The Performance of Pre‐Founding Entrepreneurial Teams: The Importance of Learning and Leadership

Entrepreneurial teams often struggle with simultaneous task and team challenges at an early stage of new venture creation. The way in which teams shape their teamwork is key in leveraging performance in the pre‐founding phase. Learning should help the team in establishing good teamwork and in expand...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applied psychology 2018-07, Vol.67 (3), p.401-427
Main Authors: Knipfer, Kristin, Schreiner, Emanuel, Schmid, Ellen, Peus, Claudia
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Charisma
Entrepreneurs
Founding
Leadership
Learning
Reflexivity
Self directed work teams
Teams
Teamwork
Ventures
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Summary:Entrepreneurial teams often struggle with simultaneous task and team challenges at an early stage of new venture creation. The way in which teams shape their teamwork is key in leveraging performance in the pre‐founding phase. Learning should help the team in establishing good teamwork and in expanding its members’ entrepreneurial capabilities. Leadership is needed to facilitate and guide this learning. Accordingly, we investigated learning and leadership as facilitators of performance in the pre‐founding phase. Specifically, we examined team reflexivity as a collective internal learning process and boundary spanning behaviour as an externally directed individual activity, operating at different levels in fostering team and individual performance. Charismatic team leadership was examined as a catalyst of learning, shaping team and individual performance ultimately. The multilevel mediation model was tested based on data from 196 members of 58 teams of a venture creation programme. Team reflexivity predicted team and individual performance. Boundary spanning behaviour was not related to performance. As hypothesised, charismatic team leadership predicted team and individual performance, both mediated by team reflexivity. This research highlights the relevance of team learning in pre‐founding teams and emphasises leadership in shaping learning and moving new ventures forward.
ISSN:0269-994X
1464-0597
DOI:10.1111/apps.12126