Entrepreneurship Seminar Series

The Entrepreneurship Cross-Enterprise Leadership Centre (ECELC) will be hosting a series of research seminars with Entrepreneurship faculty from institutions across North America. For more information on visit schedules and paper sessions, contact the centre at iveyentre@ivey.ca

• February 8, 2016
  Jeff McMullen | Indiana University
  
  

  Should We Require Every New Venture to Be a Hybrid Organization?
  Jeffery S. McMullen & Benjamin J. Warnick (Indiana University)

  Critics of entrepreneurial capitalism have argued that entrepreneurship creates dysfunction in individuals, families, communities, and society because entrepreneurs neglect social and environmental dimensions of value in favour of financial value creation. By way of contrast, hybrid organizations, such as Benefit Corporations, are created explicitly to address social and environmental objectives in addition to their financial objective. Therefore, in this paper we explore the consequences of a world of blended value in which every new venture is required to be a hybrid organization. In doing so, we reveal the boundary conditions of current social criticism levied against entrepreneurship and suggest that blended value may best be relegated to the role of ideal or guideline as opposed to normative or legal obligation.

• February 22, 2016
  Dane Blevins | Binghamton University
  
  

  The signalling role of a CEO’s degree: How does education influence a foreign IPO’s value?
  Dane P. Blevins (Binghamton University) & Eric W. K. Tsang
  (University of Texas at Dallas)
  

  This paper investigates how the background of a chief executive officer (CEO) influences the firm’s value in an initial public offering (IPO). Specifically, we argue that the educational background of the CEO may help when entering a foreign capital market, and in turn, may positively influence the IPO’s valuation. Forming arguments tied to the knowledge and social capital gained from education, we hypothesize that there are advantages associated with where CEOs earned their degrees. We test our hypotheses by examining all of the foreign IPOs debuting on U.S. stock exchanges from 2003 to 2013. Our findings reveal that only prestigious degrees, whether in the United States or in the home country of the IPO firm, positively affect the valuation of the IPO.
  
  
• March 21, 2016
  Erin Powell | Clemson University
  
  

  In the beginning: Identities and organizing in multi-founder nascent ventures
  E. Erin Powell, Clemson University & Ted Baker, Rutgers Business School

  We conducted a longitudinal field study of nine nascent ventures – all attempting to revitalize local communities – in order to understand how and why identity processes shape organizing in multi-founder nascent ventures. Our primary discovery was that as multiple founders moved toward a working consensus, the interplay of their identities shaped both the structuring of the nascent ventures and also whether or not founders remained engaged in their joint organizing efforts. We develop grounded theory and a process model that moves founder identity theory beyond its prior focus on individuals’ social and role identities and towards the co-construction of collective identities. This paper contributes toward our understanding of the structuring of nascent ventures, the development of in-group consensus and the continuation or discontinuation of organizing efforts. The processes we describe provide a platform for research exploring a wide variety of contingencies that shape how multiple founders attempt to move from “who I want to be” to “who we are.”