Search

Entrepreneurial exit – which encompass options such as family succession, employee buyout, independent sale, acquisition, initial public offering (IPO), and liquidation – is a critical event that occurs at the very end of the entrepreneurial process. Capitalising on a growing convergence of the two research fields of entrepreneurship and family business, this paper synthetises and extends the current literature on the antecedents to exit routes. It proposes a conceptual multidimensional model based on the holistic investigation of the exit phenomenon via the lenses of institutional theory.

Based on our conceptual model, that incorporates social groups’ attention and opinion to a critical event, we provide an alternative explanation for firm heterogeneity in response technological discontinuities. We rely on the “spiral of silence” theory, part of the mass communication literature, to explain how public opinion can trigger incumbent response. Given that attention is a necessary prerequisite of opinion, we study the concept of audience engagement – a social group’s attention and opinion. We propose that the impact of an audience’s opinion is conditioned on its attention to the critical event. We differentiate between three audiences; where the public and the field represent external and the peers the internal audiences. We add to the extant literature on firm response to discontinuous change by focusing on outsider-driven adoption triggers, rather than firm- internal processes.

The entrepreneurial pitch to potential investors is a critical event in the entrepreneurial process. We examine entrepreneurs’ signals of their own knowledge and experience as important cues that i...

This study explores how professionals experience promotions as a critical event in their careers. Particularly, through an analysis of qualitative interviews and participant drawings, it investigat...

An Initial Public Offering (IPO) is a critical event in a firm’s life cycle and can reshape its innovation strategy. Recent empirical studies suggest that after going public firms experience an inc...

A critical event in the life of a firm is when it undergoes an initial public offering (IPO). Drawing on the Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) literature, which evidences a psychological condition that produces heightened pessimism and risk aversion during the fall and winter months, this study focuses on understanding the potential implications of SAD for entrepreneurial firms. Our results confirm the influence of SAD on IPO underpricing and demonstrate that younger firms and those of larger size and/or that operate in high-tech industries experience even higher underpricing, particularly during periods most heavily associated with SAD. Implications are discussed.