Title: Venture survival after environmental jolts

Authors: Sooduck Chang, Donna Kelley, Hyunsuk Lee

Addresses: Department of Business Administration, Hannam University, 133 Ojeong-dong, Daeduk-gu, Daejoen 302-715, Republic of Korea. ' Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship, Babson College, Babson Park, MA 02457, USA. ' Department of Business Administration, Seoul National University of Technology, 172 Gongreung 2 dong, Nowon-gu, Seoul 139-743, Republic of Korea

Abstract: This research examines founder skills and efforts to overcome liabilities of newness and smallness in buffering a venture against environmental jolts. We surveyed 115 Korean technology-based ventures in 1997, just before the Asian IMF crisis, and then tracked their survival or failure in 2000. Our analysis reveals that a founder|s education and experience in the venture|s industry is associated with survival after a jolt. Organizational Commitment to Employees (OCE) and external relationships were also associated with survival in our study, suggesting that building the internal organisation and forming external relationships can help a venture overcome the effects of major environmental shocks.

Keywords: new firm survival; environmental jolts; newness; smallness; founder characteristics; OCE; organisational commitment; commitment to employees; external relationships; Korea; new ventures; technology-based firms; education; experience; internal organisation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEIM.2009.025147

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management, 2009 Vol.9 No.3, pp.343 - 359

Received: 18 Oct 2007
Accepted: 04 Jul 2008
Published online: 14 May 2009 *

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