Nascent entrepreneurs’ progress in the venturing process: the role of proactiveness and cultural values

Journal of Small Business and Entrepreneurship. 2025. Vol. 37. No. 1. P. 111–145.

Emilia Karpinskaia, Louisa Selivanovskikh, Galina Shirokova, Bodolica V.

Understanding what entrepreneurs do and how their actions relate to successful new venture creation is a central research topic in the field of entrepreneurship. However, a comprehensive understanding of what leads to venture success is currently lacking. In our study, we explore the role of nascent entrepreneurs’ proactiveness in the process of new venture creation in different national cultural settings. We use a generalized linear model estimation with a negative binomial probability distribution to analyze a sample of 22,163 nascent entrepreneurs from 32 countries to assess the effects of proactiveness and national culture on venturing progress. Our findings demonstrate that individual proactiveness positively relates to the progress of new venture creation by nascent entrepreneurs. The dominance of embeddedness and harmony values is associated with lower levels of progress in the venturing process, although in more autonomous and mastery cultures the effect of proactiveness on venturing process is stronger. Our research highlights the importance of both individual-level characteristics and country-level contextual variables when studying nascent entrepreneurship.

Keywords: nascent entrepreneurs, GUESSS, national culture, proactiveness, venturing process