Values Homophily in Action:
Co-founder authentication processes during team formation
Prof. Matthew Grimes
Professor of Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Futures
University of Cambridge
Date: 19 December 2024 (Thursday)
Time: 10:30 to 12:00
Venue: E22-G015
Host: Prof. Haitao Yu, Assistant Professor in Management
Abstract
Impact-focused venture founders engage in a process of team formation where they evaluate the skills and professional experience of co-founders and the extent to which these individuals affirm values-based commitments to social and environmental impact. Yet, an increasing flow of resources towards impact-focused entrepreneurship has also begun attracting a wider pool of potential entrepreneurs who while performing interest in impact creation, vary significantly in their values. This consistency in the performance of values yet variance in personal values is a product of institutional complexity, which can lead to foundational misalignment between founders and thus the eventual demise of early-stage ventures. In this paper, we seek to better understand this co-founder evaluative process by asking, how do entrepreneurs ensure values alignment within co-founding teams? Through an 18-month ethnographic study of a climate technology accelerator, we explore the role of values authentication processes during early-stage venture team formation. Our findings reveal a community-based process where founders’ values are authenticated through intensive scrutiny across three layers of public and private social arenas. These findings and our emergent model contribute to existing research on early-stage entrepreneurial team formation by specifying how values homophily occurs amid institutional complexity.
Speaker
Prof. Matthew Grimes is Professor of Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Futures, Director of the MPhil in Innovation, Strategy and Organisation Programme, and Co-Director of the Entrepreneurship Centre. His research interests include entrepreneurship and sustainable development. He examined how individuals and organisations create, introduce, and sustain positive social change by way of entrepreneurship by studying both the contextual and individual factors that contribute to innovation and the governance of innovation.
Prof. Grimes is a member of the Organisational Theory and Information Systems subject group at Cambridge Judge Business School, Academic Co-Director of the Cambridge Judge Entrepreneurship Centre, and current Associate Editor at the Academy of Management Journal.
All are welcome!
