreneurial environments with key trends important to leadership research, such as servant leadership and leader-member exchange theory. Overall, our work provides an assessment of the state of the art surrounding the coalescence of leadership and entrepreneurship research and sets an agenda for the next decade of research at this intersection.
The dearth of minority entrepreneurs has received increasing media attention but few academic analyses. In particular, the funding process creates challenges for either audit or correspondence methods, making it difficult to assess the role, or type, of discrimination influencing resource providers. We use a novel approach that combines analyses of 7,617 crowdfunding projects with an experimental design to identify whether African American men are discriminated against and whether this reflects statistical, taste-based, or unconscious bias on the part of prospective supporters. We find that African American men are significantly less likely than similar white founders to receive funding and that prospective supporters rate identical projects as lower in quality when they believe the founder is an African American male. We conclude that the reduction in perceived quality does not reflect conscious assumptions of differences in founder ability or disamenity but rather an unconscious assumption that black founders are lower quality. In two additional experiments, we identify three means of reducing this bias: through additional evidence of quality via third-party endorsements (i.e., awards, evidence of prior support), through evidence that African American founders have succeeded previously, and by removing indicators of the founder’s race.
The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2774.
This paper was accepted by Toby Stuart, entrepreneurship and innovation.
The article examines factors contributing to variations in executives' levels of confidence and proposes that executive confidence is influenced by contextual stimuli but that it is moderated by the executive's decision. The concept of capability cues is presented, which are described as contextual signals that decision makers might interpret as indicators of the current level of overall ability. Capability cues' effect on an executive's interpretation of the riskiness of current decisions is explored. It is shown that boldness is influenced by positive cues while negative cues will induce timidity.
Interactions between project creators and backers on the crowdfunding platform represent the linchpin of every campaign. However, the resulting internal social capital has received little academic attention. To address this topic, we frame how internal social capital can develop through project track record and how internal social capital can spill over to external online communities. Focusing on the long-term implications of these manifestations of social capital, we empirically assess whether they can increase funding success beyond a single campaign. We test our hypotheses with two data sets derived from platform and survey sources and find support for the proposed relationships.
Many entrepreneurs are struggling with the question of how to deliver a successful fund-raising pitch on crowdfunding platforms. In this study, we focus on the linguistic style of crowdfunding pitches and how such a style relates to the success in raising funds. Based on the language expectancy theory, we hypothesize that the importance of linguistic style depends on whether an entrepreneur belongs to an emergent category of new ventures (social entrepreneurs) or to an established category (commercial entrepreneurs). In particular, social entrepreneurs need to compensate for their incomplete social categorization and the related ill-formed expectations by relying more extensively on linguistic style to attract funding. Empirical analyses of 656 Kickstarter campaigns demonstrate that linguistic styles that make the campaigns and their founders more understandable and relatable to the crowd boost the success of social campaigns, but hardly matter for commercial campaigns.
This study draws upon affective events theory, research regarding funders' perceptions, and research regarding expectation alignment between products and their presenters to develop and test an indirect effects model of crowdfunding resource allocation decisions. To test our hypothesized relationships, we drew upon a sample of 102 participants who each assessed ten different product pitches made by ten different entrepreneurs. Results from the study indicate that perceived product creativity is positively related to crowdfunding performance, both directly and indirectly, via positive affective reactions of prospective funders. Moreover, we find the indirect effect of product creativity is contingent upon the extent to which funders perceive an entrepreneur to be passionate, such that perceived entrepreneurial passion increases the positive nature of the indirect effect. Implications for future theory development, empirical research and implications for practitioners are discussed as well.
This study examined relationships of the dark triad personality characteristics (i.e., narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism) with entrepreneurial intentions and motives. Results from samples of business undergraduates (N = 508) and MBA students (N = 234) found narcissism to be positively related to entrepreneurial intentions. In addition, results from subgroups of business undergraduates and MBA students high in entrepreneurial intentions (i.e., early-stage nascent entrepreneurs) indicated differences in motives for engaging in the startup process. Specifically, we found all facets of the dark triad to be positively associated with unproductive entrepreneurial motives, and observed differential associations of the dark triad characteristics with productive entrepreneurial motives.
