Veronika Ermilina, Matthew Farrell, Fatemeh Askarzadeh and Jing Zhang
For new ventures, access to entrepreneurship assistantship is the main source of growth and innovativeness. Accelerators, a growing provider of entrepreneurial resources, offer…
Abstract
Purpose
For new ventures, access to entrepreneurship assistantship is the main source of growth and innovativeness. Accelerators, a growing provider of entrepreneurial resources, offer such assistantship. This study aims to identify several factors that might account for a startup’s acceptance of accelerator programs. Particularly, this paper examines the impact of a lead founder’s country of birth, gender and education on accelerator acceptance.
Design/methodology/approach
This study tests the framework with logit regression for a sample of 10,298 observations for startups in 166 countries over 2016–2018.
Findings
This study finds that entrepreneurs from developing countries are less likely to be accepted by accelerators than entrepreneurs from developed economies. Counterintuitively, this study also finds an advantage for female entrepreneurs in accelerator acceptance. Further, the results suggest a positive impact on education. Building on signaling theory, this paper argues and shows that accelerators do not evaluate applicants uniformly.
Practical implications
Our comparative study enhances business owners’ insight for application to entrepreneurial resources and has meaningful implications for women’s entrepreneurship. For policy-making purposes, this study offers more insight on economic development for entrepreneurs’ access to global resources.
Originality/value
Despite the extant literature demonstrating the benefits of accelerators, determinants of acceptance to these programs, particularly at the individual level, are underexplored. This is the first study that shows the rarely acknowledged link between a lead founder’s country of birth, gender and education level on accelerator acceptance. Here, this study extends entrepreneurship literature and shows some sources of variation in access to international accelerator programs.
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Fatemeh Askarzadeh, Hamed Yousefi and Mahdi Forghani Bajestani
Focusing on the direction of foreign acquisition, this study aims to differentiate the effect of institutional distance on the level of ownership. The authors identify several…
Abstract
Purpose
Focusing on the direction of foreign acquisition, this study aims to differentiate the effect of institutional distance on the level of ownership. The authors identify several theoretical and methodological issues that might account for the inconsistencies in the literature and provide remedies accordingly. Specifically, the authors propose perceived institutional distance as a conceptualization of distance that controls for asymmetric uncertainty.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors test the framework with ordinary least squares regression for a sample of 14,192 firm-entries in 115 target countries over 2007–2017.
Findings
The authors find that institutional distance shows a negative effect on equity ownership in all-inclusive global samples, while there are two imbalanced opposite effects if direction is considered. This casts doubt on the validity of studies that ignore direction. The authors suggest that multinational enterprises entering countries with lower-quality institutions tend to perceive more pronounced distance effects than those expanding the other way around. Hence, the authors argue that “perceived institutional distance” better explains the functional role of distance than simple distance.
Practical implications
This study better delineates the link between distance and uncertainty and enhances managerial insights for entry mode selection. For policy-making purposes, the authors also show that improvement in institutional quality has a different effect on foreign resource commitment in developed and developing countries.
Originality/value
To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that considers both directionality and imbalance in institutional distance and proposes a measure to control for non-linear asymmetric relationship between distance and ownership. The authors extend the institutional theory and show the superiority of perceived institutional distance in predicting ownership implications.