1 s2.0 S0883902623000307 Main

Journal of Business Venturing 38 (2023) 106316
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Business Venturing

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jbusvent
Prêt-à-quitter: Career mobility and entrepreneurship in the global

high-end fashion industry
Stanislav D. Dobrev a, *, Kim Claes b, Frédéric Godart c
a
Lubar College of Business, University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, United States of America
b
SC Johnson College of Business, Cornell University, United States of America
c
INSEAD, France
A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T
Keywords: We test a general model of career mobility and entrepreneurship based on the premise that job
Careers transitions between organizations are influenced by the unique role of the organizational founder.
Sociology of entrepreneurship Three related ideas inform our inquiry. First, individuals in that role are endowed with the right
Organizational founders
to act as representatives of their organizations which increases commitment and deters external
Event history analysis
Archival data
mobility. Second, the founder role, because of its uniqueness, defines how entrepreneurs think of
themselves thus aligning person and position. Repeat entrepreneurship occurs because after a
founder leaves, this alignment is disrupted and the need to restore it leads to becoming a founder
again. Third, we see the founder role as imbued with charismatic authority. This creates an aura
of deference and a propensity to emulate the founder that inspires organizational members
working alongside the founder to themselves become entrepreneurs. We investigate these ideas
empirically in the context of the global high-end fashion industry through a research design that
allows us to compare leading designers’ career histories as both founders and members and their
transitions to and out of entrepreneurship.
Executive summary
Research that studies who becomes an entrepreneur offers explanations that are especially intuitive—people who start their own
business have the personal qualities, abilities, and experience conducive to becoming founders. Individual-level explanations for entry
to and exit from entrepreneurship leave two gaps of knowledge. First, the emphasis on stable—innate or socially acquired—founder
characteristics leaves out the dynamic, continually changing individual properties that are shaped by experience in organizations,
specifically by occupying certain organizational roles. For example, the propensity for future entrepreneurship of two equally gifted,
accomplished, risk-tolerant individuals, one of whom currently works as a founder and the other as a regular employee (i.e., member),
may not be the same. Similarly, even if the same two individuals are regular employees but one has prior founding experience while the
other one does not, their odds of starting a new venture may also differ. Second, while extant research convincingly demonstrates that
certain personological, experiential, and demographic characteristics can facilitate entrepreneurial transitions, it remains unclear
whether these same characteristics also do not prompt job transitions to regular employment. For example, while drive for success,
education level, or human and social capital may lead someone on a path to starting their own business, it is less clear whether these
same properties will not also propel the person to trade one job in regular employment for another. In other words, many existing
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: Dobrev@uwm.edu (S.D. Dobrev), kc2258@cornell.edu (K. Claes), Frederic.Godart@insead.edu (F. Godart).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2023.106316
Received 26 April 2022; Received in revised form 11 April 2023; Accepted 17 April 2023
Available online 22 July 2023
0883-9026/© 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
S.D. Dobrev et al. Journal of Business Venturing 38 (2023) 106316
accounts of entrepreneurship may in fact be reflecting general career staging and job-matching processes in the labor market that are
not unique to becoming a founder.
To address the first gap in the literature, we argue that one way to connect experience in organizations with varying propensity for
entrepreneurship is through the organizational role of the founder. This role is unique in three ways. First, individuals in that role are
endowed with the right to act as representatives of their organizations. Second, the founder role, because of its uniqueness, defines how
entrepreneurs think of themselves thus aligning person and position and shaping individual identities. Third, we see the founder role as
imbued with charismatic authority. This creates an aura of deference and a propensity to emulate the founder that inspires organi
zational members working alongside the founder in their organization.
To address the second gap, we employ a research design that considers the extended careers of all individuals in an industry
segment (luxury fashion designers), founders and members. This approach allows us to analyze job transitions to entrepreneurship and
to conventional employment in parallel over many decades and to single out mechanisms that drive one but not the other. The careers
approach also allows us to evaluate how entrepreneurial propensities change over time for the same individuals as they transition
between jobs as founders and regular employees. We develop and test a general model of career mobility and entrepreneurship based
on the premise that job transitions between organizations are influenced by the experience of individuals in organizations in founder
and member roles.
Our findings offer new insights to some vexing questions in entrepreneurship research: 1) when and why do founders leave, 2) who
are the serial founders, and 3) who becomes an entrepreneur. We find that: First, founders are less likely to leave the company they
founded than members because their commitment and attachment to their own firm is driven by the widely accepted and socially
validated role of the founder as the “face and voice” of the company. Second, most repeat entrepreneurship results not from the hyper-
energetic rush of founders to start one new venture right after the other, but as a return to entrepreneurship among former founders
who—after spells of regular employment—seek to realign how they are seen with how they see themselves. Founders continue to think
of themselves as founders even after they transition to regular employment. This self-identity conflicts with their new roles of regular
employees. Becoming founders again restores the fit between self- and social (role) identity. And third, the odds of transitioning to
entrepreneurship are influenced by a person’s experience as an employee of an organization where the original founder still works. The
charismatic influence of the founder is channeled through the willingness of employees to look up to and emulate the person who holds
the creative (and not just material) ownership of the organization.
In practical terms, our findings point, first, to the importance of separating person from position (i.e., organizational role). Second,
to encourage entrepreneurship, preparing people with the skills and knowledge to be successful founders is not enough. Broader career
management skills that raise awareness of the path-dependent nature of career-staging processes may be just as valuable. And third,
hiring managers should recognize the pronounced capacity for organizational commitment of former founders which may be trans
ferable to conventional employment with opportunity for intrapreneurship.
1. Introduction
In the early 1960s, Emmanuelle Khanh caused a stir on the elite Paris fashion scene by introducing soft, easy-to-wear designs for
professionally active women using innovative fabrics and contours (Romano, 2012). Her daring style helped usher in ready-to-wear
(prêt-à-porter) fashion in an industry thus far dominated by custom-made haute couture. Early in her fashion career, Khanh, along
with others, designed for Cacharel. But after a few years, she was ready to quit (prêt-à-quitter, the play of words in our title) and delve
into pursuing her own creative talents, ultimately founding a fashion house under her own name where she spent most of her fabled
career.
Not everyone working alongside Khanh at Cacharel proceeded to found their own fashion house; some designers stayed and some
moved to work for other established houses. This raises the general questions that motivate our empirical inquiry: Why do some people
become entrepreneurs while others, in similar circumstances, do not? Why do some entrepreneurs repeat a founding experience while
others do not? When and why do founders leave? Much earlier research has tackled some aspects of these questions (Burton et al.,
2002; Carroll and Mosakowski, 1987; Ding and Choi, 2011; Dobrev and Barnett, 2005; Folta et al., 2009; Freeman, 1986; Kacperczyk
and Younkin, 2017; Lazear, 2005b; Özcan and Reichstein, 2009; Ruef, 2010; Stuart and Ding, 2006; Stuart and Sorenson, 2003). The
novelty of our work is not in reformulating the questions but in the answers we provide. This novelty is twofold: First, substantively,
our inquiry uses the sociological lens of structural role theory (Nadel, 1957; Parsons, 1951) to draw attention to characteristics of the
founder’s role rather than individual characteristics of founders themselves. Structural role theory identifies equivalent positions in
social structure to define roles (Burt, 1982; White et al., 1976; Winship and Mandel, 1983), hence our use of the founder role as a
construct reflects the salience of the relationship of the founder with both internal and external audiences. This position-based
approach to defining the key features of roles leads us to cast the founder as charismatic leader (Weber, 1968) to internal peers, and
as organizational representative (Gould and Fernandez, 1989) to external constituents. Moreover, by tying normative influences and
identity formation to positions in social organization (White, 2008), the structural view of roles also underscores how role transitions
2
disrupt the cognitive and normative embeddedness of the person vacating the founder role, leading to misalignment between self- and
social identities (Goffman, 1952).
The second novelty of our work is our general approach to studying entrepreneurship (reflected in our research design and
empirical context). We study entrepreneurial transitions1 as part of a broad investigation of career dynamics because to understand
what makes transitions to entrepreneurial employment different, we need to compare them to transitions to conventional employment.
And the same mechanisms theorized to explain one need to also be tested as causal drivers for the other (Burton et al., 2016; Sorenson
and Stuart, 2008). Empirical research on entrepreneurship has come a long way with static and cross-sectional designs giving way to
dynamic analyses of multi-episode, event history data. Yet analyses covering both entrepreneurial and conventional employment that
allow us to model transitions to and out of entrepreneurship for the same individuals over time remain scant. Consider how even some
of the most impactful research on entrepreneurial transitions could benefit from the design framework we advocate and employ here:
Sørensen (2007), for example, convincingly demonstrates that bureaucratic organizations diminish their employees’ likelihood of
becoming founders but it remains unclear whether bureaucracy, through developed hierarchies and internal vacancy chains (Stewman
and Konda, 1983), acts as a draw for all employees thus deterring not just entrepreneurship but also regular turnover. In another
influential study, Kim et al. (2006) show compelling evidence that prior work/managerial experience shapes the likelihood of
entrepreneurship but their data do not allow to examine if such experience also matters for entrepreneurial exits, leaving open the
question of whether entrepreneurial careers (and not just entrepreneurial entry) are shaped by type of prior work experience. In her
lucid account relating social influence and entrepreneurship, Kacperczyk (2013) articulates the role of information transfer through
peer effects for becoming a founder but the extent to which such “flocking” effects also drive job transfers between existing organi
zations (Dobrev, 2005) remains unchecked. Similarly, Lazear’s (2004) well-received finding that specialization hampers entrepre
neurship could be a special case of a broader tendency for specialist employees not to turn over because specialization hampers
knowledge transfer (Fahrenkopf et al., 2020).2
We use a research design that allows us to examine job transitions to becoming a founder as part of a general model of career
mobility—a model that explicitly considers how the mechanisms behind existing theories apply not only to transitions to and out of
entrepreneurship but also to and out of conventional employment. The essence of a careers approach to entrepreneurship is that it
allows us to observe individual job transitions and the roles occupied by individuals in each job. We distinguish between two key roles:
founders (the person who alone or as part of a team founds the organization in which they contemporaneously work), and members3
(individuals who are employed by an organization founded by someone else). Observing these two roles and the individual’s job
transitions over time allow us to construct a simple two-by-two transition matrix with four distinct job transitions: current member to
future founder (i.e., transitions to entrepreneurship), current member to future member (i.e., general turnover between jobs in con
ventional employment), current founder to future member (i.e., exit from entrepreneurship), and current founder to future founder (i.
e., direct repeat entrepreneurship by way of an individual leaving the venture that they have founded to found another).4 With this
approach, founders and members are not only organizational roles that individuals occupy at any given point in their careers, but also
origin and destination states in job transitions. Moreover, the longitudinal nature of the data, which covers individuals’ employment
records over their careers, also allows us to construct measures of their prior job experience and the roles they have occupied in each
job in the past, including the role of a founder. This in turn makes it possible to “complicate” the four job transitions described above by
taking into account whether a current founder or a current member is a prior founder, that is, has started other ventures in the past and
how many. So we can model, for example, whether founding a new venture (transition to future founder either from current member or
from current founder) is influenced by prior experience as an entrepreneur that precedes the current job. As we will argue in our
theory, there is an important (and previously overlooked) difference between experience as a current founder leading to founder-to-
founder transitions (direct repeat entrepreneurship) vs past experience as a founder of a current member leading to member-to-founder
transitions (indirect repeat entrepreneurship).5 Our research design allows us to differentiate between the two.
The mechanics of what is analytically possible to evaluate through the lens of the careers approach lead to evaluating in more detail
the substantive mechanisms driving career transitions. Consider the panache that comes with the identity label “entrepreneur” and the
widespread social recognition, nearly reverence, for individual founders who are often lauded as wealth creators and visionaries
1
Consistent with the prior literature on entrepreneurship from the careers perspective (Özcan and Reichstein, 2009; Sørensen, 2007; Dobrev and
Barnett, 2005), we define transition to entrepreneurship as the job change process by which an individual, alone or as part of a team, creates a new
organization.
2
We summarize this and other influential entrepreneurship papers whose findings can be extended further by analyzing full career history data in
Table A1 in the Appendix.
3
We differentiate founders from members (rather than employees) to emphasize the generality of our conjectures and the applicability of our
theory beyond business firms to all kinds of organizations like political parties, social movements, street gangs and the like. All these organizations
have founders and members but not (necessarily) employees. In referring to “organizational members,” we follow a long sociological tradition
dating back to Herbert A. Simon that reflects a conviction that “there are a great many things that can be said about organizations in general,
without specification of the particular kind of organization under consideration.” (Simon, 1952:1130).
4
For simplicity, henceforth we occasionally drop the “current” and “future” qualifiers but in describing any transition, the origin state is the
current role and the destination state is the future role: e.g., (current) member to (future) founder, etc.
5
The transition matrix involving past, current, and future states of entrepreneurship is summarized in Table A2.
3
