Understanding shifts of entrepreneurial decision-making: a process study of effectual and causal logics in the venture creating process

摘要

This article describes a research project that aims at investigating individual entrepreneurial founders concerning their shift tendencies of decision-making logics - especially during the respective phases of the venture creating process. Prior studies found that team founders show a hybrid perspective on strategic decision-making. They not only combine causation (planning-based) and effectuation (flexible) logics but also show logic shifts and also re-shifts over time. Due to the fact, that founders' social identity shapes early structuring processes, this article describes the necessity of elimination of in-group influences of multi-founding ventures and focus on individuals in order to make specific assessments on logic shifts and re-shifts. Based on an extensive literature review, a pre-selection-test and a qualitative case study design from the empirical body of the paper. Insofar, this study applies a qualitative design of a process research approach to investigate shifts of decision-making logics of individual founders in new venture creation over time.