Entrepreneurial behavior in social contexts : the role of families, teams, and employees for entrepreneurial individuals

This dissertation consists of five studies that focus on different social contexts of entrepreneurial individuals and that analyze important cognitive or affective processes in these contexts. The dissertation comprises different stages of the entrepreneurial process and shows the social context’s importance in these stages. Chapter 2 represents the first step in the entrepreneurial process, the formation of entrepreneurial intentions. The influence of individuals’ families of origin contingent on national culture on these intentions is analyzed. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 focus on a team context and are based on a team experiment with an entrepreneurial decision making task. Chapter 3 analyzes the team’s decision quality based on information exchange, experimentally manipulated information uncertainty, and team metacognitive knowledge. In a next step, chapter 4 analyzes the members’ and the teams’ ability to assess their performance in the decision making task dependent on the level of relationship conflict experienced in the team. Chapter 5 focuses on the team members’ affective reactions to conflicts experienced in the team task contingent on team efficacy and information uncertainty. Finally, Chapter 6 concentrates on a further social context of entrepreneurial individuals, new venture employees. It analyzes how the employees’ perceptions of their supervisor’s entrepreneurial passion influence their commitment to the venture via their positive affect at work and goal clarity. This dissertation concludes with implications and suggestions for future research at the intersection of entrepreneurship and organizational behavior which will improve the understanding of entrepreneurial individuals and of the interdependencies with their social contexts.