The scale-up process and the nascent board’s modus operandi : The role of attention and self-efficacy1

Abstract

This article presents the results of a processual case study examining a young scale-up’s board of directors, focusing on board members’ attention and self-efficacy. The results help us to better understand why the board’s mode of operation sometimes leans towards discipline and sometimes towards cognition (or both), independently of the venture’s life cycle. The study reveals that the intensity of treatment of cognitive vs. disciplinary issues is highly, but not exclusively, dependent on the entry of new investors and hence changes from stage to stage. The results confirm Knockaert et al.’s (2015) intuition of the importance of attention and self-efficacy bias. Unlike the findings of those authors, however, it appears that the primary objects of attention and self-efficacy change over time and as the result of the multiple directors’ complex actions. This leads to dynamic changes in the board’s operations over time.