Major Life Events, Overconfidence, And New Venture Survival: A Resource-based View

• Main Authors: Tan, Alex Tai Loong, Fan, Terence Ping Ching
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2015
• Subjects: entrepreneurship; new venture performance; family; discrete events; Business
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/4289
• Institution: Singapore Management University

This paper conducts an exploratory study on how an entrepreneur’s family could impact the performance of the entrepreneur’s new ventures. Specifically, we focus on how discrete family events could impact the performance of the entrepreneur’s new ventures because these are easier to disentangle from the entrepreneur and her/him family. In general, there are two ways in which events within an entrepreneur’s family can directly impact the performance of new ventures: in terms of resources and in terms of psychology. Indirectly, the psychological influences of family events can interact with the overconfidence of an entrepreneur to produce further impact on the performance of new ventures. This study found evidence of both this direct and moderated influences of family events. In particular, financial difficulty within the household, birth or death events significantly impact the performance of new ventures in the presence of an entrepreneur’s overconfidence (improving, worsening and improving it respectively), and the latter two of these also exert their direct influence (in the same direction).