Does Investor Gender Matter for the Success of Female Entrepreneurs? Gender Homophily and the Stigma of Incompetence in Entrepreneurial Finance

Female support of other women has been put forth as a remedy to the gender gap across many domains. Yet the potential costs associated with gender homophily are not well understood. We propose that homophily aggravates negative gender bias in evaluation. Focusing on the context of entrepreneurship, we theorize that future investors will discount a female entrepreneur’s competence as the key factor in an early-stage investment decision, when the investment comes from a female investor. Consequently, female-backed female entrepreneurs may struggle to raise additional funds from new investors. In a field study of venture-backed startups, we find that firms with female founders who received funding from female rather than male VCs are two times less likely to raise additional financing. We find no equivalent investor gender effect for male-founded firms. In an experimental study, we find that pitches by female-backed female entrepreneurs receive lower evaluations compared with all other pitches, and that this is driven by perceptions of entrepreneur competence. Our findings suggest that well-intentioned calls for women to invest in women not only place an undue burden on female investors, but may also undermine the long-term success of female entrepreneurs.

The Mechanisms and Components of Knowledge Transfer: The Virtual Special Issue on Knowledge Transfer Within Organizations

Knowledge transfer within organizations has important implications for organizational performance and competitive advantage. In this virtual special issue, we review articles on this topic published in Organization Science between 2014 and 2020 and identify 53 articles for their theoretical and empirical contributions. These articles examine knowledge transfer through five transfer mechanisms: social networks, routines, personnel mobility, organizational design, and search. We consider the intersection of each transfer mechanism with important components of knowledge transfer (characteristics of sources/recipients, characteristics of knowledge, and characteristics of contexts). We present 15 exemplar articles, each of which reflects the intersection of a mechanism and a component of knowledge transfer. We also present an overview of the methodological approaches and empirical contexts that are utilized. We conclude our article with a discussion of future research opportunities. The articles published in Organization Science have advanced understanding of both the mechanisms through which knowledge transfer occurs and the conditions under which it is most likely.

The Role of Opinion Leaders in the Sustainable Development of Corporate-Led Consumer Advice Networks: Evidence from a Chinese Travel Content Community

Online community marketing and social media influencer marketing have aroused the interest of many researchers and practitioners around the world. Companies building online content communities to implement community marketing and influencer marketing has become a new corporate strategy, especially in the tourism and hotel industries in which experiential products are sold. However, based on the content community, maintaining the sustainable development of a consumer advice network composed of opinion leaders and consumers is a major challenge. This paper selects the travel content community of Qunar.com as the research object to study the role of opinion leaders in the sustainable development of corporate-led consumer advice networks (CANs). Empirical evidence based on network evolution data from 1356 “Hotel Sleep Testers” across 11 years shows that: (1) the creation and provision of information can obviously increase the probability of the relationship construction and increase the number of relationships, thus facilitating the formation of opinion leadership (OL); (2) active participation in interactions and withhigh-quality information brings greater effects; (3) the network structure variables, such as preferential attachment, structural equivalence, and similarity, can also better predict the probability of a potential relationship; and (4) reciprocity in consumer advice networks has no significant impact on the establishment of network relationships.

Cooperation Beyond the Network

It is well known in economics, law, and sociology that reputation costs in a closed network give insiders a feeling of being protected from bad behavior in their relations with one another. A person accustomed to doing business within a closed network is, therefore, likely to feel at unusual risk when asked to cooperate beyond the network because of absent reputation-cost security. It follows that business leaders in more closed networks should be less likely to cooperate beyond their network (Hypothesis 1 ). Success reinforces the status quo. Business leaders successful with a closed network associate their success with the safety of their network, so they should be even less likely to cooperate with a stranger (Hypothesis 2 ). We combine network data from a heterogeneous area probability survey of Chinese CEOs with a behavioral measure of cooperation to show strong empirical support for the two hypotheses. CEOs in more closed networks are less likely to cooperate beyond their network, especially those running successful businesses: successful CEOs in closed networks are particularly likely to defect against people beyond their network. The work contributes to a growing literature linking network structure with behavior: here, the closure that facilitates trust and cooperation within a network simultaneously erodes the probability of cooperation beyond the network, thereby reinforcing a social boundary around the network. Taking our results as a baseline, we close sketching new research on personality, homophily, network dynamics, and variation in the meaning of “beyond the network.”

