The Performance of Pre‐Founding Entrepreneurial Teams: The Importance of Learning and Leadership

Entrepreneurial teams often struggle with simultaneous task and team challenges at an early stage of new venture creation. The way in which teams shape their teamwork is key in leveraging performance in the pre‐founding phase. Learning should help the team in establishing good teamwork and in expanding its members’ entrepreneurial capabilities. Leadership is needed to facilitate and guide this learning. Accordingly, we investigated learning and leadership as facilitators of performance in the pre‐founding phase. Specifically, we examined team reflexivity as a collective internal learning process and boundary spanning behaviour as an externally directed individual activity, operating at different levels in fostering team and individual performance. Charismatic team leadership was examined as a catalyst of learning, shaping team and individual performance ultimately. The multilevel mediation model was tested based on data from 196 members of 58 teams of a venture creation programme. Team reflexivity predicted team and individual performance. Boundary spanning behaviour was not related to performance. As hypothesised, charismatic team leadership predicted team and individual performance, both mediated by team reflexivity. This research highlights the relevance of team learning in pre‐founding teams and emphasises leadership in shaping learning and moving new ventures forward.     

The generation effect in primed word-fragment completion reexamined

Summary Two experiments were designed to test a claim made by Gardiner (1988) that there are generation effects in implicit memory as measured by word-fragment completion. Subjects either read words at study or generated the words from fragments. As in previous research, fragments were completed to a greater extent if they were identical at study and test than if they differed. In Experiment 1 it was found that subjects could recognize explicitly the exact form of fragments that had been used for self-generation and distinguish these from other forms of fragments. An analysis of the contingency relations between recognition of fragments and fragment completion showed a high degree of dependence between the two tests. In Experiment 2 it was found that the match of surface features between study and test was a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to produce enhancement of priming. The results are interpreted as supporting the claim that generation does involve a data-driven component in addition to semantic elaboration.This research was supported by a grant from the Swedish Council for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences to Lars-Göran Nilsson.     

The countable homogeneous universal model of B 2

We give a detailed account of the Algebraically Closed and Existentially Closed members of the second Lee class B ₂ of distributive p-algebras, culminating in an explicit construction of the countable homogeneous universal model of B ₂. The axioms of Schmid [7], [8] for the AC and EC members of B ₂ are reduced to what we prove to be an irredundant set of axioms. The central tools used in this study are the strong duality of Clark and Davey [3] for B ₂ and the method of Clark [2] for constructing AC and EC algebras using a strong duality. Applied to B ₂, this method transfers the entire discussion into an equivalent dual category X ₂ of Boolean spaces which carry a pair of tightly interacting orderings. The doubly ordered spaces of X ₂ prove to be much more readily constructed and analyzed than the corresponding algebras in B ₂.     

The effect of enactment on memory for order

The effect of enactment on memory for serial order was investigated in two experiments. In both experiments a reconstruction task was used to separate order from item information. In Experiment 1 enactment and test information was manipulated between groups. For subjects who had not been informed about the reconstruction test, performance of verbal and motor groups was similar with regard to both serial-position curves and overall performance. For subjects who knew beforehand that they would be tested for memory of the order of the action events, performance in the verbal condition was significantly better than in the motor condition. In Experiment 2, the reversed enactment effect for test-informed subjects was replicated with a within-subjects design. The results agree with Engelkamp and Zimmer's (1984, 1994) position that enactment serves exclusively to enhance item information, and indicate that subjects have less control over the encoding processes when they are enacting than during verbal encoding (cf. Cohen, 1981).     

Response force is sensitive to the temporal uncertainty of response stimuli

Three experiments examined whether temporal uncertainty about the delivery of a response stimulus affects response force in a simple reaction time (RT) situation. All experiments manipulated the foreperiod; that is, the interval between a warning signal and the response stimulus. In the constant condition, foreperiod length was kept constant over a block of trials but changed from block to block. In the variable condition, foreperiod length varied randomly from trial to trial. A visual warning and response stimulus were used in Experiment 1; response force decreased with foreperiod length in the variable condition, but increased in the constant condition. This result is consistent with the hypothesis that responses are less forceful when the temporal occurrence of the response stimulus is predictable. In a second experiment with an auditory warning signal and a response stimulus, response force was less sensitive to foreperiod manipulations. The third experiment manipulated both the modality and the intensity of the response signal and employed a tactile warning signal. This experiment indicated that neither the modality nor the intensity of the response signal affects the relation between response force and foreperiod length. An extension of Näätänen’s (1971) motor-readiness model accounts for the main results.     

Geometry, intuition and experience: From kant to husserl

I take this opportunity to thank my colleagues at ZiF for their very helpful comments and criticisms during the academic year. For the preparation of this paper, I am especially indepted to Michael Hallett, who not only improved my English but also saved me from a number of errors.     

Attributions for dietary failures: problems reported by participants in the Hypertension Prevention Trial

Assigned participants in the Hypertension Prevention Trial to one of four diets for a period of 3 years: (a) weight loss, (b) reduced sodium, (c) weight loss plus reduced sodium, and (d) reduced sodium plus increased potassium. At 6-month intervals, they reported problems they were having adhering to their diets. Problem attributions were coded along the dimensions of internality, stability, and controllability and were categorized as intrapersonal or extrapersonal. Attributions were found to differ by type of diet and sex of participant. Participants assigned to weight-loss groups were significantly more likely than those assigned to non-weight-loss groups to blame themselves for their problems with adherence, making characterological as opposed to external or situational attributions. Men perceived problems to be more controllable than women. Attributions did not predict weight loss, change in urinary sodium, or change in potassium excretion.