(Baumol, 1990; Lazear, 2005a; Shane and Khurana, 2003).6 In the backdrop of such eminent social accolades, we explore whether
founders are drawn to and reluctant to let go of being the public face of their company. Through the prism of social structure, the
founder role is partly that of a mediating broker (representative) between their firm and the outside world (Gould and Fernandez, 1989).
Importantly, this authority to represent is tacitly endorsed by the beliefs and expectations that the social audience attributes to the
founder role. In addressing the likelihood of founders to leave, we surmise that their external mobility is significantly deterred (i.e.,
reduced founder-to-founder and founder-to-member transition odds) by the organizational commitment arising from the authority to
represent inherent in the role.
We also revisit the phenomenon of repeat entrepreneurship and ask: how are the career trajectories of founders shaped by the fact
that being an entrepreneur is a significant part of their conception of self (Hoang and Gimeno, 2010)? Internalizing the role of the
founder means that when founders exit to conventional employment (i.e., experience founder-to-member job transitions), they will
struggle to adapt to their new role: while founders may hold on to their identity as founders, the reality of their new social context will
negate it. It is the urge to resolve this identity misalignment that leads to return to entrepreneurship. This suggests a different path to
repeat entrepreneurship, one that involves, first, a founder-to-member and then a member-to-founder transition. This is in stark
contrast to the imagery of the venture-hopping founder starting multiple ventures, one right after the other.
Finally, the public sentiment of reverence and admiration for the founder is just as pronounced among the internal audience, those
who work side by side with the founder. Embedded in the structure of social relations, the founder role entails charismatic authority
(Weber, 1968) that commands deference and emulation by rank-and-file members of the nascent organization. In this way, the founder
role not only affects founders’ own career mobility but also that of the regular members with whom they work. Under the general rubric
of ‘who becomes an entrepreneur,’ we explore one specific mechanism—whether working side by side with the firm’s founder leads
members to become founders.
2. Study context
In order to synthesize and test a career model of entrepreneurship, we need a setting where new ventures are relatively common
and considered to be part of personal career development at a field level. Creative industries offer such a setting (Bielby and Bielby,
1994; Cattani and Ferriani, 2008). Among them, the global high-end fashion industry affords this opportunity and is highly relevant for
several reasons. First, in high-end fashion, roles are deployed within organizations that are not temporary; this is different from cinema
or music where project teams are the norm (e.g., movie crews or bands) and permits conjecturing the effect of experience in orga
nizational roles on external mobility. The creative nature of the industry also conveniently combines with labor market dynamics akin
to those in high tech (Saxenian, 1996) or law (Phillips, 2002) where it is not uncommon for individuals to alternate (sometimes
repeatedly) conventional (i.e., working as members) and entrepreneurial (i.e., working as founders) employment. Second, for those
working in high-end fashion, entrepreneurship is a widespread aspiration. Most fashion designers strive to found their own fashion
house, and doing so is eased by surmountable startup costs and relatively low barriers to entry (Kawamura, 2018). Third, low fixed
costs also decrease the cost of exit so transitions from entrepreneurship to conventional employment are also frequent in this industry.
In fact, as we will elaborate below, it is primarily the social, and not the economic discourse, in which decisions to become and remain
a founder are immersed. A successful fashion house instantaneously transforms its founder into a celebrity and opens the doors to
social elite circles. In an industry of formidable egos where famed designers are iconized on par with famous artists and Hollywood
stars, the social perception of the founder is amplified (Godart et al., 2015).
In sum, we chose to study the global high-end fashion industry because it is a prototypical creative industry in which the roles of
entrepreneur (founder) and employee (member) are salient and routinely considered alternatives,. In this exclusive (and expensive)
segment of the fashion industry, creativity plays a central role in the success of firms producing clothing items (i.e., fashion houses)
(Doeringer and Crean, 2006). This is to be contrasted with the other (less costly and prestigious) segments of the industry such as fast
fashion (or even ultra-fast fashion) where producers take inspiration from high-end fashion and imitate their designs (Raustiala and
Sprigman, 2006).
Because high-end fashion generates creative designs that get imitated by other segments down the “fashion pyramid,” the in
dividuals in charge of the collections of high-end fashion houses—the creative directors—play a pivotal role in the success of their
firms, and have been diversely portrayed as charismatic “superstars” (Hoppe, 2020) or creative “geniuses” (McRobbie, 1998). Since
creative directors are so central to the industry, their mobility is critical to fashion houses and the luxury conglomerates which own
them, for example Paris-based LVMH and Kering. Thus, every mobility event of these influential and highly paid individuals is
meticulously monitored by industry stakeholders, from journalists to financial analysts. This careful attention happens because newly
appointed creative directors become the new “voice” and “face” of their new employer, representing them in the eyes of various
stakeholders (Peirson-Smith, 2013). It also happens because in many cases creative directors can decide to create their own brand
instead of simply working for someone else. Stories abound of fashion startups rising quickly up the ranks of global fashion and in fact
6
This broad social reverence for entrepreneurs, while prevalent in Western societies, is by no means universal across the globe. To the extent that
our theory builds on the taken-for-granted legitimacy of the founder role, it may not be applicable to societies where entrepreneurial activity is less
well regarded.
4
all powerful fashion brands bear the names of their founders, a feature unique to fashion: Dior, Chanel, Gucci—to name a few
—exemplify this phenomenon known as the “personification” of fashion (Godart, 2012).
Thus, when considering mobility, fashion designers can envision two seemingly appealing options: being an employee of a fashion
house (i.e., member) or establishing one’s own brand (i.e., founder). Importantly, in fashion, founders are designers who, by definition,
create their own organization and hire others to help them (such as assistant designers, merchandisers, and the usual corporate
functions we do not study per se in this research). Thus, founders in the fashion industry, like in many other industries such as high
tech, operate on their own will when creating a new organization (i.e., a fashion house). They may need additional funding to run
operations, but fashion is not an industry where big investments are necessary, and entry is relatively easy as illustrated by the case of
Calvin Klein who started his (namesake) house in 1968 with only $10,000 (Po, 2019). In that sense, unlike many other creative in
dustry contexts in which freelancers and contractors are central and create on behalf of others (Leung, 2014; O’Mahony and Bechky,
2006), in fashion, designers can, and do, easily become founders of autonomous organizations and create under their own name.7
Our intuitions about the founder-role based mechanisms that drive entrepreneurial career dynamics match well with the context of
the high-end fashion industry. For example, the notion of the founder as a representative is particularly salient, as is its preventive
impact on external mobility. In fashion, founders are constantly out in the press and other media to explain what their house stands for,
and how it adapts to changing trends. Commenting on why he decided not to join a big house and rather stay at his own namesake
house, French designer Simon Porte Jacquemus explained: “Five years ago Anna Wintour [editor-in-chief of Vogue] asked me if I
wanted to work for a big house … I said I have a big house. It’s called Jacquemus… The dream starts when you start dreaming” (Kim,
2022). The appeal of being a founder in fashion is very strong, beating the prospect of working for someone else’s big house.
This appeal not only pulls founders to remain at the helm of their firms but also, in the case of former founders, to pursue reentry to
founding (current member [who is former founder] to future founder transition). For example, German designer Jil Sander—who left
her house three times—commented: “The first time I left was difficult … But it was even more sad the second time.” Coming back the
third time, she said: “I’m so lucky to be able to return” (Thomas, 2012). Relatedly, parting ways with one’s own house is usually a very
tough event for founders in fashion, showing how decoupling the two identities—the role identity of the founder and the self-identity
of the person—can trigger a disruptive tumult and a strife to rebuild. For example, in 1999 French designer Hervé Léger was kicked out
of his own fashion house, an event that was described as a “nightmare” and that led Léger to go as far as to “fight legally to win back
[his] name to design under” (Lowthorpe, 1999).
Finally, the influence of founders on their employees is pronounced in this industry. Although there are many examples of founders
learning the ropes of fashion entrepreneurship while being employed, many accounts, like that of French fashion designer Yves Saint
Laurent, make it clear that the experience is about much more than just learning: In 1986, recounting how working side by side with
Christian Dior at his namesake house shaped who he is, Laurent remarked: “He taught me the essential … Then came other influences
that, because he had taught me the essential, blended into this essential and found it to be a wonderful and prolific terrain, the
necessary seeds that would allow me to assert myself, grow strong, blossom, and finally exude my own universe” (Musée Yves Saint
Laurent Paris, 2022).
We provide these examples in support of our theoretical conjectures at the onset because in the course of this research, it will prove
difficult to devise fine-grained measures of organizational representation and charismatic authority. The difficulty stems from the
conception of these constructs as structural properties of the role, rather than as individual characteristics. While one can design
instruments to survey respondents and assess their (reactions to) personal charisma or sense of representation, doing so to assess the
properties of an organizational role, especially over a long period of time, is elusive. The alternative, which we pursue here, is to
identify individuals in founder roles, gather enough variance among organizational roles, and assume that by selecting founder roles,
we are also identifying the roles that bestow to their occupants the right to represent and the structural charisma to influence others in
the organization.
3. Theory
3.1. Organizational roles and representativeness
Rooted in classic sociological role theory (Nadel, 1957; Parsons, 1951), our starting premise is that organizational roles correspond
to social positions with discernable patterns of behavior that are assumed and expected by both their occupants and other social
participants (White et al., 1976; Winship and Mandel, 1983). Norms and expectations tied to an organizational role emanate from both
formal and informal structures (Stryker and Statham, 1985), that is, they are shaped not just by position in the hierarchy but also by the
informal structure of relations within organizations, and more broadly, by the social legitimacy and institutionalization of a role (Katz
and Kahn, 1978). A key feature of organizational roles is the extent of representativeness afforded to its occupants (Dobrev and Barnett,
2005).
7
While there are freelancers in the fashion industry, they are never responsible for the collections that are shown in the catwalk. Rather, they
typically occupy auxiliary functions in design teams.
5
Being a representative is a special form of brokerage, a structural position of an actor connecting otherwise unconnected alters
(Burt, 2004; Fernandez and Gould, 1994; Fleming and Waguespack, 2007; Friedman and Podolny, 1992; Stovel and Shaw, 2012). In
the context of an organization, a representative connects organizational members with outsiders serving as a conduit of resources and
information (Fernandez and Gould, 1994). An organizational representative has the authority to speak on behalf of the organization, to
argue and defend its purpose and stated objectives, and to negotiate desirable exchanges. As with any other role feature, the extent of
representativeness in an organizational role hinges on both internal and external context, and on both formal and informal dynamics,
all of which combine to drive the institutionalization of normative expectations about a role. In our view, it is the combination of
internal authority (formal and informal) and external legitimacy (taken-for-granted assumptions about entrepreneurs) that imbues the
founder role with the highest extent of organizational representativeness.
Much like the attorney of the accused, the politician elected by a constituency, or the guardian of a minor, the founder’s role is
vested with the undisputed right to represent their organization (Dobrev and Barnett, 2005; Ruef, 2010). By virtue of its formal design,
which allocates decision rights and specifies roles and responsibilities, organizational structure imbues positions with varying degree
of representativeness.8 But while function and hierarchy may substantiate (to a certain extent) the representative function of any
organizational role, a key difference is that the founder’s right to represent is also broadly legitimated and socially endorsed.
3.2. Founder roles, representativeness and external mobility
The unquestioned right to represent not only vests representatives with formal and informal influence over peers but also empowers
their initiative thereby generating a sense of belonging and attachment to the organization. Working to synchronize individual and
collective goals, representation forges an alignment of norms and values that ultimately drives commitment and serves as a powerful
deterrent to external mobility. The theoretical link between the role of the representative and organizational commitment goes
through organizational identification (Dutton et al., 1994). To the extent that identifying with one’s employer is a special case of the
psychological tendency for a person’s self-concept to reflect their membership in different social groups (Stryker and Serpe, 1994), and
to the extent that occupying a position with leeway for organizational representation amplifies the sense of membership in the or
ganization, representatives are more likely to identify with their organizations than other members.
It is being in the role of a representative that makes brokerage between insiders and outsiders possible rather than sheer mem
bership in the organization. Enacting that role, carrying out its prerogatives, engaging others through it, eventually raises identifi
cation with its essential features. As a process of self-definition (Brown, 1969), identification with the role shapes the definition of self
and gives rise to organizational attachment (Failla et al., 2017). By this view, attachment results not just from how well certain
organizational characteristics match with personal values or preferences (O’Reilly and Chatman, 1986), but also from the occupancy of
a role whose content (i.e., to represent) invokes and promotes identification with the entire organization. The origin of commitment
thus lies in the cognitive link between person and organizational role (Stryker and Serpe, 1982).
Overall, while many different reasons may account for a founder’s pull to remain with their firm, our theory emphasizes the draw of
occupying a role of a representative which is most strongly associated with the founder role. And while all representatives are prone to
develop a sense of organizational belonging and identification, for founders, the defining features of their role imprint into their own
identities, making them measurably more committed to their organizations than members and less likely to pursue external mobility of
any kind, be it to conventional employment (founder-to-member transitions) or to founding another venture (founder-to-founder
transitions).9
H1. Representativeness in the role of current founders decreases external mobility to entrepreneurship (i.e., founder-to-founder
transitions) and to conventional employment (i.e., founder-to-member transitions) more strongly than does representativeness in
the role of current members.
