becoming a founder: how founder role identity affects entrepreneurial transitions and persistence in...

Journal of Business Venturing 25 (2010) 41–53

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Journal of Business Venturing

Becoming a founder: How founder role identity affects entrepreneurialtransitions and persistence in founding☆

Ha Hoang a,⁎, Javier Gimeno b

a ESSEC, Avenue Bernard Hirsch, BP 50105 Cergy, 95021 Cergy Pontoise Cedex, Franceb INSEAD, Boulevard de Constance, 77305 Fontainebleau, France

a r t i c l e i n f o

☆ This paper benefited from feedback by Phil AndeViolina Rindova, Filipe Santos, Bala Vissa, and particip⁎ Corresponding author.

E-mail addresses: [email protected] (H. Hoang), Javie

0883-9026/$ – see front matter © 2008 Elsevier Inc.doi:10.1016/j.jbusvent.2008.07.002

a b s t r a c t

Article history:Received 10 December 2007Received in revised form 30 June 2008Accepted 2 July 2008

We develop a new theory that views organizational founding as involving a role transition.Through the construct of founder role identity, we delineate how identity centrality andcomplexity affect individuals' ability to exit a work role in order to undertake foundingactivities. We argue that individuals are challenged to adjust to the founder role requirementsand incorporate the new role into an overall self-concept. We then delineate howconfigurations of founder role identities influence persistence, and the longer-term outcomesof dormancy and successful founding.

© 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Keywords:Founder role identityEntrepreneurial transitionPersistenceOrganizational foundingIdentity centralityIdentity complexity

1. Executive summary

We view organizational founding as involving a role transition thereby highlighting the challenges that potential founders face:1) adjusting to the novel skills and social networks that underpin the new role, and 2) integrating the founder role identity into anoverall self-concept that may consist of contradictory or competing identities. We develop the concept of founder role identity anddelineate how two aspects, centrality and complexity, affect potential founders' ability to exit a current work role in order toundertake founding activities, an indicator of successful role transition. Founder centrality denotes the subjective importance ofthe founder role to an individual's self-concept, while complexity captures diversity and richness in the person's conceptions of therole. We detail how these two dimensions of founder role identity affect individuals' ability to overcome the challenges of thisdistinctive role transition.

We explore how distinctive configurations of founder role identities influence the extent and type of behavioral persistencedisplayed by entrepreneurs when receiving the negative feedback so prevalent during the founding process. We detail the conditionsunderwhich persistencewill involve extensive role experimentation andwhen itwill be dominated by role confirmation. Byexplicitlyconsidering actions taken in response to feedback, we are able to link founder identity to longer-term outcomes, including successfulfounding. Founder identity can also shed light on the phenomenon of dormancy, wherein a role transition has occurred but successfulfounding has not. Ourmodel suggests that variation in how founders imprint their organizations can be explained by founders' initialrole conceptions, feedback received during the founding process, and founders' subsequent persistence.

Because it focuses on characteristics of individuals that are situationally relevant, our perspective can be seen as a mid-leveltheory that broadens our understanding of founders. Understanding founder role identity may in turn enrich our understanding of

rson, Steve Barley, Roxana Barbulescu, Matthew Bidwell, Elizabeth Florent, Herminia Ibarra, Anne Miner,ants of conferences and seminars who provided comments on previous versions of this paper.

[email protected] (J. Gimeno).

All rights reserved.

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mailto:[email protected]

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2008.07.002

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42 H. Hoang, J. Gimeno / Journal of Business Venturing 25 (2010) 41–53

organizational imprinting by linking founder role identity to processes and structures that are formed at the time of founding. Ourfocus on entrepreneurial transitions complements existing perspectives on founders, and the concept of founder role identity canserve as a common theoretical perspective from which to explain a variety of seemingly diverse phenomena such as professional(e.g. academic) and non-professional transitions (e.g. user) to the founder role.

2. Introduction

Entrepreneurship research has accumulated a large body of empirical evidence about the survival and performancedeterminants of start-up businesses. Yet the dynamic processes that lead to their founding have received little systematicexamination. Only during the last decade have researchers examined the early gestation process by focusing on the figure of the“nascent entrepreneur” or “those persons currently taking explicit steps to start a new business (Reynolds and White, 1997: 40).”Because such research promises to illuminate those processes that lead to new organizations (Aldrich, 1999), representativesamples of nascent entrepreneurs have been studied across a variety of countries (Gartner et al., 2004; Davidsson and Honig, 2003;Welter and Bergmann, 2002; Reynolds and White, 1997).

Longitudinal research of nascent and early-stage entrepreneurs promises to shed light on the complexity of organizationalfounding by illuminating how founders achieve critical milestones (Delmar and Shane, 2004), respond to negative feedback(Gatewood et al., 1995), create new social relationships (Lee and Tsang, 2001), and manage the evaluations of potentialstakeholders (Zott and Huy, 2007). Earlier research has also highlighted that an ebb and flow of entrepreneurial activity is oftenobserved for the same individual across different periods of their career (Carroll andMosakowski, 1987). The ferment generated bysuch empirical work suggests that more dynamic theories of founders and the founding process are needed in order to consolidateimportant insights and to guide further research by identifying new areas for study.

Scholars have sought to fill this gap by proposing sophisticated models of the founding process and by identifying multiplefacets of founders that are relevant to the identification and exploitation of opportunities (Shane, 2003; Shane and Venkataraman,2000). Knowledge, cognitive skills, task-relevant abilities (typically proxied by education level and prior entrepreneurial and workexperience), and social ties emerge as key factors that increase access to opportunities and enable the mobilization of resources.Although thesemodels affirm the importance of individual agency and avoid the problem of static theorizing, they currently ignorean important source of dynamism that is due to differences in individuals' conceptions of the founder role and variation in thesubjective importance that individuals place on becoming a founder. In order to develop a dynamic and distinctive theory, we setout to introduce the concept of founder role identity, capturing an individual's thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about oneself in thefounder role (Rosenberg, 1979). We recast the founding context from a role transition perspective and explore the interactionbetween founder role identity and the role transition process.

