Abstract
Chapter five covers the empirical study of entrepreneurial fund-raising intentions within the initial financing process of new ventures. Chapter 5. 1. addresses the realization of the empirical study. In 5. 2. below, the results of the study will be presented and discussed on the basis of empirical evidence collected from the multiple cases.
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Note also that statistical generalizations from samples consisting only of entrepreneurs seeking external finance may suffer from a sample selection bias because of the non-randomness of entrepreneurs seeking external funding or not (see Cosh et al., 2005, 7).
Note that the term’ sampling’ is somewhat unfortunate within the context of multiple case study designs which follow a replication and not a sampling logic (Yin, 2003, 47). However, the term theoretical sampling is very common in qualitative research literature.
Note that such a view is also advisable with regard to the research resources available, in particular when an empirical project is to be conducted by an individual researcher (cf. Dawson, 2002, 49 and Curran & Blackburn, 2001, 65p.).
Note that the gestation phase of new ventures may often take no more than 12 months (cf., for example, Carter et al., 1996) so that, together with the above limitation on venture age and the presumption that fund-raising activities may not necessarily come first in the gestation phase, the retrospective part of the analysis is restricted to a reasonably short period of time.
Note that since one cannot analyze everything, the focus has been on the main turning points during the fund-raising struggle, e.g. the events that followed a rejection by a central potential financier that the entrepreneur was hoping for (cf. Stam & Garnsey, 2005 for this principal consideration to be made in the research of development processes).
In addition, to give the main interviews a conversational character and avoid the use of directional and unnatural academic language, a preparatory pilot interview was conducted in order to identify some categories and issues that entrepreneurs might talk about when telling their fundraising story (following the approach employed in the entrepreneurial intentions study of Jenkins & Johnson, 1997).
Alternative direct field observation also ultimately relies on judgemental interpretations of the researcher (Herzog, 1996, 76).
In particular, a freehand approach to map and code cognitively based interviewee statements (e.g. beliefs about one’s chances to obtain funding or demands of investors) was employed (cf. Hodgkinson et al., 2004 and also Strauss & Corbin, 1998, 102pp. for open coding procedures).
Note that such time-ordered formats were merely used to accompany the main conceptual displays. This is because this study aims to identify broad patterns of changing financing intentions in view of external restrictions which shape the evolutionary internal variation-selection process at the individual venture level. It is believed that this focus will be more fruitful than attempting to identify typological patterns of common sequential phases that initial fund-raising processes in new ventures might form (also cf. Strauss & Corbin, 1998, 167 for principal scepticism regarding the detailed identification of a sequential order of phases in complex social processes).
Note that it is common in conceptual cross-case displays like the one in figure 5-3 to transform case level entries into condensed summarizing phrases or words pertaining to identified sub-categories and categories (Miles & Huberman, 1994, 179).
The idea of this is not to develop theoretical patterns as a proof — as this case study is not explanatory. Rather, the comparison of cross-case similarities with the prepared orienting concepts facilitates both proposing relations between theoretical constructs and suggesting indicators for their operationalization (cf. Ghauri 2004, 121).
Note that environmental munificence has also been thought to positively influence the range of options available to management in a general business strategy context (cf. Castrogiovanni, 1991, 543).
Researchers interested in the specifics of continuous adjustments versus termination of fundraising plans may want to ‘unbundle’ the feasibility variable into two variables (i.e. current and overall perceived funding chances); cf. Miles and Huberman (1994, 254p.) for partitioning variables.
Also cf. Guenther (2001, 115) for the category of complex ‘action programmes’ within a differentiation of types of human behaviour.
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(2008). Multiple case studies of fund-raising processes in new ventures. In: The Evolution of Entrepreneurs’ Fund-Raising Intentions. Gabler. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-8349-9797-5_5
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