Female entrepreneurs’ narcissism and new venture performance in high-tech sectors: the moderating roles of gender discrimination and political connections

Abstract

Narcissism, considered a fundamental personality trait of many entrepreneurs, has been shown to significantly influence entrepreneurs’ leadership and strategic decisions, yet it has been widely disregarded in the entrepreneurship literature. According to role congruity theory and expectancy violation theory, narcissism, a typical agentic characteristic, may exert a greater influence on the performance of female entrepreneurs than it does on their male counterparts since it is considered a gender-incongruent characteristic of women. This study examines the relationship between female entrepreneurs’ narcissism and new venture performance while also evaluating the contingent roles of gender discrimination and political connections in this relationship. Using a sample of 537 technology-based female entrepreneurs in China, we find that female entrepreneurs’ narcissism has an inverted U-shaped relationship with new venture performance, and we determine that this relationship is steeper for female entrepreneurs with strong political connections and low gender discrimination. Our findings contribute to the entrepreneurship literature by revealing the nonlinear relationship between entrepreneurs’ narcissism and new venture performance. Moreover, our results provide fine-grained insight into the contingent mechanisms of female gender discrimination and political connections, and how each one’s interaction with entrepreneurs’ narcissism can have profound effects on new venture performance.