Harsh Evaluations of Entrepreneurs Who Fail: The Role of Sexual Orientation, Use of Environmentally Friendly Technologies, and Observers' Perspective TakingDean A. Shepherd and Holger Patzelt Journal of Management Studies, 2015, vol. 52, issue 2, 253-284 Abstract: Although there is a pervasive anti-failure bias in society, we investigate why some entrepreneurs who fail are evaluated more harshly than others. Building on attribution theory and the literatures on prejudice, pro-social intentions, and perspective taking, we offer an evaluation model of entrepreneurial failure and test this model on 6,784 assessments made by 212 observers. We find that variance in the harshness of failure evaluations depends on both the attributes of the entrepreneur and the attributes of the observer, and the interaction between the two. Specifically, entrepreneurs who are homosexual are evaluated more harshly by some observers and entrepreneurs who use environmentally friendly technology are evaluated less harshly. Moreover, observers high in perspective taking are more ‘lenient’ in their failure evaluations of those who use environmentally friendly technology than those low in perspective taking. Date: 2015 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jomstd:v:52:y:2015:i:2:p:253-284 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Journal of Management Studies is currently edited by Timothy Clark, Steven W. Floyd and Mike Wright More articles in Journal of Management Studies from Wiley Blackwell |
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