著者

小本 恵照

出版者

日本経営学会

雑誌

日本経営学会誌 (ISSN:18820271)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.42, pp.40-51, 2019

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<p> Entrepreneurship scholars have studied start-ups for decades, and have identified various factors that affect their performance. However, previous studies have the following two drawbacks. First, most of them have not examined the configurational effects of certain factors on business performance. That is, they estimate only independent and symmetric effects using regression analysis. Second, most studies have analyzed start-ups only with business histories of more than 10 years.</p><p> In this study, I analyze the antecedents of the performance of start-ups within 28 months of their establishment. I consider six features of an entrepreneur: (1) age, (2) growth orientation, (3) funds at the start of their business (4) business experience, (5) the form of the firm, and (6) risk-taking behavior. To analyze the complex interactions among these features, I explore configurations leading to high or low business performance using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. The results indicate three configurations for high performance and three other configurations for low performance. The high performance configurations show that growth orientation, as well as funds and business experience, are required for business success. However, the configurations also indicate that young entrepreneurs exhibiting both growth orientation and risk-averse behavior can succeed, even if funds and business experience are low. The low performance configurations indicate that unsuccessful entrepreneurs tend to start their business without establishing companies. In addition, these configurations show that when entrepreneurs are not young and growth orientation and funds are lacking, these factors, coupled with other conditions, cause low business performance. These results indicate that some of the six features have asymmetric and complex effects on business performance of start-ups, leading to high or low performance.</p>