Marching to the beat of the drum: the impact of the pace of life in US cities on entrepreneurial work effort

Founders face a variety of challenges while working to establish a viable start-up. In order to successfully overcome the many pressures that they face, founders must make difficult choices about how to allocate their time and how much effort to exert in their ventures. These founders are also embedded in a broader social context, and their efforts are influenced by external conditions. In this study, we examine one particular social condition—pace of life—and its relationship on entrepreneurial work effort. We argue that the pace of life in the region where founders launch and run their ventures affects their work effort over and above other individual- and firm-level characteristics. We also argue that this direct relationship can strengthen or weaken depending on founding team size or entrepreneurial experience. Our longitudinal analyses of nearly 2600 US new ventures from 2004 to 2011 support our arguments. Our work advances prior research on the determinants of entrepreneurial work effort, enhances the literature on social norms and entrepreneurial action, and provides additional insights into the multilevel influences of entrepreneurial activity. While entrepreneurs are commonly perceived as non-conformists who march to the beat of their own drum, we find evidence suggesting that regional pace of life actually sets the tempo for business owners and influences the amount of effort that they allocate to their ventures.