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Revisiting the Small-Firm Effect on Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Firm Dissolutions

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  • Aleksandra Kacperczyk

    (Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142)

  • Matt Marx

    (Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142)

Abstract

Afrequent claim in the entrepreneurship literature is that employees learn to become entrepreneurs during paid employment. We revisit this mechanism in the context of the well-established finding that smaller firms generate higher rates of entrepreneurship. We propose a novel mechanism responsible for higher rates of entrepreneurship emanating from smaller firms: large firms might have a advantage over small firms in providing internal opportunities to retain entrepreneurial talent. We test this claim in a setting where firm dissolution extinguishes internal opportunities, using a new hand-collected data set of career histories in the automatic speech recognition (ASR) industry. For nondefunct firms, we replicate the “small-firm effect.” However, the small-firm effect no longer holds within the subsample of defunct firms: entrepreneurship rates among individuals present at firm dissolution are in fact higher for larger firms. Additional analyses indicate that this effect is unlikely to be driven by the early departure of higher-skilled workers who anticipate the firm’s demise. Finally, we find preliminary evidence consistent with the notion that large organizations may not only retain but also “mold” workers into entrepreneurs. More broadly, the study emphasizes the need to consider a novel mechanism responsible for transition into entrepreneurship—the role of opportunities available to employees in incumbent firms.

Suggested Citation

  • Aleksandra Kacperczyk & Matt Marx, 2016. "Revisiting the Small-Firm Effect on Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Firm Dissolutions," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 27(4), pages 893-910, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:27:y:2016:i:4:p:893-910
    DOI: 10.1287/orsc.2016.1065
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    7. Sundriyal, Vivek Kumar & Gabrielsson, Jonas, 2024. "The employment consequences of founding an incorporated business among STEM founders: Evidence from Swedish microdata," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    8. Francesca Melillo, 2023. "Going From Entrepreneur Back to Employee: Employer Type, Task Variety, and Job Satisfaction," GREDEG Working Papers 2023-21, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.
    9. Davide Hahn & Tommaso Minola & Giulio Bosio & Lucio Cassia, 2020. "The impact of entrepreneurship education on university students’ entrepreneurial skills: a family embeddedness perspective," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 55(1), pages 257-282, June.
    10. Nathaly Pinzón & Javier Montero & José L. González-Pernía, 2022. "The influence of individual characteristics on getting involved in an entrepreneurial team: The contingent role of individualism," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 18(3), pages 1103-1140, September.
    11. Coad, Alex & Kaiser, Ulrich & Kuhn, Johan, 2021. "Spin doctors vs the spawn of capitalism: Who founds university and corporate startups?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(10).
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