Fostering Resilience in New Venture Teams: The Role of Behavioral and Affective Integration

Abstract

Resilience has begun to receive attention in entrepreneurship research. However, most studies focus on organizational and individual resilience; little is known about team resilience in the entrepreneurship field. To fill the gap, this study explores team resilience and its formation and function in a specific context: new venture teams (NVTs). Conceptualizing team resilience as a second-order emergent state with first-order dimensions being resilience-efficacious beliefs and resilience-adaptive capacity, this study articulates the role of behavioral integration in cultivating team resilience and tests the effect of team resilience on NVT performance. Furthermore, a double-edged sword effect of affective integration is proposed: it strengthens the link between behavioral integration and team resilience but weakens the tie between team resilience and performance. Survey data collected from 488 entrepreneurs in 110 NVTs lend support to our hypotheses. These findings add to the knowledge of team resilience in a unique entrepreneurship setting, expand our understanding of NVT effectiveness, and provide implications to NVTs in terms of resilience building and team climate management.