3.3. Founder experience and external mobility
We surmise that representativeness drives commitment and deters external mobility even when it involves transitions to direct
repeat entrepreneurship. This idea challenges the notion, popular among some analysts, that entrepreneurship is almost exclusively
the works of individuals who are particularly gifted at it (MacMillan, 1986; McGrath and MacMillan, 2000). This notion emphasizes
the distinctive personal characteristics (like drive for success and risk-taking propensity) that make up the profile of a person prone to
engage in entrepreneurship time and again (Halaby, 2003; McClelland, 1961), thereby producing serial entrepreneurs. The structural
8
The extent of representativeness in any organizational role is partly determined by the formal decision rights allocated to its position (a CEO has
the authority to negotiate on behalf of the organization), and by the functional responsibilities it entails (a marketing employee’s job is to
communicate outside of the firm’s boundaries).
9
By jointly specifying a lower likelihood of founder-to-founder and founder-to-member transitions, we offer an alternative explanation to the
commonly cited reasons for founder exit like loss of control and pursuit of new opportunities—after all, if these reasons primarily accounted for
founders’ departures from their ventures, the transition to direct repeat founding (founder to founder) would not be stifled as control and pursuit of
creative opportunity are endemic to the founder role.
6
approach we advocate here points in a different direction by zeroing in not on characteristics of the founders but on properties of the
organizational role (e.g., representativeness) and suggests that external mobility of any kind (including direct repeat entrepreneurship)
is lower for current founders. At the same time, our model must account for the well documented fact that many entrepreneurs create
more than a single startup (Hyytinen and Ilmakunnas, 2007). Below we expand on the idea that a founder-to-member transition
produces cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957) between internal conceptions of self and the reality of the new role (Gordon, 1976).
And the need to resolve that friction is what pushes current members who are former founders to indirect repeat entrepreneurship.
We argued that representativeness in the founder role engrains in individuals’ own conception of self. Research also shows that
people are motivated to maintain their social identity, especially a positively valued one (Petriglieri, 2011), thus ensuring its alignment
with individual identity. The social identity of a founder imprints in perceptions of self and becomes an integral part of self-identity.
And self-identity is not merely a sum of one’s personal characteristics but instead a reflexive evaluation of one’s history and context
(Giddens, 1991: 53). Upon leaving their venture, a transition to conventional employment abruptly strips the founder’s social identity
and produces a cognitive disjuncture between one’s perceptions of self and the new role of a (regular) member in another organization
(Feng et al., 2022; Hoang and Gimeno, 2010). This not only makes current founders generally unlikely to depart (as per H1), but it also
makes former founders (who are current members) particularly drawn to becoming founders again. While remaining in one’s own
company allows a current founder to maintain their social identity, returning to entrepreneurship makes it possible for a current
member who is a former founder to restore that identity. This reasoning agrees with research on role conflict, particularly with those
who view it not as resulting from the incompatible demands of simultaneous roles, but as a product of intertemporal role transitions
where the old role is characterized by high levels of attachment (Van De Vliert, 1984).
An exit from entrepreneurship thus produces an identity rift: the founder role identity is taken away but the person’s own
conception of self, their individual identity as a founder, lingers on (Dobrev and Barnett, 2005). Simply put, founders continue to think
of themselves as founders even when they no longer occupy that role (Obodaru, 2017). Self-identities are inflexible precisely because
they reflect one’s subjective interpretation of flow and consistency between past and present: “Self-identity has continuity—that is, it
cannot easily be completely changed at will—but that continuity is only a product of the person’s reflexive beliefs about their own
biography” (Giddens, 1991: 53). And it takes time to alter internal beliefs—what Goffman (1952) referred to as a “cooling out” period
during which internal and external identities struggle and compete. Seeking to resolve this external-internal identity rift pushes current
members with prior founding experience to repeat entrepreneurship. Moreover, the greater the prior founding experience, the more
deeply ingrained the individual identity of a founder becomes and the greater the likelihood to attempt to recreate it grows.
Overall, by the logic of our argument, repeat entrepreneurship mostly results from the effort of former (but not current) founders to
restore the unison between self-identity and organizational role. This implies that members with prior founding experience will be
more likely to transition back to entrepreneurship than those who currently are founders or who have never been founders before since
neither of these categories are at risk of experiencing a “founder vs member” role-based identity rift.
H2. Experience as prior founder makes current members more likely than current founders or current members without such
experience to transition to entrepreneurship.
3.4. Founder’s charismatic authority and external mobility
Modern formal organizations rely on bureaucratic authority to govern themselves (Weber, 1968). Fluid, still evolving new ventures
in their infancy lack established formal structures and instead rely on the charismatic authority of their founders (Dobrev and Barnett,
2005). This does not mean that all, or even most founders possess personal charisma. Instead, charisma is attributed to the founder’s
role, and is broadly institutionalized and legitimated. It elicits respect and deference and serves to induce consensus in the absence of a
developed formal hierarchy. Recognition of the founder’s accomplishment and ownership of the creative idea that gave birth to the
organization legitimates the founder’s authority, a core feature of which is the right to speak for and on behalf of the organization.
Although the study of charisma originated with Weber’s (1968) structural approach to charisma as a source of authority over others
and thus a feature of the relations among social actors (i.e., social structure) (Lepsius, 2017), subsequent research transformed Weber’s
original ideas by developing theories that focus on charisma as an individual characteristic of an effective leader (Conger, 1989;
Shamir et al., 1998). Returning to the roots of the theory of charismatic authority, we focus on the observation that initially engaged
Weber—why social actors are willing, without the threat of force or fear of punishment, to defer to the authority of a person they
consider in possession of a personal gift or a special ability. The focus then is not on whether an individual is charismatic or not, but on
whether others perceive that individual as such and are willing to abide by their authority. Consider the leader of a religious cult
prophesizing a doomsday ideology. For most, it defies reason that such a diabolical individual possesses a personal gift or special
ability. Yet, for his followers who voluntarily surrender their free will to him, he is a prophet. The key point in the structural rendering
of charisma is that it turns on the willingness of the disciples to follow a leader they consider charismatic, not on whether that leader is
actually charismatic or not. This view is akin to the sociological insight on social status where the crux falls not on the special qualities
and abilities of high status actors but on the acquiescence of those below them in the status hierarchy who accept the status ordering
and defer to those at the top (Sauder et al., 2012).
7
By this argument, studying entrepreneurship provides an opportunity to examine charisma as a property not only of individuals but
of social structure. Although personal charisma is undeniably important and consequential for effective entrepreneurial leadership, it
is a different argument: the founder role itself is imbued with perceived deference, respect, and admiration, irrespective of the personal
qualities of the actor occupying it. The same social expectations that grant founders the authority to represent the organization
externally, also grant them the authority to lead and be trusted as a leader. Charismatic authority turns founders into mentors and role
models, and it turns members into founders. It has been argued that working side by side with former founders affords a chance to learn
about the pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunities, how to make the most of them, how to prepare for the inherent challenges, and how
to handle the perils including failure (Nanda and Sørensen, 2010). No doubt this is true. But while any current member with prior
founding experience can be a source of learning, the willingness to learn, to submit oneself to the lessons of another’s experience, to see
them as valuable, comes from the charismatic authority vested in the founder’s role. That is, a person with the same entrepreneurial
experience and knowledge to share is more influential when occupying a founder role than a member role.
Whether directly acknowledged as charismatic or veiled in the nebula of intangibles like “essence,” (see the quote by Yves Saint
Laurent above), the uniqueness of the founder role in the context of their organization manifests in the increased propensity of those
around them to themselves aspire to become entrepreneurs. The charismatic authority of the founder turns members into disciple-like
peers open to absorb and emulate (Stuart and Sorenson, 2003). Working side-by-side to a current founder as a regular employee in their
organization thus increases the chances of entrepreneurship (i.e., member-to-founder transition).
H3. Current members working alongside their organization’s founder(s) are more likely to transition to entrepreneurship (i.e.,
experience a member-to-founder transition) than current members working for organizations whose founders have left.
3.5. Summary
The key tenets of the structural model theorized above10 propose new answers to some vexing questions in the entrepreneurship
literature: Why do founders stay with their ventures (the draw of the representative aspect of a founder’s role), what explains repeat
entrepreneurship (the drive of former founders to realign organizational roles and self-identities), and what drives transitions to
entrepreneurship (the effect on members of the charismatic authority inherent in the founder’s role). While our inquiry mostly
complements and adds empirical rigor to existing theories of entrepreneurship, it is important to ascertain that the suppositions we put
forth above are not easily ruled out by alternative explanations.
A plausible empirical model of entrepreneurial careers must allow for the same mechanisms affecting transitions to entrepre
neurship to display effects that are consistent with expectations based on the same mechanisms in transitions to non-entrepreneurship;
they should also apply to both founders and members at risk of external mobility. In the empirical investigation that follows, we
explore multiple alternative mechanisms that could be at play in addition to, or instead of the founder role considerations that motivate
our research. Faced with the aforementioned measurement constraints, our analytical strategy is to come up with as many different
indirect ways to test for the relationships implied by our theorizing as meaningfully possible.
4. Data and method
4.1. Data sources and structure
We use a novel, comprehensive dataset of all job transitions of “key” fashion designers in the global high-end fashion industry
between 1945 and 2010. We started in 1945 because it marks the rebirth of the global fashion industry after World War Two (Steele,
2017). Focusing on key employee mobility is standard in management research to study core organizational phenomena such as
routine transfer (Aime et al., 2010), inter-organizational affiliations (Roberts et al., 2011), or status dynamics (Rider and Tan, 2015)
not only because these employees lead others and are imitated by them, but also because better data are available about them. The
“key” designers, like for example the “key personnel” studied by Aime et al. (2010) in the National Football League (NFL) (i.e. coaches
in that study), are those who have had a noticeable impact on the industry and the opportunity to impact its development, thus leaving
a trace in archives. It is the inherent creativity (i.e. whether they are novel and useful) of cultural products like fashion designs that
audiences judge first and foremost (Godart et al., 2015). The key designers that we focus on here are the ones who have yielded these
creative innovations over the course of the industry.
We used Vogue fashion show reports from 1945 to 2010 to identify these fashion designers.11 Vogue fashion reports systematically
identify, unambiguously, the key designers in charge of creating the collections. Then, using this list of names and standard fashion
encyclopedias (Price Alford and Stegemeyer, 2014; Vergani, 2010) we followed the procedure detailed by Godart, Shipilov, and Claes
(2014, p. 386) and reconstructed from their start the careers of those who have participated in at least one fashion show since 1945 in
the main fashion capitals of the world: Paris, New York, Milan, and London. These fashion capitals are—at least for the period we
10
Fig. A1 in the Appendix presents a conceptual summary of our model.
11
Examples of our data sources are presented in Figs. A2 and A3 in the Online Appendix.
8
cover—the undisputed center of high-end fashion with institutional schedules (Breward and Gilbert, 2006), and even represent in
some cases models emulated by other countries globally (Djelic and Ainamo, 1999). While there is a fashion industry outside of these
capitals, and indeed other fashion capitals (such as Madrid or Mumbai), these four capitals constitute a league of their own not unlike
the NFL in American football. Although there are professional football teams outside of the NFL, many academic studies (e.g., Allen
et al., 2022) focus on the NFL because it constitutes the top of the sport. Once a designer is identified, we trace back the start of their
career which predates the time of their first fashion show reported in Vogue. So, the earliest career year on record in our data is 1929,
and the observation window closes in 2010. Vogue is widely recognized by management scholars as the most reliable source on the
global high end fashion industry and it is also exhaustive in the sense that all fashion shows of high-end fashion houses are reviewed
there (Godart et al., 2022; Kim and Kim, 2022). Our study is distinctive because all previous studies (e.g., Godart et al., 2022; Kim and
Kim, 2022) looked at time periods after 2000 whereas we looked at a much longer period starting in 1945. This is where relying on
Vogue as a primary data source becomes even more relevant as it is the only continuous source of industry data, providing consistency
of observations and eliminating possible selection bias.
The organizations between which designers move jobs are the houses in the high-end of the fashion industry that produce apparel
under a certain brand. The fashion industry has undergone significant structural and institutional changes over the course of our
observation for which we account (see variables below). For example, although fashion houses have long been independent, starting in
the late 20th century, big conglomerates have emerged and started acquiring fashion houses, letting them be creatively independent
but constraining mobility (Barkey and Godart, 2013). In addition, because what constitutes “fashion” has changed over the years, we
focus on the high-end, luxury segment which has remained the only stable segment of the industry (Crane, 2000). So, for example we
exclude “fast fashion” brands like Zara and H&M which have emerged later on and which, unlike the population we study, do not rely
on the creativity of fashion designers for their success but instead pursue a fast second-to-market strategy.
We constructed an event history dataset at the designer-fashion house-year level; that is, we coded an annual job spell corre
sponding to each job held by each designer for every year they were active in the industry, with separate spells for years in which a
designer designed for additional brands. Following our methodology, we identified 740 designers and 753 fashion houses for a total of
17,572 unique year-designer-fashion house records (or spells) ranging from 1929 to 2010 based on Vogue reports published between
1945 and 2010.
4.2. Variables
4.2.1. Dependent variable