Our theorizing begins with the assumption that founding typically requires individuals to transition to a newwork role – that offounder – and to ultimately abandon a current work role. This assumption builds on prior work which argues founders should beexamined in a larger career context in which individuals' careers are demarcated by a sequence of work roles that may include afounder role transition (Carroll and Mosakowski, 1987). Understanding how potential founders complete or abandon anentrepreneurial transition in turn may help to explain empirical patterns in organizational founding activity. For example, theymay shed light on Welter and Bergmann's (2002) findings that as many as 17% of the German population consideredentrepreneurship a professional possibility, 6% had detailed ideas, but only about 2% were actively trying to start a business.

While there is a dearth of research on transitions into an entrepreneurial role, further work in this area is clearly merited as anumber of qualitative studies find that founders grapple with the challenges of disengaging from an old role and developing a viablenew identity (Ibarra, 2003;Warren, 2004;Moore and Buttner,1997). Indeed, self-assessment and self-targeted reflection are found tobe important activities in the early stages of founding. Carter et al. (2003) found in aUS studyof potential founders that goals related toself-realization captured in statements such as a “desire to challenge myself” and “grow and learn as a person” are as important asfinancial success. In an in-depth study of career changers, Ibarra (2003) observed that among those contemplating entrepreneurshipfew do a systematic analysis of their alternatives, weigh pros and cons, and then proceed to exit their current role after identifying thebest available option. Instead, they were actively engaged in developing new conceptions of themselves – a precursor to assuming anew role identity – by taking concrete steps, such as building new social relationships, to explore other possible self-definitions.

In what follows, we review the role transition literature in order to develop a new view of the founding process. We argue thatthe degree of founder role novelty and the extent to which a founder role conflicts with other roles that an individual holds canprevent a successful role transition. We then leverage role identity theory and research on possible selves to build the concept offounder role identity. Founder role identity is a vital concept for understanding successful transition completion or abandonmentbecause identity helps individuals orient themselves to the founding context, gives meaning to their experience, and, as suggestedby research on possible selves, influences behavior even before individuals come to occupy the role.

After a successful role transition, the concept of founder role identity can also help to explain how individuals proceed withfounding. By considering the typical case in which potential founders receive negative feedback about their efforts, we are able todevelop more nuanced insights about how founder role identity influences persistence, defined as the actions taken in response tofeedback. Because of the challenges that entrepreneurial situations pose, persistence is an important but understudied componentof the organizational founding context. Biographies of entrepreneurs can attest to substantial persistence despite negativeenvironmental feedback: for example, Howard Schultz, the founderof Starbucks,was famously turneddownby217 investors beforeobtaining funding (Schultz and Yang, 1999). Building on our conceptual development, we predict that specific configurations offounder role identitieswill produce different kinds of persistence, ranging from role experimentation to role confirmation.We then

43H. Hoang, J. Gimeno / Journal of Business Venturing 25 (2010) 41–53

link founder role identity to longer-term organizational outcomes of successful founding, abandonment, or dormancy. Finally, wediscuss how our model might be tested and explore its implications for the study of organizational imprinting and careers.

3. Literature review

Because careers can encompass a broad range and number of work role changes, transitions represent a significant andincreasingly frequent experience in people's working lives (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996). The study of career transitions has led to akey insight: assuming a new work or professional role requires that individuals actively construct a stable sense of who they are inthe role from social interactions with new role partners, from conceptions of what is possible and desirable, and from priorconceptions of themselves that are carried forward (Beyer and Hannah, 2002; Ibarra, 1999; Hill, 1992; Barley, 1989; Nicholson,1984). A role transition involves potentially dramatic changes in behaviors around the set of activities that make up the role as wellas the content and pattern of relationships with others necessary for role enactment. Moreover, to display the “appropriatemannerisms, attitudes, and social rituals,” required for effective role execution, individuals must also go through a deeper change,typically adopting the perspective, attributes, orientation to time, and norms appropriate to the role (Van Maanen and Schein,1979; Hughes, 1958). Consistent with this, Cohen and Musson (2000) found that, for many of the entrepreneurs they interviewed,the role's stereotypical connotations were rejected because they were perceived as negative or inappropriate, requiring morepersonalized conceptions. Because social interactions during role enactment leave room for experimentation (Strauss, 1959), thereis latitude for individuals to develop behaviors and adopt attitudes that aremore idiosyncratic. Transitions thus involve assuming anew role identity: the term explicitly encompasses both the socially defined elements of meaning that underlie a role and anindividual's own subsequent construction, enactment, and internalization of that role (McCall and Simmons, 1966).

While it is widely recognized that movement from one role to another role is neither linear nor necessarily upward as thetraditional career ladder image implies, most research in this area examines transitions within and between organizations. Studiesinvolving transitions into entrepreneurship are few in number. Hence, understanding of the entrepreneurial transition context andprocess is limited. To date, researchers have focused on a set of individual-level factors that explain the decision to enter or exit thefounder role: extent of human capital (Evans and Leighton, 1989), having self-employed parents (Gimeno et al., 1997), and havingprior entrepreneurial (Carroll and Mosakowski, 1987) and small firm work experience (Sørensen, 2007).

The broader research on transitions could usefully inform our understanding of the founding process by providing insights intoentrepreneurial transitions. Much of this work begins with the premise that transition experiences are shaped by a variety ofindividual, situational, and role characteristics (Ashford and Taylor,1990). In turn, variation in how individuals assume their newworkrole – typically involving exit from a prior work role – has been shown to have a large impact on important transition outcomesincluding satisfaction in the new role, and more distal outcomes such as turnover (Pinder and Schroeder, 1987; Dawis and Lofquist,1984). In particular, researchers have noted that a transition may be abandoned if the individual has difficulties in executing the newrole, or in adopting the underlying perspective consistent with the new role, or both. While there are many factors that are likely toaffect the ease ordifficulty of a transition and subsequent adjustment to the new role,we focusedon two factors fromour reviewof thetransition literature that form a baselinemodel for subsequent theorizing.1 As elaborated below, role novelty and role conflict are twoobjective features of the transition context that can decrease individuals' chances of successfully completing a role transition.

