David J. Scheaf’s research while affiliated with Baylor University and other places

Entrepreneurship researchers commonly use survey‐based research designs. However, surveying entrepreneurs poses unique challenges. A principal concern for survey‐based research is non‐response bias, which occurs when survey respondents systematically differ from those who were sampled but did not participate in the study. To address this concern, we conducted a systematic review of the literature to determine what practices are currently being used to address non‐response bias (142 articles, 180 surveying efforts) and conducted multiple studies to determine the extent to which non‐response bias can affect statistical results. Based on these efforts, we present a series of techniques and a checklist that entrepreneurship scholars and reviewers and editors can consider to mitigate the risk of non‐response bias prior to, and following, their data collection efforts. In an average survey of entrepreneurs approximately 40% of the people contacted will respond. This raises an important question: Can we make conclusions about the entrepreneurs who did not respond? Answering this question requires one to consider non‐response bias (i.e., if respondents differ from non‐respondents). We conducted a systematic review of survey‐based studies in entrepreneurship and conducted three field studies. Our results show that non‐response bias can manifest in different ways across studies, but it is rarely discussed in the literature. We also show that response rates are poor proxies of non‐response bias. Based on these efforts, we present several techniques for scholars, reviewers, and editors to consider in the hopes of mitigating the risk of non‐response bias in their studies. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Despite the fundamental role entrepreneurs play in the commercialization of university technology, very little research has focused on their decisions to license. In this study, we conceptualize entrepreneurs’ decisions to license a university technology as a matter of opportunity evaluation and theorize key opportunity attributes entrepreneurs evaluate in deciding whether to pursue or forgo license opportunities. We conduct a conjoint analysis experiment to test our model. Data from 784 decisions made by 98 entrepreneurs revealed that their considerations of prototype maturity, market segment clarity, and regulatory hurdles significantly influence the likelihood of licensing university technology. We further document that technology specific knowledge and active search for a technology license opportunity are key individual difference variables that moderate the effects of some technology attributes. A key finding is that regulatory hurdles, an attribute mostly ignored in prior university technology commercialization research, are instrumental in entrepreneurs’ evaluations.

“Fake it ‘til you make it”—deceptively claiming a new endeavor exhibits characteristics of successful entrepreneurial ventures to gain support from others—has become an accepted practice in entrepreneurship. An overlooked hazard of faking it until you make it is that entrepreneurs’ efforts to “fake it” can become a slippery slope in which deception escalates to the point where stakeholders accuse entrepreneurs of committing fraud. We delineate that the responsible use of faking it in entrepreneurial endeavors rests on entrepreneurs’ full appreciation of the determinants that make turning fiction into fact less versus more difficult. Leveraging prior research to offer new insights, we outline these determinates as controllable versus uncontrollable elements, sole versus contingent entrepreneurial action, and limited versus extensive stakeholder interactions. We illustrate these determinants in action via two startups, Lordstown Motors and uBiome, whose founders engaged in and escalated faking it to the point of being accused by stakeholders of fraud.

The practical relevance of entrepreneurial fraud has stimulated a wide array of research occurring in disciplinary silos. We take stock of the current state of the entrepreneurial fraud literature by conducting a multidisciplinary systematic literature review and synthesize the findings into a unified framework. Taking an inductive approach, our framework depicts the antecedents, inner workings, and ramifications of entrepreneurial fraud. Doing so, we reveal nuances in the inner workings of entrepreneurial fraud, such as variation in the focus and magnitude of deception used to obtain valuable resources from stakeholders and that fraud can service authentic entrepreneurial activities or nonentrepreneurial personal uses. Accounting for these distinctions reveals that fraud can result in a mixture of positive and negative consequences for perpetrators, victims, and societies.

We integrate social cognitive theory, and its tenets of personal and collective agency, to develop an individual-level perspective on entrepreneurs' resourcefulness behaviors that illustrates how resourcefulness behaviors can be classified as ‘self-reliant behaviors’ or ‘joint resourcefulness behaviors’. Using this novel cognitive theoretical approach, we provide and test a framework that explains how dispositional, perceptual, and behavioral factors interact in the enactment of purposeful action with regards to entrepreneurs' resourceful behaviors. Consistent with our hypotheses, results from a quantitative study of entrepreneurs (N = 178), as well as a supplemental study involving qualitative interviews with entrepreneurs (N = 15), highlight that entrepreneurs higher in frugality tend to perceive higher levels of environmental hostility. This relationship, in turn, leads to higher amounts of self-reliant resourcefulness behaviors (i.e., customer-related and internal self-financing bootstrapping behaviors) but not joint resourcefulness behaviors. Multiple theoretical and practical contributions emerge from our findings as the extant literature does not yet account for human agency as a reason why some entrepreneurs may choose to engage in certain resourceful behaviors relative to other behaviors.