In an event history specification, the dependent variable is the rate of occurrence of the event of interest. In our study we model the
rate of designers’ job transitions between fashion houses. We distinguish two destination states: taking on a regular job in an estab
lished fashion house (transition to member) and founding a new fashion house (transition to founder). Exact information on the timing of
the transitions is not available; instead, we are able to record change in employment between two consecutive annual spells. We follow
Petersen’s (1991) recommendation and assume that the transition occurred at the end of the annual spell preceding the spell with the
new job. In some models, we use the entire sample to contrast organizational founders and members. In others, we use one of two
origin states—members or founders—to tease out specific mechanisms. This allows us to model four distinct transition rates: member-
to-founder (N = 232), founder-to-founder (N = 82), member-to-member (N = 421), and founder-to-member (N = 141). In total, we
recorded 876 transition events of which 314 lead to entrepreneurship (transition to founder) and 562 lead to conventional employment
(transition to member).
4.2.2. Independent variables

To test H1, we used the Vogue Archive available via ProQuest. In this archive, each Vogue issue from its inception in 1892 to date
has been digitized and it tags, among other things, fashion designers and fashion houses throughout articles. Using the advanced search
feature, we retrieved the number of articles mentioning each fashion designer and each fashion house of our population over our
timeframe. Some of these articles mention the designer or the house alone and some mention them together. For each fashion designer
in each year, we constructed a variable named Representative which counts the number of articles where a designer is co-mentioned
with the fashion house they work at divided by all the articles mentioning that fashion house. Representative is thus a ratio mea
sure between zero and one which increases as the designer is co-mentioned more with their fashion house. For instance, for Tom Ford
and Gucci in 1995, the ratio is 0.75 as 75 % of the articles mentioning Gucci also mention Tom Ford as its creative director. Using our
career data, we also coded indicator variables for whether a designer was a Founder or a Member in the organization where they worked
in any given year. We have multiple observation records (or spells) per designer in our data, with each spell corresponding to a job the
designer held in a given year. The variable founder equals 1 for a designer who in the current record/spell year works in the fashion
house that he founded. Analogously, the variable member equals 1 for a designer who in the current record/spell year works in a
fashion house founded by someone else. To test H1, we used the founder and member indicators to further split the Representative
9
variable between founders and members, hence the Founder (Member) representative variables take the value of the Representative
variable if in the current record/spell year, the designer is a founder (member), else zero.
To test H2, we constructed the variable Prior founder experience which counts, for each designer, the number of fashion houses that
they have previously founded up to the current spell. This was constructed using the complete career data we obtained from the fashion
sources mentioned above. Coding founder experience as a continuous count variable (as opposed to a simple yes/no indicator variable)
allows us to more precisely test the logic of H2 which claims that the self-identification with the founder role increases and gradually
imprints into conceptions of self with each additional founding experience. To test H3, we constructed Working with a founder. It is an
indicator variable that equals 1 when a focal designer works in a fashion house where at least one of that organization’s founders is still
contemporaneously employed (for example, Yves Saint Laurent working with Christian Dior in the latter’s eponymous fashion house,
as illustrated above). Consistent with our theory, working with a founder thus only captures a co-worker relationship with the founder of
the organization where a focal designer works, not with a former founder of any other organization.12 If a fashion designer is a founder
himself, this variable equals 1 only in cases in which the fashion house was originally founded by multiple founders, and if at least one
of the other founders works in the same fashion house concurrently with the focal founder during a specific year. In other words, at least
two of the original founders must still be working in the organization for either of them to be coded as working with a founder in the focal
record/spell year. Thus defined, the variable captures the different meaning of working with a founder for members and for founders.
Our prediction in H3 relates specifically to the effect of working with a founder for members and it will be tested on the data subset of
members only. On the other hand, founders working with another founder suggests an altogether different dynamic related to working
as part of a founding team and this effect will be estimated separately only on the subset of founders.
4.2.3. Control variables

At the individual (designer) level, in addition to fashion designer age which is captured through the exponential constants in the
event history model (see below), we also control for gender (Female) because prior research has documented extensively the different
job-changing propensities of men and women (Barnett et al., 2000; Castilla, 2008). A pattern unique to the fashion industry is that
some designers can be invited to design for brands not owned by the fashion house in which they work. When this occurs a dummy
variable (Design for multiple brands) equals 1. We also control for Number of jobs to date which counts the total number of jobs the focal
fashion designer has had in the fashion industry prior to their current job. Use of this variable is motivated by the finding that
interorganizational mobility increases with the number of prior job changes (Dobrev and Merluzzi, 2018).
At the organizational level, we measure Fashion House Size as the number of designers employed at the current time. This is an
important control given the theoretical debate about the “small firm” effect in entrepreneurial transitions (Elfenbein et al., 2010). We
also control for Fashion House Age because prior research finds that it not only drives increasing levels of bureaucratization but that
interpreting the effect of organizational size is incomplete if age is excluded from models of external mobility (Dobrev, 2012). To
control for market power, we used an indicator variable to identify fashion houses that belonged to a Conglomerate. We manually
checked all fashion houses in our dataset to identity whether they were acquired, by whom, and when. Two independent coders used
Factiva (the Dow Jones affiliated global news provider: https://www.dowjones.com/professional/factiva/) to track each house’s
history and crosschecked all information (only information reported by at least two different news sources was validated). Finally, to
account for fashion house performance which may shape interorganizational mobility, we included a Number of awards measure
counting the cumulative number of industry awards the fashion house for which a designer currently works has received to date.
Following various sources (Godart et al., 2014) we included the awards granted by the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA)
and the British Fashion Council (BFC) because they are the only accolades that recognize designers internationally.
At the industry level, we controlled for the Density of fashion houses as the number of houses in the country in which a designer is
employed in the current spell to account for variation in the opportunity structure of the labor market. We also ran the analyses
presented below with additional macro-level controls for fashion house location in one of the four major “fashion countries” (France,
Italy, UK, and the U.S.) and period effects, defined following Godart (2012). Neither of these controls added explanatory power to our
models nor had any effect on our results so we excluded them from the final models for parsimony considerations.13 To make in
terpretations of causality plausible, all time-varying covariates are lagged by one yearly observation.
4.3. Method
We analyzed the data with an event-history model where an individual is at risk of changing jobs between organizations each year
in which they are working in a fashion house. We modeled the instantaneous hazard rate (Blossfeld, 2001; Hannan and Tuma, 1984) of
firm-to-firm job transitions and censored other exit events like career hiatus or retirement.14 We used fashion designer age (μ)
measured in years and ranging from 14 to 97 in our sample, as the time clock. In labor economics analyses of turnover, age is often
12
We do construct a separate working with an ex-founder variable later in the robustness checks to tease out the structural charisma from the
learning from founders effect on transitions. Please refer to Table 8 below.
13
The results of these models are presented in Tables A8 and A16 in the Online Appendix.
14
If a designer reappears in the data following a hiatus, we use the values of the individual-level independent variables from the last year of
industry employment, but we update their age and industry level variables contemporaneously. This coding strategy makes sense because these
individual-level variables reflect the overall career experience of the designer in the industry up to the point of reentry from hiatus. Controlling for
experiencing a career hiatus does not alter our main effects, as the results in Table A7 in the Online Appendix demonstrate.
10
S.D. Dobrev et al.
Table 1
Descriptive statistics and correlations.
Variables Mean S.D. Min Max 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