3.1. Role novelty

The extent of change associatedwith a transition is directly related to objective differences in the knowledge, skills, and abilitiesrequired to perform the new role as compared to the old role. In addition, the social relationships required to learn about thedemands of the role and engage in founding activities may be different from the contacts that are organized around the currentrole. In the face of role novelty, disengaging from one role and engaging in a new role may be perceived as negative and distressing,with consequences for adjustment and success in the new role. In empirical work, the magnitude of a transition has been linked tothe perceived challenge of adjustment to a role change (Bruce and Scott, 1994), time to proficiency in a new role (Pinder andSchroeder, 1987), and degree of reported personal change, e.g. in attitudes or values, as a result of the transition (West et al., 1987).The concept of role novelty is particularly applicable to the study of entrepreneurial transitions because the opportunities thatindividuals choose to pursue can vary in the level of their difficulty: some founders build new firms based largely on skills andrelationships that they already have, while others identify opportunities that require the development of new skills and social ties.

3.2. Role conflict

Transitions may also be difficult due to the challenges associated with assuming a new role while holding other, potentiallycompeting role identities that a person views as self-defining (Sieber, 1974). When an individual assumes a new role, new role setmembers make demands that cannot bemet without reducing time spent with established interaction partners. Role conflictmay alsoarisedue to an incompatibilityof identities. Researchonwomenentrepreneurs, inparticular, hashighlighted that careermotivationsand

1 Ashford and Taylor (1990), for example, note seven different transition and situational characteristics which can affect the extent of adaptation to a roletransition. However factors such as whether the transition is gradual or sudden and extent of insider information available may be more appropriate toorganizational contexts. In addition, factors such as the degree of ambiguity and complexity of the job are likely to be uniformly high in entrepreneurial contextsand hence less predictive of outcomes.


family roles often conflict with a transition to an entrepreneurship role (Buttner and Moore, 1997) and contribute to the subjectiveexperienceof role conflict.Warren (2004), for example, reported that thewomenentrepreneurs inher studygrappledwith themeaningof ‘entrepreneur’ and its implications for other important roles they held. This conflict is mademanifest when the behaviors and valuesimpliedbya founder role contradict those that are impliedbyanother role identity (e.g. familyandprofessional identities suchasmotherand engineer). For example, a founder's role may entail being opportunistic and thus require making quick judgments which maycontradict a broader view of oneself as a methodical and thorough person. Such a view of role conflict underscores that divergent roledemands may be placed on an individual simultaneously, resulting in inter-role conflict in addition to role overload (Hall, 1972).

Role conflict recognizes that aspects of an individual's broader self-concept, consisting of other role, personal, and socialidentities may conflict with a founder role (Rizzo et al., 1970). Personal identities refer to self-definitions based on characteristics,experiences, attributes, and values that distinguish oneself from others (for example, being a cautious or risk-averse person)(Deux, 1991; Hitlin, 2003). Social identities are self-definitions based on collective membership such as organizational affiliation(e.g. church or unionmembership) or on social categories such as ethnicity and gender (Thoits and Virshup,1997). If aspects of thefounder role identity are seen as contradicting other personal or social identities, individuals will experience stress associated withattempting to reconcile or integrate the demands of a new role (Hall, 1972; Goode, 1960).

Researchhas found that institutionalized socializationprocesses and symbolicmanagement help to reduce the potential impact of roleconflict in organizational contexts (Saks and Ashforth, 1997; Jones, 1986; Ashforth and Johnson, 2001). For example, organizationalnewcomers are situated within a work group which allows for social comparison and the transmission of ideologies that can aid inreconciling self-viewswith the conflictingwork role (Ibarra,1999). Because transitions to the founder role occur outside such systems andtheir supporting mechanisms, however, role conflict is likely to have a large impact on transition outcomes in entrepreneurial contexts.

4. Founder role identity and transition processes

Building on the view that an entrepreneurial transition poses challenges due to role novelty and conflict, we now develop theconstruct of founder role identity. We explore how two aspects of founder role identity, centrality and complexity, influence thiskey outcome. Because we conceive of the entrepreneurial transition process as a distinct process but one that overlaps with thefounding process, we also link these core dimensions of founder role identity to broader efforts to establish a new organization,including medium-term outcomes such as persistence, and longer-term outcomes of success, abandonment, and dormancy.2 Bydoing so, we develop a more dynamic theory about the role of the founder in organizational founding.

4.1. Orientation to and conception of founder role identities

Role identity captures the notion that individuals inhabit roles which are associated with a set of behavioral expectations held bysociety but that are internalized by role occupants in different ways. Much of the literature on role identities focuses on how identityorients individuals to their social context and provides guidelines for action. Recently, scholars have highlighted that people holdpossible role identities, and that possible identities have similar properties to actual role identities. Possible identities can guide andmotivate goal-orientedbehavior, often to theextent that apossible role becomes anactual one (Markus andNurius,1986; Ibarra,1999).Founder role identity, encompassing perceived prescriptions for behavior and thoughts and feelings about oneself in a future founderrole, represents a key concept that with further elaboration can link potential founders with actions to complete a transition.

With the aim of identifying individual-level differences that are likely to be predictive of behaviors and outcomes, we exploretwo dimensions of founder role identity because they can significantly influence how founders interpret and respond to objectivefeatures of the transition context. The first dimension, identity centrality, describes individuals' strength of attachment to thefounder role which in turn suggests differences in individuals' motivation to undertake and persist in challenging transitions. Thesecond dimension, identity complexity, captures diversity and richness in individuals' definition of the founder role which can inturn explain patterns in how andwhen persistence occurs. While our primary focus is on delineating their impact on the transitionprocess, we address how these subjective differences toward the founder role might emerge across individuals.

4.1.1. Identity centralityJust as individuals may identify with a current work role to varying degrees, individuals are likely to differ widely in their

orientation to the founder role. At one extreme are those for whom the founder role represents a significant part of their self-definition. Such a self-conception can be powerfully motivating, as typified by the following reflection:

2 Rescurrentwhen crelation

“I am an entrepreneur. I have always been entrepreneurial. I've always made things and sold them. I've always made myown money. I've never wanted to work for anybody else” (Mallon and Cohen, 2001).

