Phillip H. Kim

A Life Course Perspective on Occupational Inheritance: Self-employed Parents and their Children

Using a life course perspective, we develop a theoretical model of how parents can influence their childrens propensity to enter self-employment. We draw on the sociological, economic, psychological, and behavioral genetics literatures to develop a model in which parental influence occurs in different ways, depending on someones stage in their life course. We review and summarize existing findings for parental influences on entrepreneurial entry using a three-part life course framework: childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. We also analyze new data from the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics on the extent to which children were involved in their parents’ businesses. From our review, we propose strong effects from genetic inheritances and parenting practice (during childhood); moderate effects from reinforcement of work values and vocational interests (during adolescence); and little influence from financial support but stronger effects from other tangible means of support (during adulthood).

Seeking Assurances When Taking Action: Legal Systems, Social Trust, and Starting Businesses in Emerging Economies:

This study examines how institutional conditions provide assurances founders seek when creating businesses. Classical theories predict legal institutions promote supportive conditions that foster business creation. We develop an alternative theory for why this relationship is not as straightforward in emerging economies. In these regions, people may be discouraged from taking entrepreneurial action because of the difficulties in accessing legal protections efficiently. We also introduce theory regarding the moderating role of generalized social trust because of its normative influences on business creation. We argue that generalized trust in strangers exerts positive moderating effects on the direct relationship between legal protections and entrepreneurship. The findings from our multilevel analysis of 30 emerging economies are consistent with our theory. Our work advances a new framework for how entrepreneurs cope with uncertain business conditions in emerging economies where informal, normative social structures offer more privately oriented safeguards than do formal, publicly oriented institutions. Our study also reconnects macro-institutional theories with individual-level accounts of entrepreneurship.

Can You Lend Me a Hand? Task-Role Alignment of Social Support for Aspiring Business Owners

Previous research has emphasized the positive impact of supportive informal relations on workers in various occupational settings. Such support seems particularly important for workers who aspire to be self-employed, running their own businesses. Existing theory, however, offers little guidance regarding the mechanisms through which these supportive relationships operate. We argue that social support and role expectation theories address this conundrum. Our framework highlights the differences between instrumental and informational support types, the requirements involved in delivering such support, and the benefits of aligning role expectations with the type of support requested. Analyzing a representative sample of people attempting to create their own businesses in the United States, we find evidence consistent with our predictions: social support’s effect on people’s persistence depends on alignment between the tasks performed and the roles of support providers. To the extent that the support is task-role aligned, aspiring business owners receive the greatest benefits from high-commitment service and labor assistance provided by family and low-commitment informational assistance from friends but also suffer the most when such support is misaligned. These findings cast doubt on the prevailing assumption in the broader social support literature: that having more support always leads to better outcomes.

Conditional Morality? Attitudes of Religious Individuals toward Racial Profiling

Racial profiling has been a contentious topic in recent years. However, little is known about the attitudes of Americans toward this practice. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, profiling on individuals of Arab and Muslim backgrounds has been on the rise. The author examined how religious Americans are responding to this form of racial discrimination. Using data from a national survey taken in October 2001, the author concludes that Protestants, Catholics, and Jewish individuals were more likely to support racial profiling compared to nonreligious individuals. The author proposes that these individuals are faced with competing moral demands and tactically support this law enforcement practice. In addition, race, knowing a Muslim personally, political ideology, age, and education have significant association with attitudes toward racial profiling.

Owner Contributions and Equity

Given that persons starting new ventures often share ownership with one or more persons (Ruef, Aldrich, & Carter, 2003), determining the distribution of ownership among team members and how members contribute various sources to their startups has become more complicated. Teams are recognized as having larger pools of potential resources, including time, money, ideas, and social connections. For teams to be effective, members must synthesize their shared assets enough to compensate for the extra time and effort that coordination, delegation, and consensus making can take (Aubert & Kelsey, 2003; Erez & Somech, 1996; Faraj & Sproull, 2000). Startup teams differ from top management teams, classroom teams, and work teams because they are typically self-selected, self-directed, and composed of individuals sharing close relationships (such as kinship ties). Prior to the PSED I and PSED II, researchers had little empirical information regarding how startup team members activated their pooled resources to pursue business formation. Now that the two studies are publicly available, information on equity and contributions can be used to address at least four important concerns regarding startup processes in teams: access to resources, helpfulness (willingness to contribute), equality, and role differentiation.