1 Fashion designer age 43.42 14.57 14 97
2 Female 0.34 0.47 0 1 0.07
3 Design for multiple brands 0.03 0.16 0 1 -0.07 -0.08
4 Number of jobs to date 1.07 1.57 0 10 0.03 -0.22 0.31
5 Fashion house size 1.51 0.81 1 6 -0.21 -0.09 0.08 0.01
6 Fashion house age 21.62 23.83 0 237 0.28 -0.09 0.06 0.10 0.10
7 Conglomerate 0.06 0.23 0 1 -0.02 -0.03 0.07 0.13 0.09 0.19
8 Number of awards 0.59 1.69 0 16 0.04 -0.07 0.03 0.11 0.21 0.13 0.24
11
9 Density of fashion houses 65.43 41.14 1 175 0.00 0.07 -0.03 0.09 -0.03 -0.03 0.07 0.21
10 Representative 0.15 0.33 0 1 0.01 0.03 -0.04 0.10 -0.07 -0.08 0.10 0.10 0.16
11 Founder representative 0.14 0.32 0 1 0.02 0.04 -0.04 0.06 -0.08 -0.16 0.03 0.08 0.17 0.94
12 Member representative 0.02 0.11 0 1 -0.03 -0.02 0.01 0.12 0.02 0.23 0.22 0.07 0.00 0.26 -0.07
13 Member 0.28 0.45 0 1 -0.31 -0.13 0.18 0.15 0.40 0.45 0.17 0.16 -0.07 -0.17 -0.26 0.26
14 Prior founder experience 0.86 0.53 0 4 0.30 0.11 -0.01 0.08 -0.33 -0.31 -0.08 -0.13 0.09 0.13 0.19 -0.16 -0.74
15 Working with a founder 0.21 0.41 0 1 -0.27 -0.02 0.04 -0.07 0.58 -0.12 0.00 0.05 0.01 -0.11 -0.10 -0.04 0.29 -0.26
16 Working with an ex-founder 0.90 0.29 0 1 0.02 -0.06 0.05 0.06 0.38 0.27 0.17 0.17 0.01 0.04 0.01 0.09 0.19 -0.11 -0.16
N = 17,572

treated as a proxy for labor market experience, and concomitant to the accumulation of human capital (Becker, 1962) hence a strong
predictor of mobility. Specific to entrepreneurial transitions is the finding that the hazard decreases with age, interpreted as increasing
risk aversion (Carroll and Mosakowski, 1987; Dobrev and Barnett, 2005). An informed assumption about the distribution of events
over the individuals’ life-course makes the frequently used Cox model less appropriate than a model that allows us to estimate the
baseline rate as a function of individual age.15
We used Stata 16 to estimate piecewise-exponential models in which the breakpoints for the interval “age pieces” are set as: 0 ≤ τ1
≤ τ2 ≤ … ≤ τp. With the assumption that τp+1 = + ∞, there are P time intervals: Ip = {μ | τp ≤ μ ≤ τp+1} where p = 1, …,P. This
specification models the transition rate as constant within each interval (or age piece) but allows it to vary across intervals. Based on
assessing model fit of different breakpoints and the distribution of transitions, we chose to split fashion designer age into three in
tervals: μ < 35, 35 ≤ μ < 50, and μ ≥ 50. The models we estimated have the general form:
( ) ( )b ( ) ( )
rj μj = rj μj exp kp exp βj Xj , μ ∈ Ip ,
where rj(μj) is the instantaneous job transition rate (to becoming a founder or to conventional employment) for fashion designer j, μ j is
j’s current age, rj(μ j)b is j’s baseline transition rate estimated as a function of observables, kp represents a set of age-specific effects, Xj
contains the set of independent variables associated with our conjectures and βi are their respective coefficients to be estimated.
5. Results
Descriptive statistics and correlations are presented in Table 1 and provide an overview of our data at the spell (person-job-year)
level. The average fashion designer observation in our data is for a 43-year-old male (66 %) working the second job of their career. The
average observation is for a 22-year-old fashion house that does not belong to a conglomerate. Confirming the high frequency of
entrepreneurship in the industry, 72 % of the records correspond to the career spells of founders, and 21 % refer to cases of designers
working side by side with a founder. Clearly, as intended, the designers we study comprise a highly dynamic, entrepreneurially in
clined population. The correlation matrix does not reveal any collinearity concerns and this was confirmed by a VIF analysis which
revealed that all independent and control variables in our analysis have VIF values well below the conventional threshold of 10.16
We present the results from the event history analyses in Tables 2 through 8. Table 2 contains two series of models, one for
transitions to entrepreneurship (transitions to founder, left side) and one for transitions to conventional employment (transitions to
member, right side). The first models in each series (models 2.1 and 2.4) are baselines that reveal some similarities between the two
transitions (propensity to change jobs declines with fashion designer age, positive fashion house age and size dependence in transi
tions, positive effect of number of prior jobs) but also some differences (women are less likely than men to move to a regular job
(transition to member), while designing for multiple brands and having received awards increases the transition to conventional
employment—that is, the transition to member). Models 2.2 and 2.5 introduce the measure of representativeness without differen
tiating between roles. Both coefficients are negative and significant suggesting that transitions to any job become less likely as the level
of representativeness increases. In the third model of each set (Models 2.3 and 2.6) we differentiate representativeness based on
organizational role and split the measure into founder representative and member representative. The founder representative effect is
negative and significant in both transitions while the member representative effect is not significant: representativeness only reduces
the external mobility of founders. Based on the estimates, if the representativeness score increases from 0.5 to 0.75 (that is, if a founder
goes from being co-mentioned with their house 50 out of 100 times to being co-mentioned 75 out of 100 times), the hazard of
transitioning to another founding job (founder to founder) decreases from 0.512 (exp− 1.337*0.5) to 0.367 (exp− 1.337*0.75). Analogously,
in the same scenario the hazard of transitioning to a regular job (founder to member) decreases from 0.830 (exp− 0.372*0.5) to 0.757
(exp− 0.372*0.75). In combination, the results in Model 2.3 and Model 2.6 offer support for H1.
We next turn to testing H2 which predicted that members with founding experience are more likely to transition to entrepre
neurship than either founders or members without such experience. Table 3 presents a series of models estimating transitions to
entrepreneurship among the full set of designers in our data. The baseline model 3.1 shows a significant positive effect of firm density
suggesting that job transitions are facilitated by an increased availability of jobs and a rising competition for human resources among
fashion houses. That model also includes an indicator variable for member roles, the estimated effect for which is positive and highly
significant: the likelihood of member-to-founder transitions is significantly greater than the likelihood of a founder-to-founder tran
sition, a finding consistent with H1 and the conjecture that representativeness in the founder role deters any external mobility for
founders including direct repeat entrepreneurship—leaving to found another venture while still employed as a founder (founder-to-
founder transitions).
The following model in Table 3 (Model 3.2) introduces the effect of founder experience on subsequent entrepreneurial transitions;
the estimate is positive and significant, consistent with earlier research documenting the phenomenon of repeat entrepreneurship. We
15
As a robustness check, we re-estimated all models presented below with Cox “shared frailty” estimates grouped at the designer level. This further
helps to minimize concerns about stable person-level differences. All results held. Please refer to Table A15 in the Online Appendix.
16
Table A14 in the Online Appendix contains the VIF values of all variables entered in our models.
12
S.D. Dobrev et al.
Table 2
Transitions to founder and transitions to member among elite fashion designers.
Transitions to Founder Transitions to Member

Model 2.1 Model 2.2 Model 2.3 Model 2.4 Model 2.5 Model 2.6
Fashion designer age:

< 35 -4.515*** (0.151) -4.450*** (0.149) -4.447*** (0.149) -3.758*** (0.146) -3.728*** (0.145) -3.729*** (0.145)
35 ≤ < 50 -5.419*** (0.179) -5.285*** (0.180) -5.282*** (0.180) -4.768*** (0.154) -4.709*** (0.155) -4.710*** (0.155)
≥ 50 -6.376*** (0.265) -6.278*** (0.263) -6.261*** (0.262) -6.358*** (0.233) -6.317*** (0.232) -6.321*** (0.232)
Female 0.052 (0.126) 0.058 (0.127) 0.056 (0.127) -0.335** (0.117) -0.333** (0.117) -0.333** (0.118)
Design for mult. brands -0.065 (0.252) -0.134 (0.260) -0.122 (0.256) 0.706*** (0.135) 0.682*** (0.140) 0.679*** (0.142)
Number of jobs to date 0.188*** (0.040) 0.198*** (0.039) 0.195*** (0.040) 0.203*** (0.045) 0.206*** (0.045) 0.207*** (0.044)
Fashion house size 0.361*** (0.044) 0.340*** (0.045) 0.340*** (0.045) 0.359*** (0.034) 0.350*** (0.034) 0.350*** (0.034)
Fashion house age 0.005** (0.002) 0.004** (0.002) 0.004* (0.002) 0.005*** (0.001) 0.004*** (0.001) 0.005*** (0.001)
Conglomerate 0.049 (0.201) 0.127 (0.201) 0.098 (0.209) -0.052 (0.145) -0.026 (0.145) -0.019 (0.147)
13
Number of awards 0.016 (0.026) 0.014 (0.026) 0.014 (0.026) 0.045* (0.022) 0.044 (0.023) 0.044 (0.023)
Density of fashion houses 0.002 (0.001) 0.003* (0.001) 0.003* (0.001) 3e-04 (0.001) 0.001 (0.001) 0.001 (0.001)
Representative -1.168*** (0.304) -0.395* (0.170)
H1: Founder
representative -1.337*** (0.370) -0.372* (0.175)
Member representative -0.551 (0.552) -0.512 (0.414)
N of spells 17,572 17,572 17,572 17,572 17,572 17,572

N of events 314 314 314 562 562 562
Δχ2/Δdf 24 / 1 26 / 2 6.2 / 1 6.3 / 2
Log likelihood -348.511 -336.309 -335.528 -199.487 -196.399 -196.344

2
Note - Robust standard errors in parentheses. Δχ = chi-square difference, Δdf = degrees of freedom difference against baseline.
* p < .05.
** p < .01.
*** p < .001.
Two-tailed tests.
Table 3
Transitions to founder among elite fashion designers.
Model 3.1 Model 3.2 Model 3.3
< 35 -5.186*** (0.202) -6.391*** (0.276) -4.571*** (0.645)
35 ≤ < 50 -5.718*** (0.221) -7.141*** (0.301) -5.347*** (0.695)
≥ 50 -6.321*** (0.305) -7.803*** (0.363) -6.015*** (0.770)
Female 0.133 (0.135) 0.050 (0.122) 0.101 (0.136)
Design for mult. brands -0.247 (0.257) -0.699** (0.271) -0.864** (0.300)
Number of jobs to date 0.141** (0.046) 0.032 (0.039) 0.033 (0.041)
Fashion house size 0.141** (0.054) 0.163** (0.053) 0.169** (0.055)
Fashion house age -0.007** (0.002) -0.006* (0.002) -0.006* (0.003)
Conglomerate -0.062 (0.208) -0.112 (0.203) -0.134 (0.215)
Number of awards -0.026 (0.028) -0.014 (0.028) -0.009 (0.031)
Density of fashion houses 0.005** (0.002) 0.004** (0.001) 0.004* (0.002)
Member 1.822*** (0.160) 2.878*** (0.236) 0.922 (0.658)
Prior founder experience 1.298*** (0.149) -0.263 (0.624)
H2: Member x Prior founder
experience 1.836** (0.629)
N of spells 17,572 17,572 17,572

N of events 314 314 314
Δχ2/Δdf 130 / 1 32 / 1
Log likelihood -280.200 -215.019 -199.191
Note: Robust standard errors in parentheses. Δχ2 = chi-square difference, Δdf = degrees of freedom difference against
previous model.
* p < .05.
** p < .01.
*** p < .001.
Two-tailed tests.
Table 4
Member-to-founder transitions among elite fashion designers.

< 35 -3.296*** (0.210) -3.496*** (0.219) -3.634*** (0.233)
35 ≤ < 50 -3.958*** (0.276) -4.511*** (0.291) -4.658*** (0.297)
≥ 50 -5.180*** (0.442) -5.925*** (0.574) -6.123*** (0.576)
Female 0.109 (0.151) 0.078 (0.154) 0.061 (0.154)
Design for mult. brands -0.303 (0.273) -1.040*** (0.305) -1.038*** (0.309)
Number of jobs to date 0.146** (0.052) -0.008 (0.048) -0.020 (0.049)
Fashion house size 0.099 (0.059) 0.129* (0.061) 0.046 (0.071)
Fashion house age -0.006** (0.002) -0.006* (0.003) -0.003 (0.003)
Conglomerate -0.27 (0.230) -0.354 (0.231) -0.292 (0.232)
Number of awards -0.019 (0.028) -0.003 (0.036) -0.001 (0.034)
Density of fashion houses 0.007*** (0.002) 0.004* (0.002) 0.004* (0.002)
H2: Prior founder experience 1.739*** (0.172) 1.816*** (0.172)
H3: Working with a founder 0.447** (0.169)
N of spells 4,833 4,833 4,833

