Michael Rychener

This research enhances the understanding of the exit process of ‘formerly persistent’ unprofitable part-time entrepreneurs – a group of enterprising individuals who can be described as generally intrinsically driven in their endeavors. Based on interview data from (former) entrepreneurs, we developed a process model of exit that illustrates how not being able to live up to intrinsic aspirations, in particular, can cause negative emotions when leaving one’s business. Strikingly, however, the entrepreneurs studied often appear to seek ways that help them avoid these negative emotions, such as by reducing entrepreneurial efforts while ensuring to remain ‘symbolically’ connected to the entrepreneurial activities.

How do ventures that are focused on solving social and environmental problems come into existence? Drawing upon social identity theory, this study focuses on the venture creation process of Missionary founders. More specifically, we investigate in what way the strength of a founder’s Missionary identity affects the relationship between two central entrepreneurial actions – i.e., conducting discovery and exploitation related start-up activities – and firm emergence. We test our hypotheses using binary logistic regression on a sample of 133 nascent entrepreneurs from a recent longitudinal study. Our results suggest that Missionary founders find it more difficult to develop and implement their business model in comparison to other founders, resulting in a different importance of discovery and exploitation related start-up activities, and, possibly, in some cases also leading to an escalation of commitment.