Social contagion research suggests that individual decision making is shaped by collective, social processes. We extend the entrepreneurial optimism literature by arguing that collective optimism—the shared, positive expectations about future outcomes—is salient to key entrepreneurial outcomes. We test our position by examining how fluctuations in U.S. collective entrepreneurial optimism influence venture creation and growth using 1993–2010 NFIB entrepreneurial optimism data. Results indicate that collective entrepreneurial optimism exhibits a curvilinear relationship with venture creation and growth, which is moderated by environmental dynamism. We validate the NFIB measure by constructing an alternative measure of collective entrepreneurial optimism using media reports.
The changing nature of work suggests that young people may face the prospect of a “portfolio” career including periods of paid employment, nonwork and selfemployment, of which the latter implies greater scope for entrepreneurial activity. Reports questionnaire surveys of young adults which examine their attitudes to entrepreneurship as a career. Reference is also made to current policy initiatives and entrepreneurship education in the UK. The findings suggest that generally positive images of entrepreneurship are hampered by a lack of identifiable role models, poor media presentation of individuals or small firms, and lack of encouragement from important influencers on career choice such as teachers and career guidance specialists. University courses have their limitations but can have a role in providing a useful insight into the challenges involved in being an entrepreneur and also encouraging skill development and selfreliance.
This research assessed the internal structure and validity of the Narcissistic Inventory-Revised (NI-R). As described by the authors, its 42 items resulted in a single total score measuring vulnerable narcissism but in fact showing correlations with both grandiose and vulnerable narcissism. In two studies (total N = 1733), we present the new three-factor structure of the established NI-R consisting of Admiration, Pretension, and Mistrust. The structure proved to be replicable and reliable. As criteria for assessing the construct validity of the NI-R, we applied the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire, which measures grandiose narcissism, and the Brief Pathological Narcissism Inventory, which measures vulnerable narcissism. Both inventories are recent developments whose factor structures have been demonstrated to be generally replicable in this research. The proposed dimensions of the NI-R showed differential correlations with these measures as well as with the external criteria of life satisfaction and emotion regulation strategies. However, the overlap between the NI-R dimensions with the measures of grandiose and vulnerable narcissism is limited, suggesting that the NI-R might capture aspects of narcissism beyond these two facets.
Computer-aided text analysis (CATA) is a form of content analysis that enables the measurement of constructs by processing text into quantitative data based on the frequency of words. CATA has been proposed as a useful measurement approach with the potential to lead to important theoretical advancements. Ironically, while CATA has been offered to overcome some of the known deficiencies in existing measurement approaches, we have lagged behind in regard to assessing the technique’s measurement rigor. Our article addresses this knowledge gap and describes important implications for past as well as future research using CATA. First, we describe three sources of measurement error variance that are particularly relevant to studies using CATA: transient error, specific factor error, and algorithm error. Second, we describe and demonstrate how to calculate measurement error variance with the entrepreneurial orientation, market orientation, and organizational ambidexterity constructs, offering evidence that past substantive conclusions have been underestimated. Third, we offer best-practice recommendations and demonstrate how to reduce measurement error variance by refining existing CATA measures. In short, we demonstrate that although measurement error variance in CATA has not been measured thus far, it does exist and it affects substantive conclusions. Consequently, our article has implications for theory and practice, as well as how to assess and minimize measurement error in future CATA research with the goal of improving the accuracy of substantive conclusions.
Research has consistently demonstrated that organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) produce a wide array of positive outcomes for employees and organizations. Recent work, however, has suggested that employees often engage in OCBs not because they want to but because they feel they have to, and it is not clear whether OCBs performed for external motives have the same positive effects on individuals and organizational functioning as do traditional OCBs. In this article, we draw from selfdetermination and moral licensing theories to suggest a potential negative consequence of OCB. Specifically, we argue that when employees feel compelled to engage in OCB by external forces, they will subsequently feel psychologically entitled for having gone above and beyond the call of duty. Furthermore, these feelings of entitlement can act as moral credentials that psychologically free employees to engage in both interpersonal and organizational deviance. Data from two multisource field studies and an online experiment provide support for these hypotheses. In addition, we demonstrate that OCB-generated feelings of entitlement transcend organizational boundaries and lead to deviance outside of the organization.
