TY - JOUR A1 - Caliendo, Marco A1 - Kritikos, Alexander A1 - Stier, Claudia T1 - The influence of start-up motivation on entrepreneurial performance JF - Small business economics N2 - Predicting entrepreneurial development based on individual and business-related characteristics is a key objective of entrepreneurship research. In this context, we investigate whether the motives of becoming an entrepreneur influence the subsequent entrepreneurial development. In our analysis, we examine a broad range of business outcomes including survival and income, as well as job creation, and expansion and innovation activities for up to 40 months after business formation. Using the self-determination theory as conceptual background, we aggregate the start-up motives into a continuous motivational index. We show – based on a unique dataset of German start-ups from unemployment and non-unemployment – that the later business performance is better, the higher they score on this index. Effects are particularly strong for growth-oriented outcomes like innovation and expansion activities. In a next step, we examine three underlying motivational categories that we term opportunity, career ambition, and necessity. We show that individuals driven by opportunity motives perform better in terms of innovation and business expansion activities, while career ambition is positively associated with survival, income, and the probability of hiring employees. All effects are robust to the inclusion of a large battery of covariates that are proven to be important determinants of entrepreneurial performance. KW - entrepreneurship KW - push and pull theories KW - start-up motivation KW - survival KW - job creation KW - firm growth KW - innovation Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-022-00722-6 SN - 0921-898X SN - 1573-0913 VL - 61 SP - 869 EP - 889 PB - Springer Science+Business Media CY - Dordrecht ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Caliendo, Marco A1 - Rodríguez, Daniel T1 - Divergent thinking and post-launch entrepreneurial outcomes BT - non-linearities and the moderating role of experience JF - Small business economics N2 - Divergent thinking is the ability to produce numerous and diverse responses to questions or tasks, and it is used as a predictor of creative achievement. It plays a significant role in the business organization’s innovation process and the recognition of new business opportunities. Drawing upon the cumulative process model of creativity in entrepreneurship, we hypothesize that divergent thinking has a lasting effect on post-launch entrepreneurial outcomes related to innovation and growth, but that this relation might not always be linear. Additionally, we hypothesize that domain-specific experience has a moderating role in this relation. We test our hypotheses based on a representative longitudinal sample of 457 German business founders, which we observe up until 40 months after start-up. We find strong relative effects for innovation and growth outcomes. For survival, we find conclusive evidence for non-linearities in the effects of divergent thinking. Additionally, we show that such effects are moderated by the type of domain-specific experience that entrepreneurs gathered pre-launch, as it shapes the individual’s ideational abilities to fit into more sophisticated strategies regarding entrepreneurial creative achievement. Our findings have relevant policy implications in characterizing and identifying business start-ups with growth and innovation potential, allowing a more efficient allocation of public and private funds. Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-023-00828-5 SN - 0921-898X SN - 1573-0913 VL - 57 PB - Springer Science + Business Media B.V. CY - Dordrecht ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Caliendo, Marco A1 - Cobb-Clark, Deborah A. A1 - Pfeifer, Harald A1 - Uhlendorff, Arne A1 - Wehner, Caroline T1 - Managers’ risk preferences and firm training investments JF - European economic review N2 - This study analyses the impact of managers’ risk preferences on their training allocation decisions. We begin by providing nationally representative evidence that managers’ risk-aversion is negatively correlated with the likelihood that their firms engage in any worker training. Using a novel vignette study, we then demonstrate that risk-tolerant and risk-averse decision makers have significantly different training preferences. Risk aversion results in increased sensitivity to turnover risk. Managers who are risk-averse offer less general training and are more reluctant to train workers with a history of job mobility. Adopting a weighting approach to flexibly control for observed differences in the characteristics of risk-averse and risk-tolerant managers, we show that our findings cannot be explained by heterogeneity in either managers’ observed characteristics or the type of firms where they work. All managers, irrespective of their risk preferences, are sensitive to the investment risk associated with training, avoiding training that is more costly or that targets those with less occupational expertise or nearing retirement. This provides suggestive evidence that the risks of training are primarily due to the risk that trained workers will leave the firm (turnover risk) rather than the risk that the benefits of training do not outweigh the costs (investment risk). KW - manager decisions KW - risk attitudes KW - employee training KW - human capital investments Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2023.104616 SN - 0014-2921 SN - 1873-572X PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Caliendo, Marco A1 - Kritikos, Alexander A1 - Rodríguez, Daniel A1 - Stier, Claudia T1 - Self-efficacy and entrepreneurial performance of start-ups JF - Small business economics N2 - Self-efficacy reflects the self-belief that one can persistently perform difficult and novel tasks while coping with adversity. As such beliefs reflect how individuals behave, think, and act, they are key for successful entrepreneurial activities. While existing literature mainly analyzes the influence of the task-related construct of entrepreneurial self-efficacy, we take a different perspective and investigate, based on a representative sample of 1,405 German business founders, how the personality characteristic of generalized self-efficacy influences start-up performance as measured by a broad set of business outcomes up to 19 months after business creation. Outcomes include start-up survival and entrepreneurial income, as well as growth-oriented outcomes such as job creation and innovation. We find statistically significant and economically important positive effects of high scores of self-efficacy on start-up survival and entrepreneurial income, which become even stronger when focusing on the growth-oriented outcome of innovation. Furthermore, we observe that generalized self-efficacy is similarly distributed between female and male business founders, with effects being partly stronger for female entrepreneurs. Our findings are important for policy instruments that are meant to support firm growth by facilitating the design of more target-oriented offers for training, coaching, and entrepreneurial incubators. KW - entrepreneurship KW - firm performance KW - general self-efficacy KW - survival KW - job creation KW - innovation Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-022-00728-0 SN - 0921-898X SN - 1573-0913 PB - Springer Science CY - Dordrecht ER -