Antecedents and outcome of entrepreneurial identification: The moderating effect of role orientation

This article focuses on the entrepreneurial identification (EI), through the perspectives of social identity theory and identity theory. Using an empirical method, we investigate factors that affect the formation of EI. Results show that academic entrepreneurs’ multiple identities (MI) and role conflict (RC) influence such type of formation. Moreover, we use role orientation (RO) as a moderating variable and find that, although RO of academic entrepreneurs can moderate the relationship between RC and EI, the effect of MI on EI cannot be moderated by ROin a significant way. We also discuss and validate the relationship between EI and academic entrepreneurial performance. These findings highlight the importance of certain factors in forming anEI, thus providing theoretical contributions of RO moderation in the relationship between RC and EI, as well as insights into the integration of social identity theory with identity theory.