Abstract: This study answers the pertinent question of how new ventures can attract and maintain employees. We address this issue by building on the evolving literature about organizational legitimacy. Through a longitudinal, abductive study of a successful, innovative start-up, we identify internal legitimacy, i.e. employees granting legitimacy to the organization they work for, as a means to attract and maintain employees and show how internal legitimacy can be established over time. We distinguish between manifest and latent legitimation strategies and illustrate the impact of both. We highlight the congruence between employees’ and the organization’s objectives as a precondition for effective internal legitimacy building.

Abstract: In this study, we attempt to investigate the puzzle that technology ventures led by returnees who in general enjoy technology advantage underperform the ventures led by their local counterparts. With a sample of technology ventures in China’s high technology industries, we found that while returnee ventures have a higher level of innovation input, their innovation efficiency is lower than their local counterparts. Our results also show that innovation efficiency mediates the negative effect of returnees on venture performance, especially when the ventures have a lower level of marketing efficiency.

Abstract: Using the cleantech sector as a research context and drawing upon the knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship (KSTE), we model the relationship between the innovative activities of marketplace incumbents and new venture creation. We extend current versions of KSTE by considering the contingent effects of community environmental ideologies. We hypothesize that ideologies regulate KSTE dynamics by shaping both opportunity recognition processes and entrepreneurial motivation. Consistent with our predictions, we find evidence that the positive relationship between the innovative activity of marketplace incumbents and new firm creation is enhanced by the strength of community environmental ideologies. Furthermore, we also find that the moderating impacts of environmental ideologies on KSTE dynamics weaken as the knowledge base in an MSA becomes more specialized in cleantech.

Abstract: Returnee entrepreneurial firms have been profiled as transferors of knowledge across markets that contribute to innovative development of emerging markets. Yet, there is little understanding about what kinds of factors drive these firms’ innovation effort. From a social networks perspective, we propose that returnee entrepreneurial firms combine business and political ties and resources to nurture and upgrade their knowledge base and competitive advantages through innovation. With a survey of 200 returnee entrepreneurial firms sampled in China, the findings support our hypotheses on the role of business ties in driving innovation of returnee entrepreneurial firms. The study offers insights on how network ties with different actors and subsequently sourced resources may differentiate entrepreneurial firms’ innovation performance in emerging markets.

Abstract: This research builds on identity theory to look at the bottom-up formation process of an organizational identity. Based on an ethnographic study, we focus on how individuals relate to an organization and contribute to the formation of its collective identity in the context of a social enterprise. We show how members actively contribute to the formation of the organizational identity using personal social identity components. We take a cross-level perspective and explain how individual identity translates to the collective level through three processes which we term projecting, sharing, and contextualizing. The resulting model contributes to the identity literature by focusing on the bottom-up formation of an organizational identity, the role of individuals in this and the resources used.
[Keywords: organizational identity, individual identity, social enterprise]