Social goal commitment in entrepreneurial teams: an entrepreneurship education experiment

Although values and motivations of entrepreneurs are thought to impact key decisions and performance during business venturing, research in this field is still scarce. Organizational psychology and entrepreneurship literature has suggested that social value orientation (SVO) might affect entrepreneurial behavior. In this article, we hypothesized about the relationship between social value orientation and entrepreneurial performance in the context of entrepreneurial teams. We have developed preliminary insights through an entrepreneurial educational field experiment with students being sampled in teams based on proself and proother orientations. As hypothesized, prosocial teams performed better, yet surprisingly altruism in teams was related to worse performance. Our preliminary findings further indicate that team relationship conflict played a positive role in prosocial teams’ performance. Although preliminary, these findings may offer promising insights to the entrepreneurial team and entrepreneurship education literature.