ObjectivesThis article has as main objective to check how some entrepreneur's and venture characteristics are related to new social venture survival. Specifically, related to the venture, five conditions have been studied, these conditions are: venture workforce, initial capital and three variables that assess the quality of the social venture plan (business plan). Regarding the entrepreneur's conditions, the experience related to the new venture activity, training level and specific training, and entrepreneurship motivation have been taken into account.
Study design and methodologyThe study uses a sample that oscillates between 291 and 212 start-ups according to the period considered. The two outcome original variables are survival at 31 December of the third year (ST+3) and at 31 December of the sixth year (ST+6) after the new venture foundation. Both variables are dichotomous (1 = survival; 0 = failure).The access to this sample has been possible with the collaboration of the Program Management and Planning Service from the Valencia Institute of Youth (IVAJ). This institution provided data on these ventures, whose creators were young entrepreneurs under 30 years old, or under 30 years but partnered with co-workers aged over 30 years, who applied for a grant.Our propositions or tenets imply the existence of an interplay between business plan quality and entrepreneur and firm characteristics. In this case, different combinations of causal conditions could lead to the same outcome. Therefore, taking into account the limitations of conventional quantitative methods to study the effect of different possible causal recipes on survival, this study uses Qualitative Comparative Analysis, specifically fsQCA. QCA methods build and test theories of complex antecedent conditions that are sufficient or necessary to explain an outcome condition (e.g., firm survival). That is, the goal is to determine if any of the conditions, or a combination of the conditions that have been numbered in the previous section are sufficient or necessary to explain new social ventures' survival.
ResultsDue to the nature of the analysis that has been applied, the results can be divided into two blocks. The first one come from testing whether any of the causal conditions and their negation are necessary for the 3-year and 6-year survival. Our results show that any of the antecedent conditions is necessary or "almost necessary" for any outcome condition because any consistency score exceeds the threshold of 0.9.The second group of results shows models of sufficiency analysis. In ST+3 there are four main causal configurations that lead to firm survival. There are some conditions that are present in the four combinations, these conditions are both specific training and the level of entrepreneur's training, economic and organizational viability and initial capital. On the other hand, one of the combinations shows a curious characteristic, that is, the lack of financial viability makes the likelihood of survival grow. The most logic explanation is t...