This paper addresses the notion of goal alignment in venture-backed firms. Aligning the goals of entrepreneurs to VCs" goals, and vice versa, may be the first step towards building strong mutual relationships between the two. Yet, little is know about the long-term outcomes of the aspects of these relationships as the literature todate has considered to a great extent the relationship between VC and entrepreneur as a "black box". This paper makes an attempt to half-open this "black box" by exploring the dyadic tensions between VCs and entrepreneurs in the course of de-internationalisation that is perceived as a negative deviation from what is normal or expected. The data emerged from a case study research that used critical incident technique to data collection, analysis, and interpretation. Grounded in data, the paper proposes the typology of goal alignment that was generated by crosstabulating entrepreneurs" and VCs" agendas. Four types of alignment emerged: life changing opportunity, enslavement, no marriage, and illusive alignment. The concept of goal alignment is unidirectional; it is geared towards the VCs" agenda of a quick exit.

International new venture, Legitimacy, Hype, Survivability, Critical incident technique, Theory building,

No abstract

In this paper, we advance a three-stage theory-building framework to assist scholars in addressing theoretical and coverage biases by means of the appropriate design of cross-domain theory-building research. In our discussion, we use an example from research in international entrepreneurship, which has been emerging as a cross-domain area for the entrepreneurship and international business research communities since the mid-1990s. Theoretical bias can stem from the situation where the conceptualisation of a phenomenon whose research is currently emerging and depends upon several of the established disciplines of social science and their sub-domains, is in fact dominated by the theoretical approaches of a single domain. As to the coverage bias, the somewhat novel research domain of international entrepreneurship provides us with a means to illustrate how research in an emerging domain tends to focus on positive growth only and rarely takes appropriately into account companies that fare less well; for instance, accounting for survivor bias would require that scholars carefully acknowledge firms that go out of business for one reason or another. Observations from a longitudinal, multiple-case study research on the de-internationalisation of small high-technology firms is used to exemplify the structure of our framework.

This paper explores within the framework of new venture legitimation how and why international new ventures acquire external legitimacy and strive for survival in the face of critical events. Following a longitudinal multiple-case study methodology that was adopted for the purpose of theory building, the paper introduces the typology of captivity, and the four types that have emerged: captive industry supplier, captive dyadic partner, captive market leader, and free market leader. The effects of captivity types on the acquisition of external legitimacy and its survival, on reaching legitimacy threshold, and on the valuation of the venture are discussed and respective propositions are put forward to guide future research.