Initial Conditions as Predictors of New Venture Performance: A Replication and Extension of the Cooper et al. study

By J. Dahlqvist, Per Davidsson, Johan Wiklund. 2000

249 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This study tries to adhere to ideals such as Cooper et al's by replicating and extending a theory-driven study of the effects of initial conditions on new venture performance using a very large (700 + cases) and high quality, longitudinal data set. Data on initial conditions were collected in 1995 (within a year after first registration) and outcomes were assessed in 1998. On a conceptual level, the studies results confirm those obtained by Cooper et al . regarding how general human capital, management know-how and industry affect marginal survival probability, as well as concerning the effects of financial and general human capability on the likelihood of becoming a high performance venture. The results sometimes coincide also on a very detailed level, such as the differential effect of gender on marginal survival vs its effect on high performance. Other parts of Cooper et al's results could not be replicated. To some extent this may be due to weak operationalizations of certain constructs, but real samp...

Subfields: Accounting, Economics and Econometrics, Management of Technology and Innovation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c318f4c522f6d49f71f4d1627c778bedda3e23de

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Citations in the corpus

The influence of perceptions on potential entrepreneurs (2011, background): “Among these variables, the following may be highlighted: age, gender, religion, ethnic group, education, socioeconomic status or professional experience (Cooper and Dunkelberg 1987; Dahlqvist et al. 2000; Cooper et al. 1994; Reynolds et al. 1994; Storey 1994; Wagener et al. 2010).”
Outsider Assistance as a Knowledge Resource for New Venture Survival (2004, background): “…zero or even negative correlation between taking startup courses or counseling on the one hand, and successfully launching and/or running a business on the other (Dahlqvist and Davidsson 2000; Dahlqvist, Davidsson, and Wiklund 2000; Honig and Davidsson 2000; Maung and Ehrens 1991; Tremlett 1993).”
Startups’ Roads to Failure (2018, background): “Such study was subsequently replicated and extended in [35], by considering also environmental data.”
Inside the black box of outcome additionality: Effects of early-stage government subsidies on resource accumulation and new venture performance (2015, background): “A body of literature has examined the influence of initial resources endowments and subsequent performance of new ventures (e.g., Cooper et al., 1994; Dahlqvist et al., 2000).”
Firm Exits as a Determinant of New Entry: Is There Evidence of Local Creative Destruction? (2008, unknown): “20 Note, however, that Dahlqvist et al. (2000) found that the start-up of a firm for unemployment reasons does not affect the survival or the performance level of the firm.”
The Effects of General and Specific Human Capital on Long–Term Growth and Failure of Newly Founded Businesses (2013, unknown): “Previous research has reported relatively small effects of human capital on growth (Unger et al., 2011) and that effects on survival are even smaller than effects on growth (Dahlqvist et al., 2000).”
Power law distributions in entrepreneurship: : Implications for theory and research (2015, background): “Themost obvious question for future research raised by our findings is:What drives the performance of those new ventures at the positive extreme of the distribution—the high potential companies that have a significant impact on entire industries, places, and patterns of human behavior? Early entrepr”
Individualism and entrepreneurship: Does the pattern depend on the social context? (2016, background): “This is the case, for instance, employment experience – a relevant source of information, skilldevelopment and knowledge that may be relevant to the start-up decision (Dahlqvist et al., 2000) – or role models – facilitating vicarious learning (Bosma et al., 2012).”