TMI Signaling Credible Claims in Crowdfunding Campaign Narratives

One of the enduring insights about early-stage creative efforts is that their prospects for success depend on their ability to overcome a variety of liabilities of newness. In our study, we address one aspect of such liabilities: the ability to communicate credible claims about the merits of an idea when raising the funds required for execution. The narratives employed during fundraising are both a vehicle for assembling details about nascent ideas and a structure for communicating them to a wider audience. With this communication, entrepreneurs signal information that potential backers use to evaluate the claims. We argue that using language to differentiate new creative projects from the status quo is beneficial because of signal clarity, but employing a language of accountability that discloses too much information (TMI) may actually backfire when raising funds in open settings. We test this argument by analyzing a sample of crowdfunding campaign texts and find evidence supportive of our predictions. These results advance the literature on entrepreneurial narratives and signaling, establish some baseline characteristics of donation- and reward-based crowdfunding sites, and reinvigorate the application of Stinchcombe’s arguments about the liabilities of newness within a contemporary context.One of the enduring insights about early-stage creative efforts is that their prospects for success depend on their ability to overcome a variety of liabilities of newness. In our study, we address one aspect of such liabilities: the ability to communicate credible claims about the merits of an idea when raising the funds required for execution. The narratives employed during fundraising are both a vehicle for assembling details about nascent ideas and a structure for communicating them to a wider audience. With this communication, entrepreneurs signal information that potential backers use to evaluate the claims. We argue that using language to differentiate new creative projects from the status quo is beneficial because of signal clarity, but employing a language of accountability that discloses too much information (TMI) may actually backfire when raising funds in open settings. We test this argument by analyzing a sample of crowdfunding campaign texts and find evidence supportive of our predictions. T...

Labor of Love: Amateurs and Lay-expertise Legitimation in the Early U.S. Radio Field

Many actors claim to be experts of specialized knowledge, but for this expertise to be perceived as legitimate, other actors in the field must recognize them as authorities. Using an automated topic-model analysis of historical texts associated with the U.S. amateur radio operator movement between 1899 and 1927, we propose a process model for lay-expertise legitimation as an alternative to professionalization. While the professionalization account depends on specialized work, credentialing, and restrictive jurisdictional control by powerful field actors, our model emphasizes four mechanisms leading to lay-expert recognition: building an advanced collective competence, operating in an unrestricted public space, providing transformational social contributions, and expanding an original collective role identity. Our analysis shows how field expertise can be achieved outside of professional spaces by non-professionalized actors who master activities as a labor of love. Our work also reveals that lay-expertise recognition depends on the interplay between collective identities and collective competence among non-professional actors, and it addresses the shifting power dynamics when professional and non-professional actors coexist and strive for expertise recognition.

Responding from that Vantage Point: Field Position and Discursive Strategies of Legitimation in the U.S. Wireless Telegraphy Field

Our study explores the discursive strategies of legitimation that organizations employ as they occupy different positions in an emergent institutional field. By examining both the frame-alignment strategies and the frame targets of two organizations in the U.S. wireless telegraphy field, we show how an organization’s position – and its positional changes over time – affects the discursive strategies it uses to promote or protect its goals in the face of pressure from other field actors. Our results indicate that three distinct field positions – peripheral, central, and niche – are associated with three different legitimation strategies – which we label “robust,” “co-optive,” and “focused” – around which the discursive strategies coalesced. Organizations at the periphery attempt to break in to a field by employing a diverse range of frame-alignment strategies targeted toward a variety of relevant field actors. Those in a central position target fewer actors, but pursue a similar variety of frame-alignment strategies. Those in a niche position use fewer alignment strategies and target a smaller number of field-level actors. Our study enriches the literature on discursive strategies of legitimation by focusing on the ways in which central and non-central actors employ them, and the ways in which these strategies evolve alongside the field itself. More broadly, our work contributes to our understanding of discursive skills required to confront complex institutional pressures. These efforts depend on the interactive nature of discursive strategies from the vantage point of different field positions.

Backed by the State: Social Protection and Starting Businesses in Knowledge-Intensive Industries

Our research investigates how state-sponsored social protection is associated with undertaking the initial steps to start businesses in knowledge-intensive sectors. We define social protection as policies to protect individuals against economic risk. Although research generally shows a negative link between coordinated market economies and business creation, we highlight conditions when social protection may actually have positive consequences on entrepreneurial action. Specifically, these policies can encourage individuals to develop specific skills, which can be used by those who start businesses to pursue opportunities in knowledge-intensive sectors. Findings from a cross-national sample of individuals starting businesses in 16 advanced industrialized countries are consistent with this claim. We also find that educational attainment moderates this positive direct relationship. Our study is one of the first that provides new explanations for how welfare states can actually promote certain types of entrepreneurial action in highly coordinated economies by orienting their economic activity toward a system of highly skilled and productive labor.

Small worlds, infinite possibilities? How social networks affect entrepreneurial team formation and search

The social network perspective has become an important analytical lens for understanding strategic actions among entrepreneurs. Social theorists offer two competing visions of networks’ confi gurations: one of infi nite opportunities for individuals to develop heterogeneous circles of affi liations and the other of constrained opportunities privileging only certain individuals. We draw on this tension to describe three models of network formation – random, small world, and truncated scale free – and apply them to entrepreneurial team formation and resource mobilization strategies undertaken by entrepreneurs. We compare and contrast two models of team formation – a rational process model and an interpersonal relations model – and identify the network contexts under which each is most applicable. Mundane entrepreneurial teams arise within localized clusters and appear unlikely to take advantage of what network theorists have called small world networks, which depend upon bridging ties between clusters. Nonetheless, there are entrepreneurial strategies through which new ventures might achieve the advantages of small world networks. To the extent that new ventures emerge in truncated scale free networks, their founders must work within a highly centralized structure, with its institutionalized standards making team formation and entrepreneurial search more instrumental than within small worlds. Copyright