Year: 2018
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Entrepreneurship is an increasingly relevant and popular object of scholarly investigation. In this\ndissertation, I borrow relevant socio-cognitive constructs from the field of strategy and employ\nthem to four relevant steps of the venture creation process. The purpose of this dissertation is to\nrefine our understanding about perceptions in entrepreneurship through four essays.\nThe first essay of the dissertation investigates entry into entrepreneurship. More specifically,\nI look at the relationship between institutional environment and predisposition to entrepreneurship\nas antecedents of entrepreneurial activity. The key insight is that, among other institutional factors,\nthe perception of entrepreneurial activity positively moderates the role of innate predisposition to\nentrepreneurship.\nThe second essay looks at the problem of resource acquisition when entrepreneurs have\nexperienced business failure in the past. The key insight is that past failure is an ambiguous rather\nthan a negative signal of entrepreneurial skill. When entrepreneurs provide additional information\nabout their entrepreneurial skill, investors do not penalize past failure.\nThe third essay addresses the problem of recruitment. The key insight is that startups can\nconvey different types of information through their job advertisements and attract different types of\nearly employees based on their level of human capital and risk propensity.\nThe fourth essay looks at the step of technology product launch. The key insight is that\nperception of familiarity and creativity of category labels has an influence on their adoption to\nrepresent the technology product category. More precisely, I find that for both familiarity and\ncreativity, there is an inverted U-shaped relationship associated to category labels’ adoption.\nThrough diverse theories and methodologies, the dissertation provides empirical support to\nthe role perceptions play during the entrepreneurship process, and suggests rhetorical strategies\nentrepreneurs can exploit to gather resources and achieve competitive advantage.
Source: Econstor (Econstor)
Author: Diego Zunino
Institution: Copenhagen Business School
Language: English
Subfield: Management of Technology and Innovation
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2901534827