03/31/2022
By Peiyi Jia

The Manning School of Business Department of Marketing, Entrepreneurship and Innovation invites you to attend a doctoral dissertation defense by Peiyi Jia on “Three Essays on Entrepreneurship: Remittances, Initial Public Offering Narratives, and Acquisitive Growth.”

Candidate Name: Peiyi Jia
Defense Date: Thursday, April 14, 2022
Time: 2 to 3:30 p.m.
Location: Virtual dissertation defense via Zoom.
Dissertation Title: Three Essays on Entrepreneurship: Remittances, Initial Public Offering Narratives, and Acquisitive Growth

Advisor: Sunny Li Sun, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Marketing, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, UMass Lowell

Committee Members:

  • Sunny Li Sun, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Marketing, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, UMass Lowell (Chair)
  • Yi Yang, Ph.D., Professor, Department Chair, Marketing, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, UMass Lowell
  • Michael Ciutchta, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Marketing, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, UMass Lowell
  • Charlotte Ren, Ph.D., Professor of Practice in Strategy and Innovation, School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania

Abstract:

This dissertation aims to advance the understanding of entrepreneurship from macro and micro perspectives. This dissertation consists of three essays on remittances, initial public offering (IPO) narratives, and acquisitive growth.

In the first essay, I examine the relationship between migrant remittances and the home country’s informal economy from a macro perspective. Drawing on the entrepreneurial mobility and informality literature, I argue that migrant remittances not only serve as an alternative financial resource for entrepreneurs in the informal economy to grow the business but also can be used to develop the human capital and entrepreneurial capability required for the transition to formality. I develop a mediation model which migrant remittances reduce the home country’s informal economy through enhancing venture funding availability.

In the second essay on the micro perspective, I investigate how new ventures construct unique stories to influence public investors’ perceptions and how venture capitalist (VC)-backed ventures differ in telling their stories in IPOs. Drawing on the sensemaking and sense-giving perspective, I develop a multiple mediation model that identifies entrepreneurial narratives and customer narratives in the IPO prospectus as two mediators through which VC presence affects a venture’s IPO performance. The results suggest that VC presence positively affects a company’s IPO performance through enhancing the entrepreneurial narratives and customer narratives conveyed in the prospectus.

In the third essay on the micro perspective, I study the growth choice of new ventures drawing on Penrose’s (1959) theory. Firm’s growth strategies — organic growth vs. acquisitive growth are based on the firm’s resources and managerial services. I examine the Penrose effect in the context of a newly public firm’s first acquisition. Specifically, I investigate the impact of product market competition, digital capabilities, and their interactions on how quickly newly public firms initiate their first acquisitions. I develop hypotheses that product market competition reduces companies’ tendency to pursue acquisitive growth. Firms with stronger digital capabilities are more likely to move to acquisitive growth quickly after IPOs. Furthermore, the negative impact of product market competition on the speed of the first post-IPO acquisition is less pronounced when the firms have strong digital capabilities. Empirical results of 2,245 newly public firms from 2005 to 2019 support these hypotheses.