Prior Research and Theoretical Background

Abstract

At the outset of this chapter, in section 2.1, I give an overview of the existing literature on management turnover in start-ups. In section 2.2, I describe existing research gaps and formulate the intended contributions of this thesis to entrepreneurship theory and literature. Subsequently, in section 2.3, three fields of theory and their relevance in the context of founder turnover are presented. First, I look at corporate governance in venture capital financed start-ups. Second, I introduce job matching theory as an important reference. Third, organizational psychology is discussed as a field of theory adding an important relational perspective to the understanding of founder turnover in start-up companies. Chapter 2 lays the foundation for the subsequent derivation of hypotheses to follow in chapter 3.