N of events 232 232 232
Δχ2/Δdf 182 / 1 7/1
Log likelihood -92.096 -1.303 2.261
Note: Data restricted to only annual records in which a designer works in a member role.
Robust standard errors in parentheses. Δχ2 = chi-square difference, Δdf = degrees of freedom difference against
previous model.
* p < .05.
** p < .01.
*** p < .001.
Two-tailed tests.
14
Table 5
Transitions to founder and transitions to member among creative directors: comparing founders vs members.
Transitions to Founder Transitions to Member
Model 5.1 Model 5.2 Model 5.3 Model 5.4
< 35 -5.491*** (0.276) -4.290*** (0.394) -4.762*** (0.256) -4.008*** (0.297)
35 ≤ < 50 -5.875*** (0.299) -4.570*** (0.429) -5.313*** (0.248) -4.475*** (0.297)
≥ 50 -6.562*** (0.371) -5.031*** (0.501) -6.829*** (0.331) -5.856*** (0.409)
Female 0.203 (0.199) 0.207 (0.207) -0.243 (0.197) -0.237 (0.198)
Design for mult. brands 0.274 (0.434) 0.291 (0.434) 1.245*** (0.317) 1.266*** (0.281)
Number of jobs to date 0.200*** (0.053) 0.156** (0.058) 0.251*** (0.059) 0.220*** (0.061)
Fashion house size 0.370*** (0.086) 0.248* (0.098) 0.302*** (0.081) 0.223** (0.081)
Fashion house age 0.005* (0.002) -0.006 (0.004) 0.003 (0.002) -0.003 (0.003)
Conglomerate 0.400 (0.282) 0.235 (0.281) 0.144 (0.223) 0.056 (0.220)
Number of awards -0.026 (0.051) -0.045 (0.051) 0.011 (0.039) -7e-05 (0.039)
Density of fashion houses 0.003 (0.002) 0.004 (0.002) 0.005** (0.002) 0.005** (0.002)
Founder -1.194*** (0.264) -0.743*** (0.224)
N of spells 14,934 14,934 14,934 14,934

N of events 136 136 226 226
Δχ2/Δdf 22 / 1 13 / 1
Log likelihood -239.380 -228.533 -228.404 -221.971
Note: Data restricted to only annual records in which a designer’s function is that of creative director (all current founders are
creative directors).
Robust standard errors in parentheses. Δχ2 = chi-square difference, Δdf = degrees of freedom difference against previous
model.
* p < .05.
** p < .01.
*** p < .001.
Two-tailed tests.
test H2 in Model 3.3 by introducing an interaction effect between member and founder experience and estimate its coefficient to be
positive and significant. The main effects of member and founder experience lose significance suggesting that it is the founding
experience that makes members more likely to move just as prior founding experience drives transitions to entrepreneurship only
among members. Current members with prior founding experience are more likely than those without it and more likely than current
founders (recall that the data includes all designers—founders and members) to transition back to entrepreneurship, in accord with the
prediction in H2. Each prior fashion house founded by a current member increases the rate of return to entrepreneurship more than six-
fold (exp1.836). Prior experience as a founder thus moderates the relationship between organizational roles and transitions to
entrepreneurship.
The results presented in Table 4 seek to offer additional support for H2 and to test H3. We restrict the data to only the member
population so that we can model job transitions to entrepreneurship that specifically originate from conventional employment (i.e.,
member-to-founder transitions). Following the baseline Model 4.1, in Model 4.2 we include ‘prior founder experience’ and report a
strong and significant positive effect, again suggesting that a single prior founding experience increases the rate almost six-fold
(exp1.739). This effect confirms the support for H2 from Model 3.3 but in a direct comparison of members with prior founding
experience against those without such experience. Model fit improves against the baseline Model 4.1.
Hypothesis H3 regarded designers in founder roles as exerting charismatic authority over their colleagues, propelling them to
entrepreneurial careers of their own. This prediction applies only to members (i.e., regular employees working alongside the current
founder) so we test H3 in the same member-only subset of the data. Model 4.3 adds the ‘working with a founder’ covariate. The model
fit improvement against model 4.2 is significant and the estimated coefficient is positive and significant in accord with our prediction.
Members working alongside at least one original founder are 1.56 times (exp0.447) more likely to transition to founding than members
working in firms where the founder(s) had left. The results offer support for H3.
5.1. Robustness checks
We motivated our empirical investigation with priors from the sociological literature on careers and entrepreneurship, and spe
cifically the emphasis on the founder role which entails the brokerage position of a representative and structural charisma. Because we
15
Table 6
Member-to-member transitions among elite fashion designers.

µ < 35 -2.828*** (0.173) -2.819*** (0.174) -2.780*** (0.180)
35 ≤ µ < 50 -3.535*** (0.189) -3.384*** (0.186) -3.353*** (0.191)
µ ≥ 50 -4.724*** (0.315) -4.643*** (0.307) -4.619*** (0.308)
Female -0.221 (0.138) -0.113 (0.135) -0.110 (0.134)
Design for mult. brands 0.579*** (0.136) 0.816*** (0.134) 0.814*** (0.133)
Number of jobs to date 0.098* (0.049) 0.131* (0.066) 0.132* (0.066)
Fashion house size 0.221*** (0.038) 0.209*** (0.039) 0.222*** (0.042)
Fashion house age -0.003 (0.001) -0.002 (0.001) -0.003 (0.002)
Conglomerate -0.196 (0.152) -0.181 (0.149) -0.187 (0.150)
Number of awards 0.015 (0.025) 0.011 (0.025) 0.012 (0.025)
Density of fashion houses 0.003 (0.002) 0.003 (0.002) 0.003 (0.002)
Prior founder experience -1.178*** (0.207) -1.185*** (0.205)
Working with a founder -0.095 (0.119)
N of spells 4,833 4,833 4,833

N of events 421 421 421
Δχ2/Δdf 59 / 1 0.6 / 1
Log likelihood 78.766 108.034 108.354
Note: Data restricted to only annual records in which a designer works in a member role.
previous model.
* p < .05.
*** p < .001.
Two-tailed tests.
do not have a perfect measure of organizational representativeness (specifically, the extent to which it is internalized by founders and
reflected in their conceptions of self) and rely on the role of the founder to indirectly capture the charismatic authority entailed in the
role, the results are open to different interpretations, some of which we investigate next.
5.1.1. Representativeness
Tying founders to representatives, we reckoned that founders are less likely to transition to entrepreneurship or regular employ
ment while still at the helm of their ventures due to greater attachment and commitment (H1). Another plausible alternative to being a
representative is formal organizational hierarchy. If the right to represent varies with hierarchy, and if hierarchy alone could explain
the career mobility pattern we observe, the argument tying representativeness to the founder role would not be as convincing. The
most reasonable means of addressing this alternative is inherent in the context itself—fashion is a creative industry and the organi
zational hierarchy among creative staff in fashion houses is fairly flat (Kawamura, 2018). But, to the extent that hierarchy exists, it
serves to separate creative directors (or lead designers) from other designers. It is the creative director who sets general trends and
ultimately approves a collection.
Hierarchically and functionally, founders occupy the position of creative directors. So essentially, we observe two kinds of creative
directors—those who founded the fashion house they work for and those who did not. If position in the hierarchy (and not being a
founder) were all that was driving down external mobility, we would expect all individuals serving as creative directors—founders and
non-founders—to have the same transition hazard. If, on the other hand, representativeness emanates from the founder’s role, as we
surmised, we would expect the representativeness effect to be much stronger for creative directors who are founders than for those who
are not. By distinguishing between founder and non-founder creative directors, we can separate role-based from hierarchy-based
representativeness. Ruling out the “pure hierarchy” effect involves estimating significantly lower external mobility rates for foun
ders than for creative directors, both in transitions to entrepreneurship and to conventional employment.
To test this, we estimated transitions to both entrepreneurship and conventional employment in a restricted sample that only
includes spells of creative directors (founders and members)—positions that are hierarchically and functionally equivalent. We present
the results in Table 5 and report that the estimates in Models 5.2 and 5.4 demonstrate that founders are only 0.30 (exp− 1.194) times as
16
Table 7
Founder-to-founder transitions among elite fashion designers, 1945–2010.

µ < 35 -5.811*** (0.418) -5.030*** (0.761) -4.974*** (0.796)
35 ≤ µ < 50 -6.088*** (0.413) -5.245*** (0.901) -5.166*** (0.946)
µ ≥ 50 -6.619*** (0.618) -5.704*** (1.063) -5.616*** (1.112)
Female 0.265 (0.254) 0.322 (0.272) 0.320 (0.272)
Design for mult. brands 0.476 (0.640) 0.581 (0.769) 0.581 (0.775)
Number of jobs to date 0.199** (0.061) 0.226*** (0.065) 0.232*** (0.066)
Fashion house size 0.329* (0.152) 0.328* (0.155) 0.251 (0.204)
Fashion house age 0.010 (0.012) 0.008 (0.013) 0.008 (0.013)
Conglomerate 0.850* (0.396) 0.894* (0.408) 0.878* (0.410)
Number of awards -0.237 (0.165) -0.252 (0.173) -0.241 (0.171)
Density of fashion houses 0.004 (0.003) 0.004 (0.003) 0.003 (0.003)
Prior founder experience -0.811 (0.735) -0.820 (0.739)
Working with a founder 0.241 (0.347)
N of spells 12,739 12,739 12,739

N of events 82 82 82
Δχ2/Δdf 4/1 0.5 / 1
Log likelihood -176.828 -174.976 -174.752
Note: Data restricted to only annual records in which a designer works in a founder role.
previous model.
* p < .05.
** p < .01.
*** p < .001.
Two-tailed tests.
likely as creative directors to transition to entrepreneurship and only 0.48 (exp− 0.743) times as likely as them to move to regular
employment. Models 5.2 and 5.4 also show significantly improved model fit against their respective baselines (Models 5.1 and 5.3). We
interpret this as evidence that hierarchy alone does not explain founders’ lower external mobility.
5.1.2. Repeat entrepreneurship

We consider two alternatives to the “competing identities” mechanism outlined in the discussion of repeat entrepreneurship (H2).
First, an obvious alternative to the identity rift mechanism is the human and social capital of founders accumulated during the
entrepreneurial experience (Parker, 2013; Toft-Kehler et al., 2014). To the extent that members with such experience benefit from
greater access to external opportunities and favorable selection, they may transition to founding more than members without
entrepreneurial experience and this would explain the effect we observed. But if that were the case, we would also expect to see former
founders, because of their higher human and social capital, have higher general turnover rates (i.e., transitions to conventional
employment) as a function of increased opportunities, skill recognition, and access to information. Instead, if the founding experience
effect on mobility is driven by restoring founders’ sense of self, it should not increase the odds of transitions to conventional
employment for members with founding experience because such transitions will not resolve identity misalignment. Accordingly,
external mobility to conventional employment should not increase with a member’s prior experience as a founder. We tested this in
Model 6.2 which shows that having worked as a founder in the past not only does not increase general turnover but significantly
decreases the member-to-member transition hazard. Each prior founding experience makes a current member only 0.31 (exp− 1.178)
times as likely to transition to conventional employment as other members. Adding the prior founding experience covariate improves
model fit against the baseline Model 6.1.
Another way to address the human and social capital alternative is to consider the effect of prior founding experience in serial
entrepreneurship. If prior founding experience affected external mobility by providing access to new opportunities, then we should see
the chances of founder-to-founder transitions increase as a function of this experience. Once a founder is identified—by virtue of prior
experience—as “having what it takes” to be an entrepreneur, opportunities to repeat should increase (Dobrev and Barnett, 2005). By
contrast, if it is identity misalignment that drives transitions to entrepreneurship, we should not expect founder-to-founder rates to
increase with prior founding experience because individuals who are currently founders do not experience the identity rift that is
caused by no longer being a founder. As Model 7.2 shows, the effect of founder experience on the founder-to-founder transition rate is
negative and not significant. Founder-to-founder transitions are not more likely for founders with prior founding experience (and the
human and social capital accrued with it), corroborating the identity rift mechanism.
17
Table 8
Member-to-founder transitions among elite fashion designers,
1945–2010.
Model 8.1
µ < 35 -3.638*** (0.235)
35 ≤ µ < 50 -4.653*** (0.297)
µ ≥ 50 -6.116*** (0.574)
Female 0.063 (0.153)
Design for mult. brands -1.041*** (0.307)
Number of jobs to date -0.019 (0.049)
Fashion house size 0.032 (0.078)
Fashion house age -0.003 (0.003)
Conglomerate -0.302 (0.236)
Number of awards -0.002 (0.034)
Density of fashion houses 0.004* (0.002)
H2: Prior founder experience 1.807*** (0.174)
H3: Working with a founder 0.492** (0.190)
Working with an ex-founder 0.089 (0.232)
N of spells 4,833
N of events 232
Δχ2/Δdf 0.15 / 1
Log likelihood 2.335
Note: Data restricted to only annual records in which a designer

works in a member role.
Robust standard errors in parentheses. Δχ2 = chi-square dif
ference, Δdf = degrees of freedom difference against previous
model (Model 4.2).
* p < .05.
** p < .01.
*** p < .001.
Two-tailed tests.
5.1.3. Charismatic authority

