Article accepted for publication at Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal
The article "Professionalizing Entrepreneurial Firms: Managing The Challenges and Outcomes of Founder‐CEO Succession," co-authored by Caroline Kähr Serra and Jana Thiel, has been accepted for publication in the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal. This article is part of the SEJ Special Issue "Organizational Design of Entrepreneurial Ventures."
In this article, we use a multi-case setting of VC-backed high-tech ventures to examine the transition from a founder‐led start‐up to a professionally managed firm. Such transition entails significant change in the firm's organizational design and can thus constitute a critical juncture for the entrepreneurial firm, with the risk of losing key talent.
We posit that limiting the disruptive effect of changing organizational structures requires organizational members to not only adopt new roles but also embrace new behavioral norms regarding how the firm operates. We use an inductive multi‐case study paired with exogenous data on company morale to explore outcome variation in such transitional processes and elicit three managerial strategies--change readiness activation, shared pathway creation, and founder legacy fairness--that incoming professional CEOs can use to guide a successful maturation and its accompanying organizational change of the entrepreneurial firm.
Article Link: external pagehttps://doi.org/10.1002/sej.1329call_made