| Faultline and entrepreneurial passion in start-up teams |
Received:October 10, 2017 Revised:October 10, 2017 |
Key Words: start-up team faultline; team entrepreneurial passion mean and diversity; multiple stage competition performance; empirical study |
| Author Name | Affiliation | | Qin Su* | The Chinese University of Hong Kong | | Lingli Luo | UNSW Business School | | Dora C. Lau | The Chinese University of Hong Kong |
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Abstract: |
| Team members’ demographic attributes have long been considered to be critical inputs of start-up team process and outcome. In this study, we adopted the team faultline perspective (Lau and Murnighan, 1998; 2005) to examine the compositional effects of team members’ multiple attributes. At the same time, we were eager to search for possible remedies for start-up teams with strong faultlines, and we considered that a passion for entrepreneurship seems to have a high potential because of its affective intensity and capacity in building a unifying group identity. We examined the moderating roles of both mean and diversity (focus variety and intensity separation) of team members’ entrepreneurial passion. Results from 48 start-up teams competing through multiple stages in a start-up team competition showed support for our hypotheses. Start-up team faultline strength was negatively related to team performance, and group mean of TEP mitigated the negative effect of team faultlines on start-up team performance. When members varied in passion foci, the same negative effect would be exaggerated. |
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