At the other extreme, the subjective importance of a founder identitymay be low such that there is little motivation to assumethe entrepreneurial role despite having skills and experiences that would allow one to execute the role very competently. Our first

earch on role exits suggests that significant doubts and dissatisfaction about a current work role may initiate the transition process, and that exit from awork role is a strong indicator of a successfully completed transition (Ebaugh, 1988). In contrast, scholars consider that the founding process commencesoncrete actions are undertaken toward the goal of founding while successful founding is indicated by multiple criteria, including maintaining stableships with resource providers and customers (Katz and Gartner, 1988).


characteristic thus emphasizes the subjective importance of the founder role identity within an individual's self-concept (hereafterreferred to as identity centrality). To anticipate our later arguments, we expect that identity centrality facilitates the role transition bycontributing to the attractiveness of a founder role, and by reducing the associated anxiety and stress due to role novelty and conflict.

Across a broad range of role identities studied, centrality has been linked to individuals' actions – voluntarily undertaken ratherthan dictated by the situation – that serve to reinforce a role identity. Burke and Reitzes (1981), for example, show that thesubjective importance of a religious identity led individuals to spend more of their free time in that role. Individuals who viewedthemselves as creative people engaged in more creative behavior at work (Farmer et al., 2003), while those who strongly definedthemselves as volunteers tended to be psychologically (Reich, 2000) and behaviorally more committed to activities such as blooddonation (Charng et al., 1988; Callero, 1985).

Two perspectives provide insight into the source of individual-level differences in identity centrality. The first suggests thatpeople vary with respect to their degree of identification with a social group: in this case, other entrepreneurial people. Socialidentification captures feelings of oneness with a social group and the sense of sharing in its successes and failures (Ashforth andMael,1989). Positive (or negative) evaluations that the individual holds about entrepreneurs as a group, informedby societal regardfor the entrepreneurial role, may influence psychological identification (Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999; Hogg and Abrams, 1988).

Symbolic interaction theory, in contrast, emphasizes that new identities begin as claims that must be socially legitimatedthrough interactions with role set members (Goffman, 1959; Strauss, 1959). Assuming a new role requires that others react to thenew role performance as if the person has the identity appropriate to that role performance (Goffman, 1959). Hence, identitycentrality may vary among individuals due to differences in the number and perceived importance of social ties that can be linkedto a particular role identity (Stryker and Serpe, 1982). This implies that themore extensive the social support available to validate aparticular role identity, the more likely a role transition will be completed and the role will be enacted.

While the above discussion would seem to suggest that differences in identity centrality emerge either externally, fromrelations to role partners, or internally, from differences in self-categorization, in reality it is likely that psychological processes andsocial validation interact (Deaux and Martin, 2003; Ashforth, 2001; Thoits and Virshup, 1997). For example, changes in self-categorization (e.g. “I am an entrepreneur”) can serve as a source of motivation to create new social relationships and seek accessto new communities that increase the likelihood that the role will enacted.

In summary, identity centralitymay be an important antecedent of individuals' orientation to the goal of starting a new venture,termed entrepreneurial intensity (Liao and Welsch, 2004), by providing the motivational force that leads individuals to focus onthis goal and ultimately to undertake founding activities at the expense of other commitments or alternatives.

4.1.2. Identity complexityUnlike prototypical organizational roles which are narrowly defined and have strong interdependencies with other roles,

founder role identities can potentially be very broad in scope, loosely coupled to other roles, and idiosyncratic in content. This isdue in part to the charismatic basis of authority underpinning the founder role (Weber, 1968), as well as the weak normativeconstraints imposed by complementary roles in a new venture's formative stage (Burton and Beckman, 2007). While theprototypical entrepreneur is viewed as a business founder, focused on profit and growth (Carland et al., 1984), numeroustypologies of entrepreneurship developed by scholars underscore that the role definition can vary widely (Verheul et al., 2005).Lafuente and Salas (1989), for example, characterized entrepreneurs by their work role preferences: for example, someentrepreneurs tended to focus on the work itself (such as bringing a new product to market) while others emphasized the need toimprovise and lead. In noting the founder's organization-building function, still others view the role inmanagerial terms, involvingskills in marketing, management, and financial control (Chen et al., 1998).

Because founders' role definitions can vary widely, a key dimension that can facilitate analysis is the complexity of individuals'conceptualization of themselves in the founder role. Individuals may define the role as a composite of multiple dimensions, assuggested by one entrepreneur:

“I consciously go from the entrepreneur role with the ideas that are creative and having a vision [,] and make a consciousswitch to being the doer and the implementer. I can put on my administrative hat when I need to and put on my financialhat when I need to. I can put on my systematize and organizational structure hat but that is not where I want to stay.”(Moore and Buttner, 1997).

In addition to a functional dimension, a multi-faceted view of the role identity may include behaviors, traits, attitudes, andvalues that are viewed as appropriate to the role. Fig. 1 represents a simple illustration of low and high identity complexity. Lowidentity complexity is characterized by defining the founder role along a few, similar dimensions, for example, by the relatedattributes of a founder as an ‘innovator’, ‘visionary’, and someone who is ‘autonomous’. In contrast, high identity complexity is amulti-dimensional view of the role in which the dimensions are richly conceived and often do not overlap in semantic meaning.

In addition to its implications for subsequent enactment of the role, more complex conceptions of the founder role can have animportant impact on how individuals respond to uncertain or negative environments. Research on self-complexity indicates thatholding diverse self-views can have important psychological buffering effects for an individual facing stress and negative lifeevents (Rafaeli-Mor and Steinberg, 2002; Linville, 1987, 1985; Gergen, 1971). Negative feedback on one self-facet would be lesslikely to spill over to other identities, thereby helping the individual to maintain overall self-esteem. Consistent with thisargument, studies have found that the accumulation of multiple roles has beneficial consequences for psychological resilience andphysical well-being (Thoits,1991,1983). The buffering benefits of complexity are also not limited to present conceptions of the self.

