Founder personality and harmful social exchanges within new venture teams

Abstract

Though scholars have explored how the personality composition of a new venture team relates to critical firm-level outcomes, research has not yet accounted for the impact of the lead founder, whose personality likely exerts a unique influence on team processes due to their elevated role. This is particularly critical in light of recent research highlighting the prevalence of the Dark Triad in entrepreneurship. We draw on social exchange theory to theorize and test how lead founder Dark Triad personality traits influence three intra-team processes: autonomy, innovation, and relationship conflict. In a time-lagged field study of nascent founders and their new venture teams (N = 102 intact teams), we found that lead founders who score high on Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy differentially effect these socially motivated team processes. By focusing on the influence that a single individual – the lead founder – can have within a new venture team, our findings offer balance to the literature, which predominantly focuses on team composition.