Through others' eyes: three essays on perspective taking in entrepreneurship

Abstract

Perspective taking, or seeing the world from different viewpoints, is an important cognitive ability that can have a powerful impact in organizations by, for instance, increasing helping behaviors, negotiation outcomes, and innovation. The purpose of this dissertation is to elucidate the important role that perspective taking can play in entrepreneurship research and to situate perspective taking as a primary mechanism for entrepreneurial learning. To this end, this dissertation consists of a literature review and three essays on perspective taking in entrepreneurship. I start with a literature review to strategically review research that has come before mine on this important topic. I position perspective taking as a mechanism for learning in entrepreneurial settings. I structure my review alongside the antecedents, consequences, mediators and moderators of perspective taking in existing scholarship. Essay 1 then considers perspective taking at a macro-level as a possible mechanism for knowledge spillovers originating from regional entrepreneurial activity to absorb into local public service institutions. Essay 2 takes a micro-level look at employee cognitive adaptability, beneficiary contact and job burnout, as three possible antecedents to perspective taking among corporate entrepreneurs. In essay 3, I examine how international entrepreneurs achieve resource fit when making hiring decisions. Here I consider the perspective taking of international entrepreneurs as a moderator that weakens the strength of their preferences for certain resource fit. This dissertation concludes with suggestions for additional research avenues of perspective taking in entrepreneurship. I use multiple methodologies, including longitudinal secondary data from multiple sources, and primary data collected via online surveys with randomized interventions, verbal protocol interviews and a conjoint experiment, resulting in a grand total of eight different samples. Taken together, this dissertation shows that perspective taking, and the learning that it evokes, play a valuable and necessary role across the spectrum of entrepreneurship research.