Fig. 1. Example of variation in founder role identity complexity.


In a series of carefully crafted studies, Niedenthal et al. (1992) show that reaction among premedical and art students toexperimentally-manipulated feedback about their professional prospects was explained by the complexity of their possible self-concept. Those with complex constructions of their future selves were less affected by feedback to tests which were said to predicttheir likelihood of success or failure in their intended professional role. We thus build on this broader research stream on self-complexity to delineate the potential benefits of identity complexity.

Although more work on the antecedents of founder role conceptions is needed, it is likely that differences in individuals' roleconceptions are based on differential access to founders, role set members, and mentors. In addition to helping potential foundersinterpret information about new opportunities (Ozgen and Baron, 2007), such ties can provide important role relevantinformation. Founders' conceptions of the founder role may also be derived from their own career experience and functionalbackground (Boeker, 1988). In a detailed study of one healthcare firm whose managerial ranks provided many executives in theearly days of the biotechnology industry, Higgins (2005) suggests that career movement across varied roles and early exposure tohighly uncertain business challenges can help enrich a person's conceptions of the founder role.

Knowledgeof the role canalsobegained indirectly through themedia attention that entrepreneurs receive, particularlywhen theyareportrayed as success stories (Dodd, 2002).Media attentionmay, in turn, reflect adeeper societal-level role regard that captures positive ornegative assessments of the founder role. These collective assessments can include a1) viewof the role of entrepreneurs in contemporarycivic, economic, andpolitical discourse (Steyaert andKatz, 2004), and2) theperceivedalignmentof the founder rolewith a culture's long-standing values and norms (Lee and Peterson, 2000; Mueller and Thomas, 2001). Differences in the societal regard for founders acrosscountries can influenceboth theextentof economicandadministrative infrastructureneeded to supportentrepreneurial activity (Baughnand Neupert, 2003) as well as the extent of facilitating social relationships (Dakhli and De Clercq, 2004). Societal regard can in turninfluence individuals' ownwillingness to identify with the founder role (Hoang and Gimeno, 2005; Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999).

4.2. Linking founder role identity and transition characteristics

In this section, we consider how individuals' role identity conceptions affect the transition to a founder role. When transitioncharacteristics of role novelty and role conflict threaten to limit individuals' ability to complete a transition to a founder role, weargue that identity centrality and complexity act to moderate their effects. Our arguments are summarized in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2. Effects of founder role identity centrality and complexity on transition characteristics.


4.2.1. Founder role identity moderates role noveltyRecall that a comparison between the core and peripheral features of a new and old role, including the skills and abilities

required to execute the role, captures the potential novelty of a new role. Absent prior entrepreneurial experience, gainingcompetency in the set of skills necessary for successful enactment will be more challenging when role novelty is high. Identitycentrality can enhance individuals' motivations to overcome role novelty. Those who view the founder role as important to theirself-definition will view the transition as an affirmation of a valued part of their self-concept. In this situation, acquisition of thenecessary skills or social ties underpinning the founder role will be driven by a powerful perception of congruence rather than seensolely as an accommodation to external demands (Ibarra, 1999).

For thosewith high identity centrality, perception of fit with the role may also influence information processing in the directionof sustaining rather than questioning strongly held self-beliefs (Fiske and Taylor, 1991). The confirmation bias is particularlyevident when people with a strong self-view are presented with discrepant evidence held by others: they tend to take action torectify others' discrepant views or ignore the evidence (Swann, 1997; Swann and Hill, 1982). These factors imply that a potentialfounder will also experience lower anxiety and stress around a difficult transition as interactions with skeptical role set membersare interpreted in ways that reinforce the founder's strong identity commitments.

When faced with the challenge of overcoming role novelty, those who conceive of the founder role in complex ways willbe better able to identify the new behaviors and role set members necessary to enact a founder role. Complexity in one'sdefinition of the entrepreneurial role also implies holding a fuller conception of the behavioral repertoires necessary to besuccessful (Denison et al., 1995). Without a sufficiently detailed framework for organizing how one may behave as anoccupant of the founder role, interactions with role set members may be based on time-consuming trial and error. Trial anderror can also be costly as errors in role execution may lead role set members to deny resources and de-legitimate a potentialtransition. With simple conceptions of the founder role, errors resonate as poor performance on one aspect of the role is morelikely to be construed as an inability to execute other aspects of the role. Thus, criticisms of a business plan will have a morediscouraging effect when effective planning is seen as the main dimension of a founder role than when it is one of several,diverse dimensions. As the literature on self-complexity suggests (Linville, 1987, 1985; Niedenthal et al., 1992), rolecomplexity may serve as an important buffer against the psychological doubt and dissatisfaction that accompanies a difficultrole transition.

4.2.2. Founder role identity moderates role conflictTransitions are difficult when assuming a new role affects existing commitments to other role identities. Similar to its effect on

role novelty, identity centrality can dampen the negative impact of role conflict. A central role identity reduces the need to validateother identities in social interactions, decreasing the potential for inter-role conflict (Burke, 2003). Because of its subjectiveimportance, holding a strong founder role identity has motivational force and can thus facilitate the changes in one's socialnetwork and patterns of interaction to legitimate the identity and possibly reduce reliance on other role identities. Over time, acentral role identity is also likely to facilitate re-interpretation of other identities inways that enhance compatibility with a founderrole identity (Burke, 2003).

While identity centrality may lead individuals to reorient to other roles in ways that support a founder role, identitycomplexity enhances individuals' ability to execute the founder role despite competing and conflicting identities. When anaspect of the role is in conflict with other identities, those with complex conceptions of the role can avoid placing adisproportionate emphasis on dimensions that are in conflict. Instead, they can stress other aspects of the role in theirinteractions which are likely to be more complementary to established identities. This line of argument emphasizes thatcomplexity represents multiple opportunities for an individual to derive value and meaning from the focal role (Koch andShepperd, 2004). Complexity thus allows for more opportunities for self-esteem and self-satisfaction when assuming thefounder role (Steele, 1988).

