(Press-News.org) Life-changing events like the birth of a child, the purchase of a new home, or a lottery win could threaten the survival of a new business venture, research from Edith Cowan University (ECU) has found.
A recent study led by ECU’s Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Pi-Shen Seet with Associate Professor Wee-Liang Tan from the Singapore Management University found that positive family events had a comparatively greater influence, albeit negatively, on the survival of a new venture, compared with negative events.
“A positive family event, like the birth of a child, often has an emotional spin-on effect for an entrepreneur and could lead to greater confidence. This ego boost could result in an entrepreneur being overconfident and making poor business decisions.
“On the other hand, entrepreneurs that are impacted by divorce or financial difficulty, or even a death in the family, tend to put more consideration into business ventures and may make more considered and better business decisions,” said Professor Seet.
While good fortune often translates into entrepreneurs becoming more passionate, alert to new opportunities and more creative, this was in no way an indicator of future business success.
“Just because overconfident entrepreneurs are better at exploiting opportunities does not mean they will succeed. The tendency to exaggerate personal qualities and capabilities and underestimate the competition and difficulty of tasks often leads entrepreneurs to make fatal errors in judgment and decision-making.
“In short, there is a negative association shown in research between entrepreneur overconfidence and new venture survival,” said Professor Seet.
When family events come about during the venture creation process, they potentially act on entrepreneurs’ overconfidence – spontaneously and automatically fine-tuning how opportunities versus risks are evaluated and decisions are made for the venture.
“Positive family events would induce a more global thinking style focusing on abstract, high-level features of the problem and picking the first acceptable alternative solution that comes to mind. This may prove useful for entrepreneurs to make necessary decisions quickly and efficiently under tight time and resource pressures.
“However, if the positive family events lead to overconfidence, which our research has shown, entrepreneurs may believe that their talents and skills alone were enough to compensate for any lack of information and overcome real difficulties in the venture creation process and this will reinforce such errors in judgment and inferior decision-making. The net result is an increased vulnerability for making mistakes that can cause serious harm to the new venture,” Professor Seet said.
The research also noted that a changing family dynamic could further impact a new venture.
“Entrepreneurs are not alone in the venture creation process – the entire family is drawn along on the journey – and they are all involved in the feelings, emotions, and stresses that go along with the ups and downs of an entrepreneurial business, and vice versa.
“Changes within the family, events such as birth, marriage and death interrupt the family system and encroach on the entrepreneur. They change the structure and alter roles played by family members; they modify their interactions.”
A copy of the research as it appeared in the International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, can be found here.
- ends -
Media contact: Esmarie Iannucci, 08 6304 3080 or 0405 774 465
e.iannucci@ecu.edu.au
Journalists can subscribe to get the latest research news delivered to your inbox.
END
Robert Wagner, associate laboratory director for the Energy Science and Technology Directorate at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been selected to receive the George Westinghouse Gold Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, or ASME. The award recognizes his work to advance state-of-the-art clean power generation systems through research on combustion, fuel technologies and controls.
Wagner will be presented the award in October during ASME’s ...
MIAMI, FLORIDA (MAY 23, 2024) – A new treatment approach using an older drug may enable more patients with high-risk blood cancers to receive transplanted stem cells from unrelated, partially matched donors, according to a study conducted by researchers at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and colleagues.
Results to be presented at the annual meetings of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and the European Hematology Association suggest the new approach may expand the donor pool, with patients from underrepresented racial and ethnic ...
MIAMI, FLORIDA (May 23, 2024) – Coral Olazagasti expected a relatively smooth transition when she moved to New York to start her residency after graduating from medical school in her native Puerto Rico. But that proved wishful thinking.
She not only experienced major culture shock, but also her superiors and colleagues often chastised her for speaking too loudly and joked about her accent.
“Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory so when I moved to New York, I thought it wasn’t going to be a big change,” said Olazagasti, ...
The 2024 annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) will take place in Chicago and online May 31-June 4.
Below are highlights of Fred Hutch Cancer Center research to be presented at the conference and experts available to comment on news. You can follow Fred Hutch on social media for additional updates and check out Fred Hutch booth #14018 in the exhibit hall.
For interview requests with Fred Hutch experts, please contact media@fredhutch.org.
Prostate cancer
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among men in the United States and, according to the National Cancer Institute, ...
Scientists have known for years that a lattice of blood vessels nourishes cells in the retina that allow us to see – but it’s been a mystery how the intricate structure is created.
Now, researchers at UC San Francisco have found a new type of neuron that guides its formation.
The discovery, described in the May 23, 2024, issue of Cell, could one day lead to new therapies for diseases that are related to impaired blood flow in the eyes and brain.
“This is the first time anyone has seen retinal neurons using direct contact with blood vessels as a way of guiding them to form these precise 3-D lattices,” said ...
The American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) Women in Plant Biology Committee recently named 25 Inspiring Women in Plant Biology to celebrate their achievements and inspire future generations of female plant biologists. This committee, dedicated to addressing particular concerns to women scientists and promoting the inclusion of female plant biologists throughout the Society and profession, created this list with input and nominations from the community.
“This initiative was inspired by two things: First, our desire to improve recognition of inspiring women scientists. We have had ...
Speaking at the World Health Assembly, authors of a new Lancet Series call for urgent global action on antimicrobial resistance (AMR), and ensuring sustainable access to antibiotics through:
Intensifying efforts to promote vaccination, access to safe water and sanitation, and hospital infection control, thereby reducing infections and the use of antibiotics, which protects their long-term effectiveness.
Expanding access to existing and new antibiotics, which could save many lives lost to bacterial infections.
Increasing investment in new antibiotics, vaccines and diagnostics that are designed to be affordable and ...
Inadequate access to simple elective surgery in developing countries is storing up future health problems for patients and may create a spiral of future health complications putting more people’s lives at risk, a new study reveals.
Analysing the experience of more than 18,000 patients in 640 hospitals across 83 countries, researchers, experts used hernia repair to represent elective health care, concluding that such treatments are essential to prevent over-reliance on emergency systems.
The study reveals ...
The newly released Cass Review on transgender care for young people has been pivotal in the UK, where the prescription of puberty “blocking” drugs outside of research protocols has now ceased.
But in the United States, where the treatment-intensive, “gender affirming” model of care is the norm, the impact of Cass’s four-year investigation and final report has been largely ignored, finds journalist Jennifer Block in The BMJ today.
The review concluded that the evidence on use of puberty blockers and hormones for children and teens experiencing gender ...
Artificial intelligence software has been developed to rapidly analyze animal behavior so that behaviors can be more precisely linked to the activity of individual brain circuits and neurons, researchers in Seattle report.
The program promises not only to speed research into the neurobiology of behavior, but also to enable comparison and reconcile results that disagree due to differences in how individual laboratories observe, analyze and classify behaviors, said Sam Golden, assistant professor of biological structure at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
“The approach allows labs to develop behavioral procedures however they want and makes it possible ...
