Venture Capitalists' Introspection: A Comparison of "In Use" and "Espoused" Decision Policies
研究了风险投资家评估新创企业时，其声称的决策策略与实际使用的策略是否一致，发现两者存在显著差异，对依赖内省报告的研究提出质疑。
Many studies have investigated venture capitalists and the means by which they assess likely new ventures.(1) The majority of empirical research on venture capitalists' decision- making has produced lists of criteria that venture capitalists report they when evaluating new venture proposals (see, Tyebjee and Bruno 1981; 1984; Bruno and Tyebjee 1985; Gorman and Sahlman 1986; MacMillan, Siegel, and SubbaNarasimha 1985; MacMillan, Zemann, and SubbaNarasimha 1987). However, social judgment theorists suggest that espoused decision-making processes may be a less than accurate reflection of use decision-making processes (Priem 1992; Priem and Harrison 1994). Given this, prior research, which relies predominantly on the accuracy of venture capitalists' introspection, may not be valid. In this article, venture capitalists' decision-making is analyzed to determine the accuracy of their introspection. Research on the DecisionMaking of Venture Capitalists There is no well-integrated explanation of the criteria that venture capitalists to assess new venture performance (Sandberg 1986; Shepherd, Ettenson, and Crouch, in press), and there is still much to be learned about venture capitalists' assessment decisions (Hall and Hofer 1993). The methods used in previous studies typically ask venture capitalists to list and rank decision criteria based on these criteria's presumed affect on: (1) the investment decision (for example, Tyebjee and Bruno 1981; Tyebjee and Bruno 1984; MacMillan and SubbaNarasimha 1986); (2) the likelihood of success (for example, Kahn 1987; MacMillan, Zemann, and SubbaNarasimha 1987); and (3) the likelihood of failure (for example, Gorman and Sahlman 1986; Meyer, Zacharakis, and DeCastro 1993). The limitations of this research include problems of retrospective reporting (for example, Tyebjee and Bruno 1984), of questionnaire responses rather than evaluations (for example, MacMillan, Zemann, and SubbaNarasimha 1987; Robinson 1987), and biases and errors associated with self-reporting (Sandberg and Hofer 1987). Self-reporting tends to overstate the number of criteria actually used and to understate the weighting of the most important criteria compared to more sophisticated decision-making techniques (Stahl and Zimmerer 1984; Riquelme and Rickards 1992). Zacharakis and Meyer (1998) found that venture capitalists' actual decision policies explain more variance in new venture performance than do espoused policies. As the information a venture capitalist receives increases, the gap between espoused decision-making policies and use decision-making policies also increases. From their nonparametric analysis, Zacharakis and Meyer (1998) conclude that venture capitalists' understanding of their decision-making policies may be low. Tyebjee and Bruno (1984) found that venture capitalists' investment decisions can be predicted from the capitalists' perceptions of risk and return. Return is most often evaluated by venture capitalists in terms of profitability (Robinson 1987; Robinson and Pearce 1984; Roure and Keeley 1990); risk is usually assessed in terms of venture failure (Gorman and Sahlman 1986; Sandberg 1986). This study extends the work of Zacharakis and Meyer (1998) by investigating venture capitalists' introspection into their profitability assessments (one of venture capitalists' key perceptions from which investment decisions can be predicted [Tyebjee and Bruno 1984]) and through the of parametric statistics to determine the significance and strength of that introspection. Shepherd, Ettenson, and Crouch (in press) empirically tested a model of venture capitalists' decision-making which included the following strategy-related variables: industry-related competence, competitive rivalry, lead time, key success factor stability, educational capability, mimicry, scope, and timing. This model demonstrates both explanatory and predictive ability for venture capitalists' assessments of likely profitability, and is used here to investigate the following hypothesis regarding venture capitalists' introspection: Hypothesis: Venture capitalists' espoused decision-making policy is different from their use decisionmaking policy in their assessment of a new venture's likely profitability. …