In summary, our perspective suggests that challenging transitions can be facilitated by individuals’ complex conceptions andthe strong subjective importance they give to the founder role. To focus our theorizing, we explore a testable implication of thesearguments by linking identity characteristics to the exit of a current work role in order to more fully pursue founding activities.Ebaugh (1988) found that disengaging from an existing role in order to facilitate a role transition is commonly observed in manykinds of transitions, including occupational transitions.3 While this indicator of a successful transition presumes the existence of aprior work role, our base model can be applied to the transition from other social roles (e.g. college student) where socialexpectations, time, and social ties are highly constraining and can hinder the effective execution of the founder role. Our argumentsthus yield the following propositions:

Proposition 1. Identity centrality facilitates transitions to the founder role by moderating the negative effect of role novelty androle conflict on the likelihood of exiting a current work role to pursue founding activities.

Proposition 2. Identity complexity facilitates transitions to the founder role by moderating the negative effect of role novelty androle conflict on the likelihood of exiting a current work role to pursue founding activities.

3 Our focus on role exit is also supported by Gimeno et al. (1997) who noted that only 14% of new founders who belonged to the National Federation ofIndependent Businesses reported holding a parallel part-time or full-time job during the first three years of the new venture.


4.3. Impact of founder identity on persistence and adaptation after negative feedback

Thus far, we have argued that founder role identity can help explain successful transitions to the founder role. While a roletransition is necessary for organizational founding, it is not sufficient. To develop more fine-grained predictions and a moredynamic view of the role of the founder in founding processes, we thus consider how identity complexity and centrality influencesubsequent founding activities. Although no one event signals the end of the founding stage (Carter et al., 2004), it is widely agreedthat the founding period ends when distinctive organizational boundaries are created (e.g. through legal incorporation), theorganization has stable relationships with suppliers and customers, and generates revenue (Katz and Gartner,1988). Because theseoutcomes are difficult to achieve and rarely occur at the same time, founders are likely to encounter uncertainty and some level ofnegative feedback about the actions taken and their impact on enhancing the venture's future prospects. In this context, continuingto undertake actions to move closer to the goal of creating an organization is nontrivial and hence an important proximateoutcome to be explained.

Persistence in the face of negative feedback has traditionally been conceived as a simple re-doubling of effort and thus factorsthat lead to over-commitment have been the focus of past work (Brockner et al., 2004; Staw and Ross, 1987). More recently,scholars in psychology have begun to focus on the positive aspects of persistence as evidence of individuals' deeper-rootedstrengths or “psychological capital” (Luthans et al., 2007; Seligman and Csikzentmihalyi, 2000). Such a perspective highlights arange of potential beneficial responses to feedback in the entrepreneurial context, such as discerning alternative courses of actionduring founding that have thus far been unexplained. Despite the uncertainty and ambiguity associated with entrepreneurialcontexts, negative feedback can result in useful adjustments to founding activities. We thus explore how distinctive role identityconfigurations can lead individuals to persist in different ways by considering both their willingness and ability to pursue newbehavioral avenues in response to negative feedback.

4.3.1. Search and dormancy: adjustments after negative feedbackOur theory suggests that holding a multi-faceted view of the founder role that is associated with high identity complexity may

be an important consideration in responding effectively to negative feedback. Research on the self-concept has shown that thecomplexity of one's self-concept allows one to respond more effectively to changes in role demands (Hoelter, 1985; Gergen, 1971).Similarly, because multiple alternatives are available for defining a role's core and peripheral features, a complex role conceptionmay allow for greater ease in emphasizing or de-emphasizing different facets of the role in response to negative feedback (Gergen,1971; Bartunek et al., 1983; Denison et al., 1995). Those with complex conceptions of the role may also be better prepared toundertake dramatically different behaviors.

To integrate this insight with the earlier discussion on the motivation to persist in founding activities, consider the jointinteraction of identity centrality and complexity under conditions of negative feedback. As depicted in Fig. 3, by crossing high andlow levels of identity centrality and complexity, we construct four broad role identity profiles that capture differences in thecapacity for adaptation and the motivation to search for solutions. These profiles in turn suggest different modes of persistenceduring the founding process.

Individuals with high identity centrality and high role complexity would be expected to persist in ways that emphasize roleexperimentation. Because negative feedback signals the possibility that a strongly held future identity will not be fully realized,individuals with a central founder self-definitionwould likely react vigorously to negative feedback in order to counter this threatto their self-concept. At the same time, individuals with this profile will have a source of behavioral variation inherent in a complex

Fig. 3. Effects of founder role identity on gestation outcomes under conditions of negative feedback.


conception of the role that may prevent such threats from leading to a single, rigid response that might be inappropriate given thecues from the environment (Staw et al., 1981). The buffering effects of complex conceptions of the role against discouragement andfrustration, which would otherwise loom large if individuals had few behavioral repertoires from which to draw, could alsofacilitate an experimentation orientation. As a result of greater search and more adaptive persistence in response to negativefeedback, wewould expect that individuals with this identity configurationwould bemost likely to succeed in eventually foundinga new organization.

In direct contrast to the case outlined above, individuals with low centrality and low complexity are less resistant to negativefeedback, have lowmotivation to persist in their search for solutions, and have little potential to experiment and adapt. Because oftheir susceptibility to negative feedback, wewould expect that, over the medium-term, individuals in this group would respond inways that lead them to reject the founder role rather than ignore or respond to the feedback. For example, someone who simplyequates founders with inventing new products would have fewer solutions to negative market feedback in comparison to anindividual who views salesmanship and marketing skills as additional facets of the role. Moreover, low centrality of the role wouldyield little impetus to investigate the implications of negative feedback for the venture's viability and adjust accordingly. Over thelong term, individuals with this profile would be most likely to abandon their efforts when faced with negative feedback.

