Leader Emergence in Nascent Venture Teams: The Critical Roles of Individual Emotion Regulation and Team Emotions

• Author: Georg Krogh,Charlotta Sirén,Zoe Jonassen,Dietmar Grichnik,Vivianna Fang He,Henrik Wesemann
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12563
• Published date: 01 July 2020
• Date: 01 July 2020

© 2020 The Authors. Journal of Management Studies published by Society for the Advancement of Management

Studies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Leader Emergence in Nascent Venture Teams: The

Critical Roles of Individual Emotion Regulation and

Team Emotions

Charlotta Siréna, Vivianna Fang Heb, Henrik Wesemannc,

Zoe Jonassenb, Dietmar Grichnikc and Georg von Kroghb

aThe University of Queensland; bETH Zurich; cUniversity of St.Gallen

ABSTRACT This study advances a theory of how different aspects of emotion regulation influ-

ence individual leader emergence in the intensely emotional context of nascent venture teams.

Despite the growing amount of research on the role of leadership in the entrepreneurial

process, the emergence of leaders in nascent venture teams has rarely been explored. Drawing

on theories and research on leadership emergence and emotion regulation, we argue that the

two aspects of emotion regulation (i.e., reappraisal and suppression) exert opposite effects on the

degree to which nascent venture team members come to perceive an individual as a leader. We

also theorize that team emotions arising from affective events moderate the relationship between

reappraisal and leader emergence in such teams. Data from 103 nascent venture teams without

prior leaders show a negative relationship between individuals’ trait disposition to suppress emo-

tions and their emergence as leaders, and a positive relationship between their trait disposition to

reappraise emotions and their emergence as leaders. Moreover, we find that negative team emotions

magnify the positive association between reappraisal and leader emergence, while positive team

emotions mitigate it. We discuss the implications of our findings for the literature on entrepre-

neurial leadership, entrepreneurial emotions, and leadership in general.

Keywords: emotion regulation, leader emergence, nascent venture teams, reappraisal,

suppression, team emotions

INTRODUCTION

Leadership plays a pivotal role in the formation and growth of nascent ventures (Chen,

2007; Eesley et al., 2014; Kang et al., 2015). In particular, nascent ventures face scarcity

Journal of Man agement Studi es 57:5 July 2020

doi:10. 1111/jo ms .12 563

Address for reprints: Charlotta Sirén, Associate Professor, The University of Queensland, UQ Business School,

St. Lucia, Queensland 4072, Australia (c.siren@uq.edu.au)

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which per-

mits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

932 C. Sirén et al.

© 2020 The Authors. Journal of Management Studies published by Society for the Advancement of Management

Studies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

of time, money, and human capital (Reynolds et al., 2000), and leadership has an instru-

mental role in amassing such resources. As they typically operate without clear organiza-

tional structures, formal authority, or incentive systems (Bryant, 2004), nascent ventures

require leaders who can create a shared vision for both their launch and survival (Foo

et al., 2006).

The extant research on leadership in the entrepreneurial setting mostly focuses on

the leadership style or behavior of the founder (Kang et al., 2015), while few studies

simultaneously explore the individual- and team-level dynamics that underpin the pro-

cess of leader emergence in teams (Dinh et al., 2014; Paunova, 2015). This oversight is

problematic for contemporary entrepreneurship literature because prior research has

demonstrated that teams found and lead the majority of ventures (Klotz et al., 2014),

and that entrepreneurship is rarely constrained to a solo, heroic leader (Harper, 2008). In

this study, we depart from the commonly held assumption of a pre-existing ‘lead entre-

preneur’, and instead theorize and explain the phenomenon of ‘leader emergence’ – the

degree to which individuals are perceived by other team members as leaders – in nascent

venture teams. Consistent with previous research (Foo et al., 2006), we define nascent

venture teams as teams consisting of individuals who are taking tentative steps towards

firm formation.

Nascent venture teams constitute a qualitatively distinct and theoretical meaningful

context (Jung et al., 2017). In contrast to teams in mature firms, where a hierarchical

structure distinguishes leadership roles, nascent venture teams lack structure and deci-

sion-making routines (Jung et al., 2017; Knipfer et al., 2018), as roles and norms are still

in the process of being established (Klotz et al., 2014). Given their fluid and dynamic

nature, nascent venture teams constitute a particularly interesting context for studies of

leader emergence.

Prior work offers key insights into the context of nascent venture teams. As entrepre-

neurs, members of such teams often collectively embark on an emotional ‘roller coaster’.

The start-up process is replete with affective events – incidents that stir positive and

negative emotions and shape team members’ performance (Foo et al., 2009; Weiss and

Cropanzano, 1996). Time pressure, financial constraints, and personal consequences

associated with the fate of the venture make entrepreneurs respond to these affective

events with intense emotions (Cardon et al., 2012). In addition, the uncertainty about

how to cope with challenges that arise within the venture or from the market affects team

members’ daily lives (Blatt, 2009). In particular, the pre-founding stage features signifi-

cant ambiguity and uncertainty (Knipfer et al., 2018), thereby generating a wide range

of emotional experience (Fern et al., 2012; Foo et al., 2006; McMullen and Shepherd,

2006).

Within this highly emotional context, members of nascent venture teams have dif-

ferent trait dispositions towards suppressing or expressing various emotions. We argue

that these individual differences have important implications for leadership emergence in

nascent venture teams. Prior research, which assumes pre-existing leader roles, shows

that leaders’ emotional labor critically impacts not only on their own emotions, but also

those of their followers (Humphrey et al., 2008). Furthermore, leaders’ emotional dis-

plays influence subordinates’ impressions of their leaders’ sincerity (Dasborough and

Ashkanasy, 2002), charisma (Groves, 2005), and willingness to act entrepreneurially