Beyond cultural values? Cultural leadership ideals and entrepreneurship

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2016.07.003Get rights and content
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Highlights

  • We introduce culturally shared leadership ideals to comparative entrepreneurship.

  • We conduct a multi-level study on over 500,000 individuals residing in 42 countries.

  • Cultures endorsing charismatic and self-protective leadership ideals have higher rates of entrepreneurship.

  • Cultural leadership ideals influence entrepreneurship more proximally than cultural values.

  • Cultural leadership ideals mediate the effect of cultural values on individual entrepreneurship but not of cultural practices.

Abstract

This paper offers a fresh perspective on national culture and entrepreneurship research. It explores the role of Culturally-endorsed implicit Leadership Theories (CLTs) – i.e., the cultural expectations about outstanding, ideal leadership – on individual entrepreneurship. Developing arguments based on culture-entrepreneurship fit, we predict that charismatic and self-protective CLTs positively affect entrepreneurship. They provide a context that enables entrepreneurs to be co-operative in order to initiate change but also to be self-protective and competitive so as to safeguard their venture and avoid being exploited. We further theorize that CLTs are more proximal drivers of cross-country differences in entrepreneurship as compared with distal cultural values. We find support for our propositions in a multi-level study of 42 countries. Cultural values (of uncertainty avoidance and collectivism) influence entrepreneurship mainly indirectly, via charismatic and self-protective CLTs. We do not find a similar indirect effect for cultural practices.

JEL classification

L26 – Entrepreneurship
M13 - New Firms
Startups

Keywords

Comparative entrepreneurship
National culture
Leadership
Cultural values
Cultural practices
Multi-level modelling
GLOBE

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