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We argue that voice – the sound that people produce when they speak – is an important resource for entrepreneurs, especially when they are pitching to potential investors. We integrate evidence from entrepreneurship, social psychology and linguistics to show that the voice can be regarded both as a tool for entrepreneurs to utilize and as a vital source of information allowing listeners to make judgements about the speaker and their message. To better understand how the voice may be used and interpreted in investment pitches, we develop a model of the relationship between the entrepreneurial voice and investor judgments. Voice depends on entrepreneurs’ characteristics including gender and communication goals but can be utilized to express emotions (purposefully or not) and signal qualities such as competence and trustworthiness. How potential investors interpret these displays depends on cultural expectations and stereotypes. Our review illustrates that female entrepreneurs may find it more difficult to persuade investors due to their naturally higher voice pitch and bias against speech patterns prevalent among young women. We highlight directions for future research exploring the voice as a unique cultural resource for entrepreneurs.

For organizational neuroscience to progress, it requires an overarching theoretical framework that locates neural processes appropriately within the wider context of organizational cognitive activities. In this chapter, we argue the case for building such a framework on two foundations: (1) critical realism, and (2) socially situated cognition. Critical realism holds to the importance of identifying biophysical roots for organizational activity (including neurophysiological processes) while acknowledging the top-down influence of higher-level, emergent organizational phenomena such as routines and structures, thereby avoiding the trap of reductionism. Socially situated cognition connects the brain, body, and mind to social, cultural, and environmental forces, as significant components of complex organizational systems. By focusing on adaptive action as the primary explanandum, socially situated cognition posits that, although the brain plays a driving role in adaptive organizational activity, this activity also relies on the body, situational context, and cognitive processes that are distributed across organizational agents and artifacts. The value of the framework that we sketch out is twofold. First, it promises to help organizational neuroscience become more than an arena for validating basic neuroscience concepts, enabling organizational researchers to backfill into social neuroscience, by identifying unique relations between the brain and social organization. Second, it promises to build deeper connections between neuroscience and mainstream theories of organizational behavior, by advancing models of managerial and organizational cognition that are biologically informed and socially situated.

In response to recent calls to better understand the brain’s role in organizational behavior, we propose a series of theoretical tests to examine the question “can brains manage?” Our tests ask whether brains can manage without bodies and without extracranial resources, whether they can manage in social isolation, and whether brains are the ultimate controllers of emotional and cognitive aspects of organizational behavior. Our analysis shows that, to accomplish work-related tasks in organizations, the brain relies on and closely interfaces with the body, interpersonal and social dynamics, and cognitive and emotional processes that are distributed across persons and artifacts. The results of this “thought experiment” suggest that the brain is more appropriately conceived as a regulatory organ that integrates top-down (i.e., social, artifactual and environmental) and bottom-up (i.e., neural) influences on organizational behavior, rather than the sole cause of that behavior. Drawing on a socially situated perspective, our analysis develops a framework that connects brain, body and mind to social, cultural, and environmental forces, as significant components of complex emotional and cognitive organizational systems. We discuss the implications for the emerging field of organizational cognitive neuroscience and for conceptualizing the interaction between the brain, cognition and emotion in organizations.

Educators are increasingly required to develop creativity and entrepreneurial capabilities amongst students, yet within the fields of entrepreneurship and innovation these are presented as separate processes. We explore the theoretical and conceptual similarities and differences between these processes, and relate this to a range of experiential and digitally enhanced learning activities in formal education settings.

We present a conceptual model of the iterative nature of creativity and entrepreneurship as separate cognitive and social processes leading to aesthetic or sense-making outcomes. This leads to a discussion of how these processes may be experienced by students within an educational setting.

We propose a framework of learning activities which support the development of creativity through teaching entrepreneurially, at primary, secondary, and tertiary education levels. A range of different approaches is critically evaluated according to their relevance, including business planning, simulations, roleplay, co-creation, and flashmobs. Flashmobs are proposed to be most suitable and an outline learning activity design is mapped in detail against creative and entrepreneurial processes.

This chapter supports educational practice and research on learning through entrepreneurship in allowing educators and researchers to evaluate how learning activities may directly contribute to students’ learning through experience and the development of their creative and entrepreneurial mind-set.

This chapter is of value to educators as it explains how creative and entrepreneurial processes may be experienced by students through different forms of learning activity. It is of further value to research on entrepreneurial learning in considering how the creative process may inform entrepreneurial action.

