Where a person is born can shape the languages they speak, their life expectancy, and even how much they talk with their hands or smile. But how does it affect how they build a company? Does someone from South Africa have an entirely different approach than someone from Russia? It turns out that in some cases, they do.
Research: Where a Founder Is from Affects How They Structure Their Company
Even when the company isn’t in their home country.
September 06, 2019
Summary.
In a rational world, a founder would tailor a firm’s organizational structure to the particular challenges that it faced, but our research suggests that founders rarely select organizational structures that best suit their business needs. Instead they build companies around the the nature of the market and political institutions in their country of origin, regardless of where their company is actually based. And the arbitrariness of this important decision may well have negative consequences for many new firms.