THE ROLE OF FOUNDER IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Darwinians, Communitarians, and Missionaries: The Role of Founder Identity in Entrepreneurship

Darwinians, Communitarians, and Missionaries: The Role of Founder Identity in

Entrepreneurship

Introduction

This case study is about different individuals with different types of personalities, this not only affects their decision making in daily lives, and moreover it also affects the decision making involved in the creation of new firm. It is inspired by other studies that suggest that entrepreneurial activities represent a significant meaning because they are found to be a reflection of self-concept and person's identity.

Even though the previous study concentrated on founder's identity in a firm however it revolved around the role identity theory concentrating on self-concept and ignoring the basic social motivation that can also shape an individual's action and that is what this study was carried out to prove.

Research questions

The study concentrated on two major questions, from which further questions were developed for the interview. These research questions in the study by Fauchart, E., Gruber, M. (2011) were as follows.

“What are the primary types of founder identities from a social identity perspective?”

“To what extent does a founder's social identity influence key dimensions of new firm creation?”

“Founders' experiences in founding their firms, including how they came up on their initial product offerings and how they engaged in a variety of firm-organizing activities.”

“The founders' experiences in running the firms, including specific decisions made in the areas of hiring initial employees, manufacturing, sales and marketing, intellectual property, and sourcing raw materials.”

“The founders' relationships with a variety of stakeholders”

“The founders' views of competing firms”

“The founders' backgrounds”

Theoretical framework

Previous studies have concentrated on cognitive ability and ignored the possibility of social setting to interfere in the person's ability of decision making. This study revolves around The Social Identity Theory: Linking a Person's Identity with Human Behaviour and Actions. This theory is the main focus in this study, as it allows to understand the individual person in a social setting and questions such as “Who am I?” and “What is my role in the society?” which is deeply woven into philosophical discourse ever since Plato, Aristotle, and other Philosophers helped explore the meaning of “self” (Gioia, 1998). By concentrating on social identity theory, the researchers have been able to identify evidence to support its research questions.

Methodology and Research Design

The research design for this study was exploratory, qualitative method. The methodologies that were used for collecting the data were interviews from the founders of firms, they were identified using the three complementary strategies such as introduction from the Academy of Sports Science and Technology, Identification through conferences, sports-related magazines, and websites and snowballing. In other words the data was collected from several sources.

Once the data was collected then the identity related information of the founders was converted to a common file, which would be easily understandable. These identity meaning were categorised according to three main dimensions such as basic social motivation, basis of self-evaluation and frame of reference.

Results

The primary speculations for creating a new firm was related to monetary gains, ...