Entrepreneurship and Team Participation: An Experimental Study

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Entrepreneurs are surprisingly unlikely to have partners. In spite of the obvious advantages to forming partnerships, only a small minority of entrepreneurs (less than 10%, excluding family businesses) have partners. A number of possible explanations exist for this puzzling phenomenon, including an inability to locate suitable partners, fear of free-riding by partners, and a preference for not working in groups. Utilizing a diverse subject population with a high proportion of active entrepreneurs, we use a team production experiment to study whether entrepreneurs prefer to work alone or in a team. The data indicate that entrepreneurs, while no more likely to free-ride on their teammates, are substantially less interested in joining teams. This suggests that efforts to encourage partnership among entrepreneurs may run contrary to the preferences of this group.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Teams; Artefactual Field Experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 L26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent, nep-exp and nep-mic
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Journal Article: Entrepreneurship and team participation: An experimental study (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:25144

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