Passing on the good vibes: Entrepreneurs’ social support

Abstract

<jats:p> This study investigates whether the emotional support individuals have available from their social network influences the likelihood that they in turn provide instrumental support to entrepreneurs they know: if they pass on the good vibes. Hypotheses are tested on a Danish data set consisting of individuals who know a nascent entrepreneur ( N = 392). The article demonstrates how emotional support made available to individuals from their social network impacts the likelihood of them providing entrepreneurs with instrumental support. Furthermore, findings show how the relation between available emotional support and the provision of instrumental support depends on culturally defined norms associated with various role-relationships and gender. The study contributes to existing theory by changing the perspective from focusing only on differences in characteristics between entrepreneurs to how the individuals in entrepreneurs’ social networks differ in characteristics and how this affects their social support to entrepreneurs. Furthermore, a significant contribution is the demonstration of how the provision of social support to entrepreneurs is contingent on different role-relationships. </jats:p>

Revising entrepreneurial action in response to exogenous shocks: Considering the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Thus, currently, entrepreneurs may satisfy part of their need for emotional support in the broader community spirit of "being in this together, online". Entrepreneurs become co-creators of an online, or appropriately socially distanced, community of emotional support, as we have seen when Italians sing from their balconies, and pass on good vibes (Nielsen, 2020). Here, collective identities are powerful-as we know from social movements (Polletta and Jasper, 2001)-and, the emotional support co-created among entrepreneurs on the basis of common and collective identity (e.g., suffering from lockdowns) should not be underestimated, and is very much encouraged in settings like Startup Autobahn.…”

Influence of national and regional level social capital on entrepreneurial activity

“…Social capital literature suggests that forming network ties is the primary mechanism for accumulating social capital at the individual level (Adler and Kwon, 2002; Jack and Anderson, 2002). This privately held social capital is especially important for entrepreneurs as it provides them with access to information and advice (Klyver et al , 2012), emotional (Liao and Welsch, 2005; Nielsen, 2020) and financial capital (Batjargal, 2003; Le and Nguyen, 2009). It also enhances their ability to absorb knowledge (Dess and Lumpkin, 2001) and gain legitimacy (Stuart et al , 1999).…”

Can’t always get what I want: Cultural expectations of emotional support in entrepreneurship

“…In both management and entrepreneurship fields, role relations have been conventionally divided into business and social contacts (Brennecke, 2020;Schott and Sedaghat, 2014), and social contacts further divided into family and friends (e.g. Nielsen, 2019;Treffers et al, 2019). Thus, we used both the presence and nonpresence of critical events across rolerelations and the attached emotional reactions to attain our ideal types of cul tural expectations.…”

“…Alternatively, when focused on specific role relations, such approaches provide limited, if any, insight into the reasons and consequences of this role-relation heterogeneity. Yet, studies based in social support theory (Tardy 1985;Agneessens et al, 2006) challenge this universal presumption of homogeneous support effects across role-relations (Kim et al, 2013;Nielsen, 2019). For instance, Madjar (2008) finds that the effect of emotional support on individuals' creativity depends on who provides it.…”