Business Commons^™

Cofounder Selection & Satisfaction: How Entrepreneurial Cofounders Come Together And Succeed Together, Audra G. Quinn

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

As many new ventures are created by teams, not solo founders, choosing a cofounder is an important decision for entrepreneurs. The individuals who mutually select into the founding team not only define and develop the concept, imprint the venture, and influence its chances of success, but also impact each other’s satisfaction and willingness to persevere. Yet despite these relationships’ crucial implications, the literature offers only scattered insights into how and why cofounders come together and succeed together.

With this dissertation, I advance theoretical understanding of what goes into forming and maintaining a quality cofounder relationship—a key resource that can neither …

Portfolio Entrepreneurs In China: A Mixed Methods Study, Tianjiao Xu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Entrepreneurs who found and manage at least two businesses simultaneously are portfolio entrepreneurs. Portfolio entrepreneurs have been shown to run fast-growing businesses and contribute significantly to wealth creation. Extant literature has examined how portfolio entrepreneurs differ from entrepreneurs who only run one business at a time and found differences in their demographic backgrounds, human capital, cognition, and other dimensions. However, extant research has treated portfolio entrepreneurs as one homogeneous group, when in reality, there is considerable heterogeneity within this group of entrepreneurs. In this dissertation, I aim to discuss one important distinguishing factor among portfolio entrepreneurs, namely the existence of …

Essays On Entrepreneurial Joiners And How To Recruit Them, Seung Hoon Chung

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Recruiting talent is arguably one of the most significant challenges facing entrepreneurs today. The ability to find and acquire high quality human resources is particularly critical for a start-up’s ability to survive and grow. However, start-ups are often disadvantaged in the labor market because they lack financial capital, reputation, and stability. While practitioners have repeatedly claimed that recruitment is one of the biggest challenges they face, little research has explored the question of how start-ups can better recruit employees. To understand how start-ups can better recruit employees, it is important to approach the question from both the employers’ and …

The Role Of Early Customers In The Venture Creation Process, Maya Kumar

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

While startups’ interactions with early potential customers may occur long before product creation, entrepreneurs often fail to recognize how these interactions impact startup development. My research proposes that early customers are central influences and develops a model of customer interactions. More specifically, my dissertation focuses on answering: When and how do startups interact with early customers during the venture creation process, and how do these interactions create path dependence for the type of organization being created?

I undertook an inductive, qualitative process study of nine startups located in incubators and studied customer interactions in near-real-time. My findings show that types …

"My Friends, They Are People To Rely On": The Social Foundation Of Business In Ghana, Patrick D. Shulist

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The management and entrepreneurship literatures increasingly engage in poverty alleviation research in the developing world. However, there is a marked tendency to overlook how the Western World, from where most theory comes, differs from the developing world. Such a fallacy has potential deleterious effects on the research itself, but more importantly on the practical applications of that research.

With this in mind, my dissertation uses an inductive qualitative methodology to explore the nature of self-employment in the developing world as it is; that is, not coloured by theoretical priors. In doing this, I lay the groundwork for understanding the …

Ethics For Aspiring Entrepreneurs: Finding Education In Poetics, Peggy M. O'Neil

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Aspiring entrepreneurs need and want ethics education. Authentic, robust educational resources and personalized instructional methods are not, however, available in professional or scholarly settings. Textbooks focus on large corporations and do not provide a framework to coordinate various ethical theories. Alternatively, some instructors use literary theory and real life exemplars to frame and teach ethics. In my dissertation, I expand on the characterization of the entrepreneur as a liberal artist and poet, isolate the ethical dilemmas presented by the entrepreneurial setting, summarize the strengths and limits of four major ethical theories, and identify current educational aims, resources and instructional methods. …

Enterprising Outsiders: Livelihood Strategies Of Cape Town’S Forced Migrants, Madeleine Ann Northcote

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Although refugees and registered asylum-seekers have a legal right to work in South Africa, research shows that prevailing anti-immigrant attitudes and South African employers’ suspicion of these migrants’ documents makes employment extraordinarily difficult to acquire. This thesis investigates how, in the face of such challenges, forced migrants in Cape Town secure their day-to-day livelihoods. The research is based on semi-structured, open-ended interviews with thirty-two refugees and other forced migrants who live and operate in the Cape Town area, as well as five key informant interviews with employees of refugee service organizations. It also draws from literature on both South Africa’s …

Entrepreneurial Culture: Developing A Theoretical Construct And Its Measurement, Matthew A. Wong

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The concept of “entrepreneurial culture” has existed for decades, described as an organizational culture embodying and championing entrepreneurial characteristics and attributes. These have included risk-taking, innovation, and creativity; the elements one would expect to see among entrepreneurs as individuals. The literature suggests that entrepreneurial culture is related to a number of positive organizational outcomes, such as generating new business and improving firm performance.

Despite years of entrepreneurial culture discussion, however, it remains a relatively ambiguous theoretical construct. Numerous perspectives have emerged describing the phenomenon and the concept, yet it remains unfocused and equivocal. Different definitions and sets of characteristics and …