Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: How do academic entrepreneurs deal with identity conflict?
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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: How do academic entrepreneurs deal with identity conflict? Yan Shi1 · Bo Zou2 · Roberto S. Santos3 Received: 6 February 2020 / Accepted: 6 November 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Academic entrepreneurs are perpetually faced with an identity conflict. Drawing on concepts from social identity theory, we investigate the tension of duality between the academic identity and the entrepreneur identity. We contend that an indirect nonlinear relationship exists between social identity continuity and academic entrepreneurship performance through identity conflict, and that another indirect nonlinear relationship exists between experiences of multiple identities and academic entrepreneurship performance through identity conflict. We conducted an empirical survey of 246 academic entrepreneurs in China and found that our hypotheses were largely supported. Theoretically, our study offers new insights into the paradox of academic entrepreneurs and hybrid founder identities. Additionally, it also enriches the extant literature on identity conflict. Practically, our research not only offers helpful suggestions for academic entrepreneurs, but also has important implications for organizations supporting academic entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs with multiple identities. Keywords Identity conflict · Social identity continuity · Experiences of multiple identities · Academic entrepreneurship performance · Social identity theory JEL Classifications C83 · D91 · Z19 * Yan Shi [email protected] Bo Zou [email protected] Roberto S. Santos [email protected] 1
School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, 92 West Dazhi Street, Nan Gang District, Harbin 150001, China
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Lingnan(University) College, Sun Yat-sen University, No.135, Xingang Xi Road, Guangzhou 510275, P.R. China
3
Robert J. Manning School of Business, University of Massachusetts Lowell, 72 University Ave, Lowell, MA 01854, USA
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1 Introduction Identity conflict is defined as perceived incompatibilities among an individual’s identity domains (Hirsh and Kang 2016). In Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous novella, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a reputable gentleman experiences a multiple personality disorder whereby his psyche creates a doppelgänger, Mr. Hyde, and he transforms between the two personalities based on the situation. This duality of personal identity creates an internal tension that Dr. Jekyll struggles to come to terms with. Academic entrepreneurs face a similar tension in the duality between their academic identity and entrepreneur identity. This prompts the question, how do academic entrepreneurs deal with identity conflict? A considerable body of research has investigated identity conflict from different perspectives. For instance, some studies approach identity conflict from a gender, family business, or work-and-family conflict perspective (Karhu and Ritala 2020; Kubicek and Machek 2019; Schjoedt 2020), while others
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