Shaker A. Zahra

Research Summary As the study of entrepreneurship advances, our appreciation for the role of theory in the development of the field has grown. In this paper, we build on our collective experiences to offer a peek into the inner workings of entrepreneurship theorizing, using specific examples to highlight ways of developing theoretical insights for advancing entrepreneurship research. Our journeys suggest an iterative process centered on asking an important and interesting question, challenging prevailing assumptions, understanding context and phenomenon, and developing conceptual models and analyses. We focus on the uniqueness of entrepreneurial phenomena, contexts, and actors as well as the interdisciplinary nature of the field. Managerial Summary Entrepreneurship as a scholarly field has reached a stage of maturity where we need to think more carefully about our contribution to theory. Theory …

Some theorists view MNEs as a repository of knowledge that is accumulated through the individual and their collective experiences, and learning of its human capital. This knowledge develops through the interactions of MNEs’ employees with one another, within and across different units as well as with other companies. These interactions provide an opportunity and forum for learning, ie, the acquisition of new knowledge that offers fresh insights that revise what is known and how it is used and the purposes for which it is used. Individual and group learning provides the foundation to MNEs’ organizational learning. In turn, this learning serves as the engine for creating, replenishing and updating MNEs’ knowledge, enhancing their competitive advantage.

Past research shows that during a crisis, managers of publicly‐held firms often adopt a ‘conservative’ approach focused on protecting the existing core of their firms by decreasing investments and hoarding precautionary cash. By doing so, managers decrease firms’ short‐term failure rates. However, the literature says little about how managers of private, Small and Medium‐sized Enterprises (SMEs) (should) act during a crisis. To address this question, we draw on the Conservation of Resources (COR) theory. Empirically, we use longitudinal data from 38,885 Belgian SMEs’ responses to the 2008–09 financial crisis. Consistent with our expectations, we find that an ‘aggressive’ approach focused on resource investment during the crisis decreases SMEs’ failure rates for up to a decade after the crisis. Further, younger SMEs, and especially those in industries with more growth opportunities, adopt aggressive …

In high‐transaction‐cost environments, such as the world's poorest base‐of‐the‐pyramid economies (BOP), trust helps entrepreneurs form partnerships while conserving resources related to monitoring, contracting, and other transaction costs. However, trust can also expose entrepreneurs to their partners' opportunism. In developed economies, effective and consistent legal systems can protect against such opportunism. But what happens when formal institutions are ineffective and inconsistent, as is common in BOP economies, and how does trust influence entrepreneurs' performance subsequent to forming partnerships? We answer these questions, drawing on a sample of 338 entrepreneurs in the Kingdom of Eswatini (formerly known as Swaziland). We find that entrepreneurs' trust has a negative effect on business operating performance, indicating that, given the legal systems in the BOP context, trusting …

Early-stage entrepreneurs often leverage their intangible resources to raise funds that ensure their ventures’ survival. We examine how entrepreneurs decide to allocate their psychological capital to raise funding, and how this decision is affected by market performance feedback (financial and social) received given prior fundraising outcome (success vs. failure). Using a sample of 15,390 crowdfunding entrepreneurs, we find that psychological capital deployments vary between financial and social feedback, depending in both cases on prior fundraising outcome. The results also show that psychological capital deployment enhances fundraising performance following initial failure, but harms fundraising performance following success. Entrepreneurs’ gender and race also significantly moderate these relationships, sometimes leading to in-optimal deployments of psychological capital by females and minority groups.

Even as research on scaling and high growth firms (HFGs) is gaining momentum, the corpus of accumulated research remains largely fragmented and dispersed, with little in the way of a central conceptual foundation or ‘theoretical true north’ to guide empirical development. This Special Issue provides a forum for works that push the theoretical and empirical frontiers of research on scaling and HGFs. We provide a multi‐dimensional conceptualization that recognizes scaling as a dynamic capability entailing routines and processes for expansion, replication, and synchronization. We also present a typology that specifies the multiple types of HGFs. Inspired by the four studies published in the special issue, we finally outline five priorities for future research.

Prior research has documented the importance of the breadth and depth of external knowledge search for firms’ innovation performance. Still, most studies have focused on countries with abundant knowledge. We replicate and extend Laursen and Salter’s 2006 UK study using multiple EU multi-country datasets, which include countries with varying knowledge environments. Consistent with L&S, we find positive innovation performance effects of search breadth and depth, with diminishing returns. Adding to extant research, we find that the effect of search breadth is weaker in countries where knowledge is less abundant. We fail to find such systematic differences for search depth. Overall, by theoretically and empirically taking the firm’s national knowledge environment into account, we expand the environmental munificence perspective to the literature on open innovation.

We develop and test a multi‐stakeholder perspective of intrafamily CEO succession by exploring how family CEO successors affect post‐succession firm performance under conditions of sustainable human resource management (sustainable HRM) practices toward employees and top managers, as well as corporate philanthropic activities in the broader community. Using a sample of 414 CEO successions in family firms listed on China's stock exchanges during 2008–2016, we find an insurance‐like effect of both sustainable HRM and corporate philanthropy in enhancing firm performance of family CEO successors. Our results also show that firms with family CEO successors will outperform those with nonfamily counterparts under conditions of high employee compensation, low top management team (TMT) compensation, and long TMT tenure. Our findings suggest that sustainable HRM and corporate …