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Reveillard, Johan Fredrik (2023) A qualitative study into the impact of leadership competencies on a start-up’s successful progression to scale-up. Masters thesis, Dublin, National College of Ireland.
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Abstract
Leadership competencies in start-ups are frequently discussed in research. There seems to be consensus that entrepreneurial leadership competencies are diverse and critical to start-ups. There is, however, little agreement on what competencies are required, and less so whether these competencies need to change as organisations change. This research seeks to examine the impact of leadership competencies on a firm’s transition from start-up to scale-up. It further seeks to examine whether competencies need to change during the transition, and whether the leadership needs to change for the organisation to successfully adapt to growth. To uncover the relationship between leadership competencies, their practitioners, and the growing organisation, qualitative research was conducted. The researcher performed semi-structured interviews with founders of Irish firms, selected through purposive sampling. The selection criteria involved candidates having successfully, or unsuccessfully, gone through a start-up to scale-up journey, and been instrumental in that journey. With a thematic analysis, interviews were coded and clustered, from where themes were developed, described, and ultimately reported. The researcher used the qualitative data analysis tools ATLAS.ti and NVivo to add rigour and reliability to the analysis.
This research uncovers that while leadership competencies are retrospectively considered critical by founders, they are not necessarily reflected on in the start-up phase, particularly not by first time founders. This contributes to misalignment in competencies available in the firm to successfully scale the business. In contrast to available studies, founders who repeated the entrepreneurial effort, capitalised significantly on learnings made in previous ventures. Repeat founders had a better understanding of what leadership competencies would be required during what stage of the new growth journey to scale successfully. The study also shows that founders with prior entrepreneurial experience deploy human capital throughout the leadership team. Unlike what is suggested in the literature, they have neither the ambition nor ability to possess all leadership competencies a firm needs to successfully grow to a scale-up state. The study also shows that early awareness and deployment of specific leadership competencies during the different growth stages, provides a stronger foundation for success.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Masters) |
|---|---|
| Supervisors: | Name Email Del Rosal, Victor UNSPECIFIED |
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management H Social Sciences > HM Sociology > Leadership H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management > Human Resource Management > Leadership H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > New Business Enterprises |
| Divisions: | School of Business > Master of Science in Management |
| Depositing User: | Tamara Malone |
| Date Deposited: | 02 Dec 2024 11:14 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Dec 2024 11:14 |
| URI: | https://norma.ncirl.ie/id/eprint/7218 |
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