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Why do some academic entrepreneurs experience less role conflict? The impact of prior academic experience and prior entrepreneurial experience

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Abstract

Despite the growing interest in academic entrepreneurs’ role conflict, we have not gained sufficient insights into its antecedents. Based on social learning theory, we examine how academic entrepreneurs’ prior experience—prior academic experience and prior entrepreneurial experience—influence their role conflict. Through multilevel linear regression and robustness tests using data from 394 academic entrepreneurs, we show that prior academic experience positively impacts role conflict, while prior entrepreneurial experience negatively impacts role conflict. Moreover, the negative effect of academic experience is weaker for academic entrepreneurs who have a longer length of prior entrepreneurial experience. Our study contributes to the literature on the antecedents of academic entrepreneurs’ role conflict and has important practical implications for academic entrepreneurial project cultivation and selection.

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Notes

  1. For example, if there is a missing value in the role conflict scale, we regressed role conflict with the remaining 4 items. This method has been proven effective and efficient for self-reported scales, especially when the number of missing values is small (approximately 10%)(Shrive et al., 2006).

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Acknowledgements

This submission includes no observations that have been used in another published or planned published paper. All three authors have equally contributed to the manuscript.

Funding

The authors are grateful for the National Natural Science Foundation of China Youth Science Fund Project (No 0.71704073) and the Major Project of National Social Science Foundation of China (No. 19ZDA116).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Management, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing, China

    Hui Zhang

  2. School of Finance, Nanjing University of Finance and Economics, Nanjing, China

    Yuan Mo

  3. School of Public Administration, Nanjing University of Finance and Economics, Nanjing, China

    Dong Wang

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  1. Hui Zhang
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Correspondence to Dong Wang.

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Zhang, H., Mo, Y. & Wang, D. Why do some academic entrepreneurs experience less role conflict? The impact of prior academic experience and prior entrepreneurial experience. Int Entrep Manag J 17, 1521–1539 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11365-021-00764-4

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