Among individuals with high complexity and low identity centrality, we expect a greater capacity to adapt to negativefeedback: a broader set of behavioral repertories underpinning a complex role identity provides a larger pool fromwhich to drawnew solutions. At issue is whether such individuals will engage in the effort to explore potential alternatives. On the one hand, highrole complexity offers buffering benefits, but its beneficial effects may be undermined when individuals' low role centrality makesthem weakly committed to the founder role (Keough and Markus, 1998). Moreover, there is little motivation to engage inexperimentation in response to negative feedback; hence, their ability to sustain experimentation efforts would be weaker thanthose with a high centrality-high complexity profile. If their actions only yield ambiguous feedback at best, our prediction is thatnegative feedback – unfiltered by strong commitment associated with high identity centrality – would ultimately lead toabandonment of founding efforts.

Finally, individuals with high identity centrality and low complexity would likely engage in limited search activities. That is,while individuals with this profile may have strong motivation to overcome negative feedback, their narrow conceptions of thefounder role would inhibit experimentation. In the medium-term, potential founders would tend to escalate by increasing effortand committing more time rather than re-evaluating the overall approach or searching more broadly for solutions. In this sense, atendency to confirm existing beliefs, skills, and strategies would dominate these individuals' efforts in response to negativefeedback. However, because of strong identification with the founder role, the long-term implications of continued negativefeedback for this group are distinctive from those with weaker identity centrality.

Negative feedback is particularly challenging for those with high identity centrality who also lack a broad behavioral repertoireto respond to that feedback. Constant evaluation of negative feedback is psychologically distressing and calls into question valuedself-perceptions (Steele, 1988). Ourmodel suggests that founders who are predisposed to confirm the definition of themselves as afounder may persist under such conditions but then eventually go dormant; that is, while they may become inactive, they willcontinue to hold an expectation of returning to entrepreneurial activity in the future. By putting the execution of a business plan onthe “back burner”, dormancy minimizes further negative feedback, allows for continued identification with the role, and sustainsthe identity claim in social interactions.4 When dormant, individuals may only completely abandon their claim to the founder roleidentity when facilitated by an external event such as a major personal episode (e.g. illness, marriage, divorce), observing thesuccess or failure of others' entrepreneurial transitions, or a relocation that may provide impetus for reconsidering commitment toa lingering entrepreneurial identity. These ‘jolts’ can also initiate new social relationships that further weaken the centrality of theentrepreneurial role (Roberts et al., 2005).

In summary, founding efforts are shaped to a significant degree by the centrality and complexity of founders' role identity. Weargue that their impact extends beyond facilitating a role transition to influence the extent and type of persistence exhibited inresponse to negative environmental feedback. When identity centrality and complexity are considered, we posit the following:

Proposition 3a. Individuals with high centrality are less likely to abandon their efforts in response to negative environmentalfeedback than those with low centrality.

Proposition 3b. Among individuals with high centrality, those with high complexity will exhibit a more diverse repertoire ofbehaviors than those with low complexity. As a consequence, those with high complexity will be more adaptive and more likely toachieve founding under conditions of negative feedback. Those with low complexity will exhibit a narrower range of behaviorswhen responding to negative feedback, and tend to go dormant in their founding activities.

5. Discussion

This paper develops new theory about organizational founding by noting that potential founders must complete a roletransition to pursue founding activities. Our model delineates how two dimensions of founder role identity, centrality andcomplexity, affect transition success. We argue that identity centrality and complexity lower the negative impact that role novelty

4 Dormancy may also explain the surprising empirical finding of long founding periods: recent evidence shows that 38% of US potential founders listed theirfirst activity to start a new business as occurring more than five years before the time of the survey (Gartner et al., 2004).


and conflict have on successful role transition. After the transition occurs, we delineate how complexity and centrality togetherinfluence the founding process. In particular, they yield distinctive configurations of founder role identities which influence theextent and type of persistence that founders are likely to exhibit under the typical entrepreneurial condition of negative feedback.Because persistence informs whether and how founders move toward the goal of building a new organization, we are able tobroaden our understanding of the founder's role in determining organizational founding. Our model fills an important theoreticalgap by highlighting founder identity as an important but under-examined source of dynamism during the founding process.

In building a general model of transitions to an entrepreneurial role, we also provide a lens by which to view a variety oftransitions that would appear to differ widely. Scholars for example have been increasingly interested in explainingentrepreneurial activity by professionals such as engineers and academics, and by managers who leave established organizationsto start their own ventures. Founder transitions from non-work roles (such as college student) where social expectations, time, andsocial ties are highly constraining can also be challenging.While these diverse entrepreneurial transitions vary in their institutionalstructures and normative constraints, our framework can usefully integrate them by emphasizing the common role transitionprocesses that underpin all of them. However, the separate study of these diverse transitions is also likely to enrich the theory byhighlighting additional factors that affect transition patterns and founding outcomes. For example, the transition of hobbyists orusers to founder could lead to useful elaboration and refinement of the basicmodel presented here because time and effort spent inone role may complement rather than compete with the other role.

Our model may also be extended to shed light on processes after venture formation, and on founders' varying influences ontheir organizations. We highlight that variation is due to founders' initial role conceptions, feedback processes during the foundingprocess, and founders' adaptiveness. We believe that our approach extends scholarly focus on how organizations are imprinted bytheir founders at the time of founding (Shane and Khurana, 2003; Shane and Stuart, 2002). In particular, work experience andfunctional background of the founder have been linked to organizational level structure (Boeker 1989a) and strategy (Boeker1989b). In addition to linking outcomes to what individuals know how to do or have done in the past, a focus on identitycomplexity highlights the possibility of role experimentation and feedback-seeking which suggests a more dynamic view ofimprinting. Because role conceptions provide guides for actions, a focus on identity can also inform our understanding of whetherand how imprinting by founders can be a source of organizational-level heterogeneity. For example, the anti-establishment,maverick strategy of Virgin and the technological innovation focus of Hewlett Packard reflect the founders' different definitions ofthe entrepreneurial role. Selection, retention, and incentive policies at the organization level can serve to amplify their view ofentrepreneurship.