We suggested that members’ transitions to entrepreneurship are influenced by their exposure to an organizational founder (H3).
This supposition would be strengthened if we consider and address three alternatives. First, working alongside a founder should not
affect members’ likelihood of a transition to conventional employment; if it did, this would suggest that some other mechanisms,
possibly a founder’s tendency to micro-manage or be excessively demanding, drove members out of the organization. An empirical
pattern to help rule out this “despotic founder” effect would be the lack of positive effect of working with a founder on members’
external mobility to conventional employment. If employees were “running for the gates” to avoid an intolerable boss, they would
consider any option, not just becoming a founder. The results from Model 6.3 rebut this alternative—the ‘working with the founder’
effect on the member-to-member transition is not significant. Working alongside a founder only increases the chances of entrepre
neurial transitions.
Second, as we surmised above, the charismatic effect inherent in the founder’s position manifests in the behavior of disciple-like
followers—the regular employees working alongside the founder(s). But this effect should not manifest on other founders. In orga
nizations with two or more founders, working alongside a founder should not make another founder more likely to pursue the founding
of another venture. If it did, it would suggest that the positive effect of working with a founder on entrepreneurial transition may be
caused by personality conflict or power struggle at the organization’s helm. Such a managerial dysfunction in the founding team would
drive not just members but founders out of the organization. We can rule this out by showing that founder-to-founder transitions are
not a positive function of working alongside another of the organization’s founders. This non-effect is observed in Model 7.3, which
displays an insignificant ‘working with a founder’ effect on the exits of (other) founders.
Finally, it is useful to explore if learning from any peer with founding experience, regardless of their current role (founder or
member) can produce the elevated rates of entrepreneurial transitions among members. We reasoned that if the stock of knowledge,
rather than who possesses it, matters more, learning from the founding experience of others should be just as valuable whether a
member learns from a current founder or from a former founder. If working with any founder, current or former, increases a member’s
odds of becoming a founder, charismatic authority may not be implicated. Distinguishing between current and former founders teases
out the structural effect—a current founder occupies the position to which we attribute charismatic authority while a former founder,
currently a regular member, does not. If working with a former founder does not increase a member’s chances of entrepreneurial
18
S.D. Dobrev et al.
19

Fig. 1. Plot of estimated effect of founder representativeness on founder-to-founder and founder-to-member transitions.
transition while working with a current founder does, then conjectures about the founder’s charismatic contagion are plausible. We
constructed a Working with an ex-founder indicator variable to mark up members-only spells in which a focal fashion designer has at
least one coworker who is contemporaneously employed as member but had worked as a founder at least once in their prior career. We
included this covariate in Model 8.1, adding it to our most complete member-to-founder model (Model 4.3)—its effect is insignificant,
consistent with the structural charisma story.
6. Discussion
We set out to engage in an empirical investigation of a novel career dataset through which we sought to contribute to answering
central questions in entrepreneurship research: who becomes an entrepreneur, when do founders leave, and why do they repeat? We
provided theoretical conjectures based on two unique attributes of the founder role—organizational representativeness and charis
matic authority. Although measuring role-based attributes over time is difficult, the richness of our data made it possible to narrow
down the likely mechanisms at play and offer consistent evidence that makes our suppositions credible and worth pursuing in future
research.
We first addressed the external career mobility of founders. We found that founders are less likely than members to experience a job
transition to both entrepreneurship and to conventional employment as a function of role representativeness (these effects are visually
presented in Fig. 1) The empirical observation that founders have lower mobility than members is not new (Failla et al., 2017). But
historically, explanations of this effect have focused on the founder’s motivation to achieve (McClelland, 1961) and to maximize profit
(Baumol, 1968; Hobsbawm, 1969). While this may be true, a motivation/maximization story leaves out the social forces and external
context which shape founders’ motives (Dahl and Sorenson, 2012; Higgins and Gulati, 2003; Kacperczyk and Marx, 2016; Kwon and
Ruef, 2017; Renzulli et al., 2000; Ruef, 2010). As Cyert and March (1963:9) aptly noted, “Entrepreneurs, like anyone else, have a host
of personal motives. Profit is one, perhaps, but they are also interested in sex, food, and saving souls.”
Complementing theories that put profit at the forefront, we surmised that another mechanism behind the lower mobility of
founders is the representativeness in the founder role. Occupying an organizational role endowed with a taken-for-granted right to
speak on behalf of the organization, to be the voice and face of the organization they created, naturally leads founders to identify with
the organization and in turn to greater commitment and lower mobility. When this structural property of the founder role—the right to
represent—is internalized by the founder, they are less likely to leave the organization to found another venture or in pursuit of
opportunities for conventional employment.
But, if this premise is correct, what are we to make of the frequent observation (also reflected in our empirical context) that many
entrepreneurs found multiple ventures (Kwon and Ruef, 2017; Parker, 2013; Ronstadt, 1986; Starr and Bygrave, 1992)? In addressing
repeat entrepreneurship, we centered on an alternative mechanism to the one predominantly employed in the literature that sees
founders as possessing unique characteristics and psychological propensities that drive them to become founders time and again
(MacMillan, 1986; McGrath and MacMillan, 2000). Highlighting the importance of timing and sequence of jobs in evaluating repeat
entrepreneurship, we suggested that once the founder role becomes imprinted in and aligned with their self-identity, founders, like all
individuals, seek to maintain that fit, and if broken, are driven to restore it. Because exit from entrepreneurship upsets the external-
internal identity fit, former founders, now employed in regular jobs, seek to realign their organizational role with their conception of
self. By this view, reflected in the empirical patterns in our context (graphically represented in Fig. 2), repeat entrepreneurship is
mostly motivated by previous career exits from entrepreneurship.
Aspiring to contribute to perhaps the most central question in theories of entrepreneurship—who becomes an entrepreneur—we
revisited Weber’s (1968) original theory of charismatic authority and through its lens surmised that the normative valuations entailed
in the social identity of the founder bestow upon any person occupying the role of a founder the ability to lead by charismatic au
thority. This structural explanation complements micro-level theories of charismatic leadership at the individual level. Naturally, as a
personal quality, charisma is also likely to impact the effectiveness of any leader (Conger and Kanungo, 1998; House and Howell, 1992;
Shamir et al., 1993). But beyond personal qualities, charisma operates at the level of the organizational role of the founder because it is
imbued with the deference, respect, and admiration attributed to founders in the broader social discourse. That is, the social identity of
the entrepreneur (at least in our modernity and in Western cultures) is reflected in the organizational role of a founder that grants them
the ability to lead without (or beyond) the purview of formal bureaucratic authority. This view differs markedly from an atomistic
perspective that considers an entrepreneur’s ability to lead purely as an outcome of individual accomplishment (Lazear, 2005a).17
Answering the call to “evaluate how working side by side with the organization’s founders affects the propensity of other em
ployees to consider starting their own ventures” (Burton et al., 2016: 242), we found that designers employed as members in fashion
houses where the original founder is still among the ranks of the creative team are more likely to go on and found their own fashion
house. By highlighting the propensity for members to emulate founders, this finding goes beyond the established “founder-as-de
pository-of-knowledge” effect, and offers a fresh perspective that complements existing theories of peer effects on entrepreneurship
(Gompers et al., 2005; Kacperczyk, 2013; Nanda and Sørensen, 2010; Sorenson and Audia, 2000; Stuart and Ding, 2006; Stuart and
Sorenson, 2003).
We echo the claim (Dobrev and Barnett, 2005) that theories of entrepreneurship have the best chance of moving forward if they
openly address the dual challenge that research in this direction faces, namely, the need to incorporate predictions about what is
17
As Lazear (2005b:1) explains, “…entrepreneurs view themselves as leaders because they had the vision that enabled them to provide valuable
output economy.”
20
Fig. 2. Plot of estimated effect of prior founder experience on member-to-founder and member-to-member transitions.
common between entrepreneurial and non-entrepreneurial transitions but also what is distinct about the career of a founder. This
motivated the twofold objective of this study—to not only offer empirical evidence that speaks to the central questions in entrepre
neurship research by considering the unique role of the founder, but also to do so within the framework of a general model of career
dynamics. To accomplish the latter, we “complicated” the two-by-two, founder vs member mobility matrix (member-to-founder,
founder-to-founder, founder-to-member and member-to-member) by adding prior founding experience as an additional layer to the
founder-member dichotomy thus resulting in eight unique transitions (as reflected in Table A2). We then examined these transitions
and analyzed the career trajectories of the fashion designers in our sample over a span of multiple decades. It bears repeating that the
value of this approach to studying transitions to entrepreneurship as part of a general model of career mobility lies not simply in the
improved inferential validity of the findings, but in the very opportunity to develop and test new ideas (Sorenson and Stuart, 2008). For
example, the finding that repeat entrepreneurship is more likely to come from second-order (i.e., founder-to-member and then
member-to-founder) rather than first-order (i.e., founder-to-founder) transitions cannot be obtained through cross-sectional, or even
narrow-span longitudinal designs.
We extended the careers approach to entrepreneurship by essentially developing an employment ecology framework (i.e., the study
of all organizational role and position occupants within an industry over time). Setting the boundaries of our sample at the level of the
entire population of elite fashion designers allowed us to observe the spells of both entrepreneurial and conventional employment for
founders (i.e., before, during, and after they were founders). Moreover, we were able to compare the spells of conventional
employment for founders (i.e., before and after they were founders) to the spells of conventional employment for those who never
experienced entrepreneurship. In other words, in our data, founder and member “states” vary both within and between individuals.
Such an employment ecology approach to career dynamics relies on a meaningfully defined set (or population) of individuals (within
an industry, geography, profession, etc.), some of whom do and some of whom do not experience entrepreneurial transitions over a
sustained period of time, sufficient for career histories to unfold. This approach reduces unexplained variance in induvial outcomes due
to external factors (because population dynamics operate on all individuals at once) and eliminates selection bias due to unobserved
individual job transitions (because the data include the extended employment records of all individuals from the start of their careers
or entry in the population). Importantly, it allows for modeling the variance between founders and non-founders as well as between
transitions to and out of entrepreneurship.
6.1. Generalizability, future research and limitations
The global high-end fashion industry is certainly a unique context. It is distinctive in its very high social visibility, in its ability to
produce celebrities, and in the very high incidence of entrepreneurial activity. Social visibility makes role identities sharper and more
pronounced, and more research is needed to show the extent to which our results would hold in more “regular” or even obscure
contexts. The high frequency of new ventures reflects the norm for a successful designer to start their own fashion house. Because
21
evaluation of career success hinges partly on a designer’s ability to found and sustain their own fashion house continuously, entre
preneurship may carry different career implications in this context than, say, in the high-tech industry. In fashion, success is inter
preted as a judgment on the founder’s creative talents while in high tech, it is the terminal success of the venture itself (obtaining VC
funding or reaching IPO) that drives founder evaluations (Aldrich and Ruef, 2018). This distinction may manifest in different dynamics
in both entrepreneurial exits and in repeat entrepreneurship and further research is necessary to explore how the career patterns we
observe here vary across different contexts.
Even if one does not study a setting where entrepreneurship is the most widely aspired to type of employment (as it is in high
fashion), one can still differentiate between the eight types of transitions that we identified when considering organizational roles and
founder experience (Table A2). In most settings, we suspect, job transitions will likely be of the “general turnover by never founders”
type (Table A2, cell 6), as ample evidence suggests that most people do not experience any involvement in entrepreneurship
throughout their careers. Yet this still leaves seven different types of job transitions (Table A2, cells 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 8) that all
pertain to the entrepreneurial experience: four relate to entrepreneurial (re)entry, two to entrepreneurial exit, and one to the general
turnover of ex-founders. This plethora of entrepreneurship-relevant “events,” which the careers approach makes possible to identify,
highlights the need for more research to understand the nuanced mechanisms at play in each. For example, it may be interesting to
compare the general turnover and according commitment levels of employees with and without prior founder experience (i.e., former
founders vs never founders) in the member-to-member transition (Table A2, cells 5 and 6, respectively); or to evaluate whether direct
repeat entrepreneurship (i.e., founder-to-founder transitions) and exit from entrepreneurship (i.e., founder-to-member transitions) are
moderated by number of prior ventures started and thus meaningfully differ for serial founders (Table A2, cells 3 and 7, respectively) vs
one-time founders (Table A2, cells 4 and 8, respectively).
The uniqueness of luxury fashion notwithstanding, we think our empirically validated suppositions can be extended not only to
entrepreneurial careers in other settings but also to general career dynamics in different contexts. For example, the finding that
attachment to the organizational role of a representative curtails mobility can be applied to contexts like law (public defenders and
child representatives), politics (elected and appointed officials), and professional sports (coaches and star players) where both rep
resentation and extrinsic rewards can be measured more directly. Although tenures in these professions vary widely, almost to the
extreme, a shared feature is the very low incidence of voluntary departures.
Similarly, our finding that founder experience has a negative effect on member-to-member transitions (see Fig. 1) may help to
extend the “committed founder” story. Future research may further develop the idea that once in member positions, and absent op
portunities for return to entrepreneurship, former founders become more committed employees than their peers without entrepre
neurial experience.18 Perhaps organizational attachment is the substitute mechanism for restoring the role-person fit, when repeat
entrepreneurship is not an option.
Our conjectures about identity misalignment in the case of vacating an organizational role could be extended to transitions between
roles with equally strong social resonance: for example, do exiting founders experience the same identity rift when their next job is not
conventional employment in the same industry but, say, that of a politician, a movie star, or some other celebrity? Would facets of
representation and structural charisma in these new roles dampen the likelihood for return to entrepreneurship by forestalling an
identity rift?
We interpreted structural charisma as emanating from the role of the founder. Individual characteristics aside, managers have
subordinates while founders have followers. Managers have the bureaucratic authority to direct their underlings while founders
inspire members and serve as role models. We think this charismatic influence is a special case of the general dynamic that typifies the
relationship of informal leaders and their disciples in settings as varied as street gangs (Papachristos, 2009), religious cults (Stark and
Bainbridge, 1985), and nascent social movements (Swaminathan and Wade, 2001). In the case of business firms, future research could
investigate whether founders are more effective than managers in eliciting support and mobilizing resources for new ideas or in
motivating desired behaviors. A particularly useful, if highly challenging, research design would be one that allows for measuring both
personal and structural charisma.
Our study also highlights patterns of interorganizational mobility (Bidwell and Briscoe, 2010), adding to previous research on
careers in the creative industries focusing on contexts such as US chefs (Borkenhagen and Martin, 2018), Hollywood crews (Cattani and
Ferriani, 2008), and advertising professionals (Dobrev and Kim, 2019). Future research could connect with this research stream further
to see how, for example, status and geographic structures (Shipilov et al., 2017) play out with decisions to become a founder or remain
a member. Ideas about structural charisma could be pushed further and tied to research on celebrities (Gamson, 1994), often viewed as
role models and spokespersons for various causes simply due to their position of notoriety and social prominence.
Future research may also push our model further by addressing some of its limitations. Although using archival research to
painstakingly reconstruct hundreds of individual career histories over a span of more than half a century has many overcompensating
advantages, it also makes it virtually impossible to uniformly collect data on both individual and organizational properties over time.
Our results would be stronger if we had data on fashion designer earnings as well as on the profitability of the ventures they had
worked for. Assessing individual drive for success and risk-taking propensity, along with perceptions of personal charisma, would have
18
At first blush, our finding appears to contradict the argument in Feng et al. (2022) that former founders are more likely to turn over from regular
jobs than those without founding experience. However, once Feng et al. differentiated exits to entrepreneurship from exits to employment (i.e.,
member-to-founder vs member-to-member transitions), they reported that prior experience as a founder only drives higher the transition back to
entrepreneurship but not to conventional employment. Their finding well illustrates the imperative for analysts to consider both entrepreneurial and
non-entrepreneurial job transitions, a hallmark of the careers approach and of our research design here.
22
also helped to address persistent debates in the literature. Although detailed accounts of high fashion as a creative industry point to the
non-hierarchical structure of fashion houses (Godart, 2012), it would have been useful to have direct measures of span of control and
hierarchy levels rather than having to impute them interpretively. Such data might have also helped to improve our measure of
representativeness by relying on more fine-grained position indicators with more detailed role descriptions. At the same time, our
findings, robust to multiple specifications, give us enough confidence to conclude that we obtained solid support to push further
consideration of our conjectures about career mobility and entrepreneurship. While our analyses do not provide an unshakable direct
support for our predictions, they all point in the same direction suggesting that the predictions are likely valid. At a next step, a formal
theory of career mobility and entrepreneurship could ill-afford to ignore the findings of this research as the empirical evidence pre
sented here significantly raises the burden of proof to refute our predictions.
7. Conclusion
In conclusion, we reiterate the merits of a careers approach to external mobility that allows us to treat entrepreneurship as just one
of many employment states. This in turn, avails the opportunity to draw parallels and make meaningful comparisons among the
various transitions that reveal generalizable patterns elucidating how macro-level structural processes shape individual outcomes.
While some may question the efficiency of our time-consuming research design, we think this approach affords no substitute. It strikes
us as the only way to engage the study of external mobility through the sociological lens and prove the advantage of treating individual
job-change decisions as part of a broader social dynamic operating at the intersection of organizational structures, cultural disposi
tions, and role identities.
How well does our model explain the careers of elite fashion designers? Emmanuelle Khanh, the designer whose career we used to
illustrate our objectives at the onset, made her initial foray into fashion by working as a model for Balenciaga (Grimes, 2017, Feb. 28).
In 1962, she teamed up with Christiane Bailly to form her first venture, Emma Christie and design her first collection. Once noticed by
her peers, in 1964 she joined the well-established house of Cacharel, where she worked side-by-side with the founder, Jean Bousquet.
She then eventually went on to found a second venture by herself, Emmanuelle Khanh Paris in 1971 where she spent most of her career.
So, working for Cacharel (as a member) alongside the company founder (H3), after having been a founder earlier in her career (H2), led
to repeat entrepreneurship. And while others came and left, she remained steady at the helm of her firm, its symbol and representative
across the globe (H1). Perhaps profit was partly what motivated her commitment. But she is also known for saying: “The thing that
touches me the most is when someone says, I bought your coat 10 years ago and I still have it; now my daughter borrows it.” (Grimes,
2017, Feb. 28). To us, these do not seem like the words of someone preoccupied with selling as many coats as possible to drive profit.
Our theory by no means disputes the drive for economic success as motivating force behind entrepreneurial behavior. But it does
highlight the effect of organizational roles, identity constraints, and social influence on such behavior.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Stanislav D. Dobrev: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data curation, Writing – orig
inal draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization. Kim Claes: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Investigation,
Resources, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization. Frédéric Godart: Conceptualization,
Methodology, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing,
Visualization.
Data availability
The data that has been used is confidential.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the Lubar College of Business at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Earlier versions of this
paper benefited from audience reactions at the AOM and ASA Meetings, the Nagymaros Conference, Yonsei University, and the
University of Memphis. We are grateful to field editor Phillip Kim and three anonymous reviewers for terrific feedback. As always, the
flaws are our own.
23
S.D. Dobrev et al.
Appendix
Table A1
A careers approach to entrepreneurship: opportunities to answer outstanding questions through studying the extended career histories of founders and members.
Article Key Finding Outstanding Questions Career Transition to Examine
Sørensen (2007) Bureaucracy stalls transitions to Does bureaucracy reduce general Current Member to
Dobrev & Barnett (2005) entrepreneurship for members turnover? Future Member
Kim, Aldrich & Keister (2006) Managerial experience aids Does managerial experience facilitate Current Founder to
entrepreneurial transitions entrepreneurial exits? Future Member
Kacperczyk (2013) Peer effects on transition to Do other career shifts by peers Current Member to
Nanda & Sørensen (2010) entrepreneurship influence ego’s career choices? Future Member
24
Lazear (2004) Specialization dampens Does specialization also depress Current Member to
entrepreneurial transitions general turnover? Future Member
Boeker & Karichalil (2002) Firm size increases founder exits Does firm size increase (founder exit Current Founder to
to) repeat founding? Future Founder
Does firm size increase member exit? Current Member to
Future Member
Feng, Allen & Seibert (2022) Prior founding experience increases What propelled exit from Current Founder to
re-entry to entrepreneurship entrepreneurship and does it matter Future Member
for subsequent re-entry?

