The Intimacy with Founding Members and the Effect on Entrepreneurs’ Construal Level

Abstract

How will internal relationship within founding teams affect entrepreneurs’ cognition? Taking construal level theory, this study shows a fresh aspect of entrepreneurs’ intimacy with founding members and the effects on cognition of ongoing venturing projects. We argue that stronger intimacy with other founding members will shorten the perceived psychological distances between the entrepreneur and the ongoing project, thus lower down the entrepreneur’s construal level. Using survey data from 162 Chinese founding teams, we found that the stronger the intimacy with other founding members, the lower the construal level is, and this relationship is weaker when team size is large and the customer feedback acquisition is high. The findings may advance the understanding on why and how founding with friends will affect the venturing business strategy and behavior from the construal level theory perspective, and call for attention that need to be paid on internal relationship in founding teams research. This study also provides important implications for the entrepreneurs in selecting venturing partners and getting along with them.