Every two years, SME researchers from all over the world meet for a week at the Rencontres de St-Gall in order to debate SME-specific issues. The Rencontres de St-Gall 2018 took place in St.Gallen, 3.- 5. September 2018. The overall topic was «Moving towards a contextualized view of entrepreneurship».
Rolf Sternberg presented a paper written together with Martin Obschonka (Queensland University of Technology), Christian Hundt (Johann Heinrich von Thünen Institute), and Heiko Bergmann (University of St.Gallen), entitled "The formation of entrepreneurial teams: How the organizational context can lead to more ‘boygroups’. The paper focus on the gender gap in entrepreneurial teams and analyze the antecedents of team formation at the early stage of the entrepreneurial process. Combining the literature on team formation and on contextual effects on entrepreneurial activity, it hypothesizes that the organizational context influences the likelihood of starting a team business compared to a solo business and that it has a different effect for men and women. Results suggest that the entrepreneurial climate in an organization positively influences team formation of men but not of women. For women, a positive entrepreneurial climate increases solo startups more strongly than team start-ups. Paper argues that peoples’ founder identity plays an important role in team formation and contributes to the explanation of the gender gap.