TUM School of Management, Technical U. of Munich, Germany
Entrepreneurs typically want to perform well in their entrepreneurial endeavors. While we know that they can benefit from positive evaluations by their different stakeholders, their performance and different forms of performance likely shape how they are evaluated by their stakeholders. Drawing on self-categorization theory, we develop and test a social evaluation model of entrepreneurial performance, arguing that different performance indicators are valuated differently by observers with high or low entrepreneurial intentions (EI). Using 10,496 assessments from 328 observers in a metric conjoint experiment, our study reveals that observers with higher EI attach more value to personal performance indicators (income and societal influence), while observers with lower EI focus on venture-level performance indicators (profit and growth). These insights advance the understanding of how observer heterogeneity influences the evaluation of entrepreneurial endeavors and highlight the multifaceted nature of entrepreneurial performance from an external observer’s perspective.
