The impact of entrepreneurs’ cultural capital on early performance of new ventures: a comparison between Austria and Slovenia

International Journal of Business and Globalisation

Volumn 3, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 22-46

  Schwarz, Erich J ^a   Wdowiak, Malgorzata A ^a   Breitenecker, Robert J ^a   Kuntarič, Ana ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF KLAGENFURT   (Austria)

Author keywords

Austria; cultural capital; early performance; individualistic values; new venture performance; Slovenia; transition economy

Indexed keywords

EID: 84857306788     PISSN: 17533627     EISSN: 17533635     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1504/IJBG.2009.021630     Document Type: Article

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70. A new venture is considered as a mature enterprise mostly not earlier than five years after its creation (Chrisman et al., 1999, p.6). In the paper, ‘venture’, ‘business’, ‘firm’, and ‘enterprise’ relate to the early phase of an organisation’s existence and are used as synonyms.
71. Various studies provide no information about the point of time at which the influencing factors were measured. Therefore, we cannot always identify whether the founding conditions have been examined close to the start-up moment or at a later stage, i.e., retrospectively. Studies applying a retrospective method of analysis suffer from information bias.
72. Bourdieu (1986) distinguishes also an objectified cultural capital that refers to material objects an individual possesses such as CD player, computer, paintings, or books. Because we primarily focus on capital dimensions embodied in the individual itself, we exclude objectified capital from our analysis.
73. Becker (1993), for example, views primarily education and on-the-job training as crucial components of human capital with consequences for earnings and economic productivity.
74. As Lindeman and Verkasalo state: “Values (…) are inherently linked with personality, motivation, and behavior, but they have a unique contribution for understanding any psychological phenomenon that somehow ties in with evaluation, justification, or selection of actions.” (Lindeman and Verkasalo, 2005, p.178)
75. As mentioned, entrepreneurs in transition economies may still hold collectivistic values to a higher degree than founders in mature economies as result of the cultural legacy of the previous socio-economic system. Thus, it could also be relevant to investigate the impact of collectivism on entrepreneurial outcomes in a transition context. However, this issue is not the subject of the current analysis.
76. Due to the fact that Austrian regions are rather homogenous, we can assume that the results for Carinthia are also applicable to other provinces in Austria.