Gabriella Cacciotti

Is there an entrepreneurial culture? A review of empirical research

The literature on the association between cultural values and entrepreneurial beliefs, motives and behaviours has grown significantly over the last decade. Through its influence on beliefs, motives and behaviours, culture can magnify or mitigate the impact of institutional and economic conditions upon entrepreneurial activity. Understanding the impact of national culture, alone and in interaction with other contextual factors, is important for refining our knowledge of how entrepreneurs think and act. We present a review of the literature with the goal of distilling the major findings, points of consensus and points of disagreement, as well as identify major gaps. Research has advanced significantly with respect to examining complex interactions among cultural, economic and institutional factors. As a result, a more complex and nuanced view of cultures consequences is slowly emerging. However, work that connects culture to individual motives, beliefs and values has not built significantly upon earlier work on entrepreneurial cognition. Evidence for the mediating processes linking culture and behaviour remains sparse and inconsistent, often dogged by methodological challenges. Our review suggests that we can be less confident, rather than more, in the existence of a single entrepreneurial culture. We conclude with suggestions for future research.

Commentary: Blockholder Structures and Power Mechanisms in Family Firms:

We extend the work of Fattoum-Guedri, Guedri, and Delmar (2018) by suggesting that the number of family blockholders moderates the relationship between the distribution of voting power between family and nonfamily blockholders and firm performance. Building on power and negotiation theories, we argue that the participation of multiple generations of family members in the firm’s ownership leads to greater diversity of perspectives that generates potential conflict over the distribution of resources. We highlight four power mechanisms—potential power, perceived power, power games, and realized power—to explain why family blockholders’ conflicting and/or misaligned preferences, objectives, and visions for the family firm might influence the nature of the negotiation between the family and the nonfamily blockholder and impact family firm performance. We offer directions for future research.