The Interacting Effects of Environment Uncertainty, Shared Humor and Entrepreneurial Team-Efficacy

One of the greatest challenges faced by new venture teams (NVTs) is trying to effectively lead their firms under varying degrees of environmental uncertainty. Despite this fact, little is known regarding why some NVTs, but not others, are able to attain high performance at different levels of environmental uncertainty. To address this point, the current research draws from social cognitive theory to develop a conceptual model of when NVTs’ use of shared humor and level of entrepreneurial team-efficacy might conditionally influence the relationship between environmental uncertainty and firm performance. The model is tested using survey data gathered from a national (USA) random sample of startups (N = 179) in combination with objective performance data from Dun and Bradstreet. Consistent with social cognitive theory’s core tenets, we find that NVTs’ use of shared humor and level of entrepreneurial team-efficacy each positively moderate the relationship of environmental uncertainty with the performance of t...