Note: Our goal with this table is to demonstrate how our approach can contribute to the state of the art. To this end, selection of cited publications is based on a
threshold of relevant contribution to research on entrepreneurial transitions. The selection is only meant to provide a limited number of examples to illustrate our
point and is by no means an exhaustive list of all high-caliber work published on this topic.
S.D. Dobrev et al.
Table A2
Conceptual organization of job transitions based on founder vs member roles and prior founder experience.
Destination:
Origin: Future Founder Future Member
Current Member 1 5
--With Prior Founder experience Indirect Repeat Entrepreneurship by Members General Turnover by Members
(Former Founders) (Former Founders)
Current Member 2 6
--Without Prior Founder Experience First-Time Entry to Entrepreneurship by General Turnover by Members
Members (Never Founders) (Never Founders)
25
Current Founder 3 7
--With Prior Founder experience Direct Repeat Entrepreneurship by Exit from Entrepreneurship by
Founders (Serial Founders) Founders (Serial Founders)
Current Founder 4 8
--Without Prior Founder Experience Direct Repeat Entrepreneurship by Exit from Entrepreneurship by
Founders (One-Time Founders) Founders (One-Time Founders)

Note: The table presents a matrix of eight job transitions (cells numbered 1 through 8) that the careers approach to entrepreneurship makes possible to differentiate
and compare. Job transitions to entrepreneurship (including repeat entrepreneurship) are summarized in cells 1 through 4, and transitions out of entrepre
neurship—in cells 7 and 8. Cells 5 and 6 reflect general turnover, the transition between regular jobs in conventional employment.
REPRESENTATIVENESS (H1) PRIOR FOUNDER (H2)
FOUNDER MEMBER FOUNDER
WORKING WITH A
FOUNDER (H3)
FOUNDER
Fig. A1. Summary of conceptual model.
Supplementary data
The Online Appendix can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2023.106316.
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Journal of Business Venturing 38 (2023) 106316

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Business Venturing

Prêt-à-quitter: Career mobility and entrepreneurship in the global

3.1. Organizational roles and representativeness

3.2. Founder roles, representativeness and external mobility

3.3. Founder experience and external mobility

3.4. Founder’s charismatic authority and external mobility

4. Data and method

4.1. Data sources and structure

4.2.1. Dependent variable

4.2.2. Independent variables

4.2.3. Control variables

Variables Mean S.D. Min Max 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Journal of Business Venturing 38 (2023) 106316

Transitions to Founder Transitions to Member

Fashion designer age:

N of spells 17,572 17,572 17,572 17,572 17,572 17,572

Journal of Business Venturing 38 (2023) 106316

N of spells 17,572 17,572 17,572

Model 4.1 Model 4.2 Model 4.3

N of spells 4,833 4,833 4,833

N of spells 14,934 14,934 14,934 14,934

5.1. Robustness checks

Model 6.1 Model 6.2 Model 6.3

N of spells 4,833 4,833 4,833

Model 7.1 Model 7.2 Model 7.3

N of spells 12,739 12,739 12,739

5.1.2. Repeat entrepreneurship

Note: Data restricted to only annual records in which a designer

5.1.3. Charismatic authority

Journal of Business Venturing 38 (2023) 106316

6.1. Generalizability, future research and limitations

CRediT authorship contribution statement

The data that has been used is confidential.

Journal of Business Venturing 38 (2023) 106316

Journal of Business Venturing 38 (2023) 106316

REPRESENTATIVENESS (H1) PRIOR FOUNDER (H2)

FOUNDER MEMBER FOUNDER

The Online Appendix can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2023.106316.

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