An intriguing implication of this perspective is that particular identity configurations may explain an organization'sperformance during the early years of its life cycle (Beckman et al., 2007; Baron et al., 1999). For example, it may be that founder'sidentity characteristics imprint decision processes that have implications for its subsequent performance (Boeker, 1988). Giventhat a founder is likely to dominate the decision-making process during the firm's early years, it would be fruitful to examineempirically how founder identity influences their firms' subsequent perception and response to more complex patterns offeedback from the environment, and explore its implications for the adaptability of the venture. Recent work on the “hot stoveeffect” suggests that actors respond to initially negative outcomes by avoiding taking risky actions that can prove to be superiorover time (Denrell and March, 2001). Founders with a central entrepreneurial identity may be more committed to their role andavoid giving up prematurely. This imprinting of persistence may have long-term value for the firm when initial performancefeedback is ambiguous and weakly correlated to future performance (Gimeno et al., 1997). Furthermore, committed founders, i.e.those with high identity centrality, with a more nuanced and complex representation of the entrepreneurial role may be betterable to develop an understanding of the context inwhich they operate andmay build teams and structure supporting roles inmorerefined ways as the venture grows.

While more work is needed to fully delineate the linkages between founder role conceptions and the extent and kind ofenvironmental adaptation exhibited at the firm-level, it is also important to examine how founder role identity may change overthe different stages of a new venture's development. Identity development in work roles, for example, has been linked to criticalevents or “jolts” that prompt personal reflection and learning (Roberts et al., 2005). Research suggests that the changing fundingand managerial demands of a growing venture can reduce congruence between the venture and the founder's skills and personalvalues (Ling et al., 2007; Hofer and Charan, 1984), leading to the recruitment of a professional manager and exit of the founder(Wasserman, 2003). Our work suggests that the timing of founder-to-CEO succession may be due to rigidities in founder'sconceptions of their role as the organization grows and matures.

We believe our work has implications beyond the study of founder role transitions to broader research on careers, and inparticular on the consequences of recent corporate demands that increase the frequency of career transitions and place greaterburden on individuals to adjust and manage these changes. Our work contributes to a growing literature that explores howpossible role identities help to structure and facilitate a wide range of career transitions (Ibarra, 2003). More specifically, identitycentrality and complexity of possible role conceptions may be a source of individuals' ability to manage and adapt to other workrole transitions. To the extent that entry into a new role is not supportedwell bymentoring and socialization processes, and there islatitude in how the role is enacted, centrality and complexity of role conceptions may be usefully studied in certain organizationalrole transitions, for example, transitions into boundary-spanning roles.

Our work also highlights that transition processes may result in outcomes beyond clear success or failure; they sometimesresult in dormant identities. When scholars have theorized on the role transition process, they have neatly categorized roleidentities in past, present, or future form (Thoits and Virshup, 1997). However, a dormant identity blurs the distinction betweenpast and possible role identities and, when shaped by prior exposure to negative feedback, may have important implications for


subsequent behavior (Markus and Nurius, 1986). Because a possible role identity changes to accommodate prior experiences, theperiod of dormancymay be an important time for facilitating learning. Understanding the consequences of re-entering a transitionafter a dormant period is largely unstudied and may have implications for explaining work outcomes after a career transition.

5.1. Future research

In order to advance work on founder identity, measurement and validation of the construct are critical elements of theempirical research agenda. While a detailed discussion of this topic is beyond the scope of this paper, it is important to note thatadvances have been made in the broader identity literature (Gecas, 1982). For example, an elaboration of the index developed byJackson (1981) to assess respondents' differential commitment to a variety of identities could be modified to assess identitycentrality. Similarly, existing techniques to capture self-complexity can also be modified to measure identity complexity (Rafaeli-Mor and Steinberg, 2002). In order to link identity constructs to the outcomes in our venture founding model, fine-grainedinformation is also needed regarding entrepreneurial intentions and details of the founding activities undertaken that would allowfor distinctions to be made between abandonment (low intentions, low activity), dormancy (high intentions, low activity) andpersistence (high intentions, high activity).

Our perspective and resulting measurement strategy can be seen as articulating a mid-level theory that may have greaterexplanatory power in predicting outcomes because it focuses on dynamic characteristics of individuals that are situationallyrelevant (House et al., 1996). Our work is closely related to another emerging perspective that emphasizes the importance ofindividuals' psychological capital in responding to setbacks and negative feedback (Luthans et al., 2007).Work in this area suggeststhat other relatively stable, but not immutable, characteristics and beliefs of founders such as self-efficacy, hope, optimism andresilience can facilitate adjustment to challenging and uncertain environments. Our work contributes an explanation fordifferences in psychological capital based on the dynamics of self-concept. In future empirical work, our focus could be usefullybroadened to include aspects of psychological capital in order to fully explain individuals' responses to setbacks and negativefeedback during founding.

In light of the importance of accessing different resources required to get a new venture off the ground, our perspective also hasthe potential to complement existing perspectives that emphasize founders' human and social capital (Davidsson and Honig,2003; Hoang and Antoncic, 2001). The focus on social capital for example suggests that access to role models and coaches canfacilitate transition into the founder role. Similarly, organizational contexts may shape the centrality and complexity of individuals'role identity conceptions, in addition to their demonstrated impact on individuals' exposure to business opportunities (Dobrev andBarnett, 2005).

Undertaking the research efforts outlined above will advance a role identity view of entrepreneurial activity by establishing theunique theoretical contribution of this perspective. Toward this goal, construct measurement, identifying appropriate contexts fortesting, and accounting for alternative perspectives are important steps in the research agenda. Because of the potentialapplicability of this perspective to explain diverse transitions (e.g. from professional and non-work roles to founder role), webelieve that testing can also provide an important opportunity to further develop and refine the theory outlined in this paper.

In summary, we have developed a novel role identity-based perspective on founders that explains how potential founders differin their orientation to and conceptualization of this important role. By assuming that the founding process entails disengagingfrom an old role and developing a viable role identity, we developed a number of propositions linking founder role identity totransition outcomes. We also shed light on its impact on organizational founding by linking founder role identity to persistenceand successful founding, and suggest that a founder's identity can have imprinting effects on the organization. From this startingpoint, we encourage continuing development of the concept of founder role identity through empirical tests and further theorizingof its role in new venture growth and performance.

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becoming a founder: how founder role identity affects entrepreneurial transitions and persistence in...

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