Antecedents, process, and outcomes of entrepreneurial teamsan institutional approach

Laburpena

The dissertation studies the phenomenon of entrepreneurial teams. Specifically, it investigates (1) the decision to form entrepreneurial teams and the influence that context has on that decision; (2) the new venture creation process and the differences experienced in such by individual entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial teams; and (3) the outcomes of ventures created by both groups in terms of innovation, internationalisation, and employment generation. To address these issues, this research is based on several literature streams and proposes two sets of hypotheses and one set of propositions. The first group of hypotheses, analyses how certain individual attributes of entrepreneurs influence the likelihood of creating an entrepreneurial team (instead of starting a new venture alone). Apart from the individuals’ factors suggested in the literature to explain why some entrepreneurs decide to form a team and others do not, the dissertation shows that an individualistic culture negatively moderates the decision to create teams. The set of propositions, permits the analyses of the differences between the new venture creation process developed by individual entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial teams. In general, the results indicate that ventures created by entrepreneurial teams perform more entrepreneurial activities, in a different order and faster when compared to individual entrepreneurs. Finally, the second set of hypotheses, provides empirical evidence that entrepreneurial teams create more innovative, internationalised, and high employment growth firms than do individual entrepreneurs and that economic freedom positively moderates such relationships. All three issues are developed in the manuscript, which follows a conceptual framework that is explained in the first chapter. The second chapter develops the theoretical framework of this dissertation and presents the formulated hypotheses and propositions. The third chapter describes the databases employed for this dissertation. Chapters Four, Five and Six include three different empirical studies. Those three chapters describe the data, variables and methodology employed in each empirical study, and they discuss the results obtained. Finally, Chapter Seven presents the conclusions, covering the main findings, limitations, and recommendations for entrepreneurs and policy makers.