Hospital reorganization and its effects on physicians' network churn: The role of past ties

Hospital reorganizations are difficult and often fail to produce their intended benefits. Prior research has investigated how and under which contingencies changes in organizational structure affect the modification of clinician behaviors, yet we know little about how organizational redesign interventions affect physicians' collaborative networks. This paper explores how hospital reorganizations affect physicians' network churn. We developed hypotheses on the relationship between structural characteristics of networks before reorganization and the formation of cross-unit network ties after reorganization. We tested our hypotheses on a sample of 175 physicians in a large teaching hospital. The hospital had recently adopted a new organizational model aimed at enhancing a process-based approach to care delivery. Our findings revealed that the physicians' propensity to form cross-unit ties after the change was related to the structure of their collaborative networks before the change. In particular, the formation of cross-unit relations was negatively related to the size of advice networks before the reorganization. Furthermore, we found that the diversity of network ties along with the presence of structural holes in the physicians' networks before the change moderated this relationship. We discussed the theoretical and practical implications of our findings. In particular, our results may inform organizational redesign interventions within hospitals.

Trait emotional intelligence and job performance evaluations: evidence from self, manager, team and peer ratings

Purpose

The study aims to look at whether trait emotional intelligence (EI) was related to the job performance level of a manager, their immediate team and their peers.

Design/methodology/approach

This study looked at the relationship between trait EI and performance appraisals, as evaluated by the person themselves, their peers, manager and team. Trait EI facets of 903 employees were compared to evaluated performance appraisals of the different groups four months later.

Findings

All 15 of the correlations (20 < r < 0.42) between the emotional intelligence facets and self-ratings were significantly positive whilst for managers 10, peers 6 and team only 4 were significant, though all were positive. In line with affective primacy theory, structural equation modelling revealed performance was rated higher by non-manager colleagues when employees exhibited traits associated with positive interpersonal interactions.

Originality/value

There are very few studies using multi-source ratings to explore the consequences of EI on a manager’s team and peers.

Ideological Boundaries of Status Advantages: Legislative Effectiveness in the United States House of Representatives

Prior research assumes that high-status actors have greater organizational influence than lower-status ones, that is, it is easier for the former to get their ideas and initiatives adopted by the organization than it is for the latter. Drawing from the literature on ideology, we posit that the status–influence link is contingent on actors’ ideological position. Specifically, status confers organizational influence to the degree that the focal actor is ideologically mainstream. The more an actor’s ideology deviates from the mainstream the less will her status translate into increased organizational influence. We find support for this hypothesis using data on the work of legislators in the House of Representatives in the United States Congress. By illuminating how and under what conditions status leads to increased influence, this study qualifies and extends current understandings of the role of status in organizations.

The Integration of People and Networks

Social networks involve ties (and their absence) between people in social settings such as organizations. Yet much social network research, given its roots in sociology, ignores the individuality of people in emphasizing the constraints of the structural positions that people occupy. A recent movement to bring people back into social network research draws on the rich history of social psychological research to show that ( a) personality (i.e., self-monitoring) is key to understanding individuals’ occupation of social network positions, ( b) individuals’ perceptions of social networks relate to important outcomes, and ( c) relational energy is transmitted through social network connections. Research at different levels of analysis includes the network around the individual (the ego network), dyadic ties, triadic structures, and whole networks of interacting individuals. We call for future research concerning personality and structure, social network change, perceptions of networks, and cross-cultural differences in how social network connections are understood.

A Relational View of Psychological Empowerment and Sense of Community in Academic Contexts: A Preliminary Study

Scholars need to pay attention to understand the factors that shape the interactions between individuals and social groups. Constructs like Psychological Sense of Community (PSoC) and Psychological Empowerment (PE) are powerful constructs used to evaluate the antecedents and the consequences of individual attachment to social settings. In parallel, recent advances in network analysis show that the position occupied within whole networks and ego-centric networks are relational factors that affect the subjective perception of membership to social groups. Studies that are conducted in organizational and community settings show strong associations between PSoC and PE. However, these connections have rarely been evaluated within natural settings such as the classroom context. On the other hand, although the theoretic basis of PSoC and PE claims that both processes are formed in a relational way, there are few studies that empirically evaluate the effects of social connectedness on the emergence of PSoC-referred to the classroom-and PE referred to academic-task development. The aim of this research is to determine the effects that the position occupied in formal and informal exchange networks induce on PSoC and PE dimensions. Sixty-four students enrolled in a master degree program (women = 68.8%, Mean age = 26.09, SD = 3.88) participated in this cross-sectional study. Multivariate analyses and network analyses were performed to test the hypotheses under study. The main research finding is that PSoC and PE are synergistic constructs that mutually shape to each other. In relational terms, by sending several nominations in informal networks, it is possible to generate notable impacts on some PSoC dimensions, while receipt of a wide number of nominations in formal contact networks is associated with high levels of PE. In addition, individuals who present high levels of PE are located in the core of formal exchange networks. These results are discussed in order to design actions to increase PSoC and PE in postgraduate academic settings.