Jezebel's sexual lasciviousness, Mammy's devotion, and Sapphire's outspoken anger-these are among the most persistent stereotypes that black women encounter in contemporary American life. Hurtful and dishonest, such representations force African American women to navigate a virtual crooked room that shames them and shapes their experiences as citizens. Many respond by assuming a mantle of strength that may convince others, and even themselves, that they do not need help. But as a result, the unique political issues of black women are often ignored and marginalized. In this groundbreaking book, Melissa V. Harris-Perry uses multiple methods of inquiry, including literary analysis, political theory, focus groups, surveys, and experimental research, to understand more deeply black women's political and emotional responses to pervasive negative race and gender images. Not a traditional political science work concerned with office-seeking, voting, or ideology, Sister Citizen instead explores how African American women understand themselves as citizens and what they expect from political organizing. Harris-Perry shows that the shared struggle to preserve an authentic self and secure recognition as a citizen links together black women in America, from the anonymous survivors of Hurricane Katrina to the current First Lady of the United States.
Narcissism has become an increasingly popular research topic in recent years. We describe why it is beneficial for organizational researchers to study narcissism due to its two strongest organizational correlates: counterproductive work behavior and leadership. We explore why narcissists perform counterproductive work behavior and offer advice on what organizations can do to prevent narcissists' counterproductivity. Subsequently, we discuss narcissism's relationship with leadership effectiveness, and propose a Narcissistic Leaders and Dominance Complementarity Model, which examines the dynamic interaction of narcissistic leaders' characteristics with those of their followers to predict leadership effectiveness. Finally, we suggest four areas of management that may benefit from incorporating narcissism as a determinant of their respective organizational outcomes of interest: international management, social issues in management/corporate social responsibility, entrepreneurship, and negotiation.
Intercultural tensions and conflicts are inevitable in the global workplace. This article introduces the concept of ambient cultural disharmony-indirect experience of intercultural tensions and conflicts in individuals' immediate social environment-and demonstrates how it undermines creative thinking in tasks that draw on knowledge from multiple cultures. Three studies (a network survey and two experiments) showed that ambient cultural disharmony decreased individuals' effectiveness at connecting ideas from disparate cultures. Beliefs that ideas from different cultures are incompatible mediated the relationship between ambient cultural disharmony and creativity. Alternative mechanisms such as negative affect and cognitive disruption were not viable mediators. Although ambient cultural disharmony disrupted creativity, ambient cultural harmony did not promote creativity. These findings have theoretical and practical implications for research in workplace diversity and creativity.
Extant research has shown that firms with high levels of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) outperform competitors. The present study sheds light on this performance relationship in large, publicly listed high-tech firms by examining whether the strength of this relationship depends upon the CEO’s narcissism, an executive personality trait recently debated controversially in both academic and practitioner publications. A theoretically derived research model is empirically validated by means of multisource secondary data for 41 S&P 500 firms from 2005 to 2007. Findings indicate that narcissistic CEOs usually weaken the EO-performance relationship, although the opposite is true under some conditions, such as in highly concentrated and dynamic markets.
We advance a model that highlights contingent linkages between overconfidence and narcissism, entrepreneurial entry, and the successful realization of venture opportunities. Overall, our proposals point to a paradox in which entrepreneurs high in overconfidence and narcissism are propelled toward more novel venture contexts-where these qualities are most detrimental to venture success-and are repelled from more familiar venture contexts-where these qualities are least harmful and may even facilitate venture success. To illuminate these patterns of misalignment, we attend to the defining characteristics of alternative venture contexts and the focal constructs of overconfidence and narcissism.