This chapter sets forth how and why diary data analysis can help significantly advance inquiry into the intersubjective aspects of entrepreneurial opportunities. We start the chapter with a presentation of the sensemaking perspective for the study of intersubjectivity in entrepreneurship. Next, we address epistemological limitations of retrospective data collection methods and examine the relevance of real-time, prospective data, specifically diary data, for the study of intersubjective phenomena associated with entrepreneurial activity. Furthermore, we describe our experiences with application of this method to the study of entrepreneurial cognitive development in the context of longitudinal, diary data-based research on this topic. We also address limitations of the diary data collection method and propose future research avenues for studies on intersubjective dimensions of entrepreneurial agency, before concluding this chapter.

This study aims to investigate the merits of the unified model of task-specific motivation (UMTM) in predicting transfer of training and to investigate (relationships between) changes in UMTM components over time. In doing so, this study takes the multidimensionality of transfer motivation into account.

The authors collected data among 514 employees of the judiciary who filled in the UMTM questionnaire directly after the training and after three weeks. The data were analyzed by means of structural equation modelling.

The outcomes show that transfer motivation predicts transfer intention and transfer of training over time. Moreover, the study shows that (change in) transfer motivation is predicted by (change in) personal and contextual factors identified by the UMTM as antecedents of motivation.

This study describes the first longitudinal evaluation of the UMTM in the literature and shows its applicability for predicting transfer of training. It is also one of the few studies that investigate transfer motivation multidimensionally and the role it plays for transfer of training. As such, this study informs other transfer of training models about the nature of transfer motivation and how transfer of training could be predicted.

Transfer motivation has been identified as a pivotal factor influencing transfer of training. However, the role of training content has often been overlooked as explanatory variable for the rate of transfer motivation. This study aims to examine to what extent experiences in transfer motivation and its personal and contextual antecedents depend on whether the training content is soft or hard skill. To this end, this study used the perspective of the unified model of task-specific motivation.

A total of 1,122 trainees (462 soft skill and 660 hard skill) filled out a questionnaire representing the components of transfer motivation and its personal- and contextual antecedents. Data were analyzed by means of multi group structural equation modeling.

The results showed mean differences between soft- and hard-skill trainings in personal- and contextual antecedents of transfer motivation and for different types of transfer motivation. However, no differences in transfer intention were found.

The outcomes provide insight as to what practitioners and trainers could do in training design and work environments to raise personal and contextual antecedents and to what extent a differentiation should be made between soft- and hard-skill trainings. This can eventually help them in raising transfer motivation among trainees.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first that examines whether experiences in personal and contextual antecedents of transfer motivation, transfer motivation and transfer intention differ for trainings consisting of different characteristics.

Scholars increasingly depict hybridity as pervasive across organizations. The authors offer insight about how paradox theory informs and expands this approach to hybridity. To do so, the authors do a deeper dive into paradox theory, comparing and contrasting a dynamic equilibrium approach with a permanent dialectics approach. Integrating these two approaches offers paradox theory insights that can enrich and expand hybridity scholarship. The authors offer suggestions for how paradox theory can help develop a future research agenda for organizational hybridity.

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in management research is still nascent and has primarily focused on content analyses of text data. Some method scholars have begun to discuss the potential benefits of far broader applications; however, these discussions have not led yet to a wave of corresponding AI applications by management researchers. This chapter explores the feasibility and the potential value of using AI for a very specific methodological task: the reliable and efficient capturing of higher-level psychological constructs in management research. It introduces the capturing of basic emotions and emotional authenticity of entrepreneurs based on their macro- and microfacial expressions during pitch presentations as an illustrative example of related AI opportunities and challenges. Thus, this chapter provides both motivation and guidance to management scholars for future applications of AI to advance management research.

This paper aims to identify the factors that influence the evaluation of an idea beyond its intrinsic values, especially those that relate to the presentation of the idea. With reference to a review of research conducted in the fields of psycho-sociology and psychology and using a qualitative comparative approach, the analysis of 57 pitches of entrepreneurial ideas during two start-up weekends shows that ideas receive the highest evaluation when they are judged to be the best in terms of novelty, feasibility, and relevance. However, our results also show that mastery by ideators of the basics of pitch presentation – especially clear enunciation – is also a necessary condition for acceptance of the idea by the audience. The paper seeks to contribute to the literature by identifying the most favorable configurations for a positive evaluation of an entrepreneurial idea in this type of innovation contest.