07/20/2026
By Gerardo Bastos Neto

The Department of Marketing, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation at the Manning School of Business invites you to attend a doctoral dissertation defense by Gerardo Bastos Neto.

Date: Wednesday, July 29, 2026
Time: 11 a.m. – 1 p.m.
Location: Hybrid, Dean's Conference Room, Pulichino Tong Business Center (PTB), and via Zoom

Dissertation Title: Not All Pivots Are Equal: An Identity-Based Theory of Pivot Magnitude

Committee Members:

  • Michael Ciuchta, Ph.D. (Co-chair), Department of Marketing, Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Manning School of Business, UMass Lowell
  • Ann Kronrod, Ph.D. (Co-chair), Department of Marketing, Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Manning School of Business, UMass Lowell
  • Steven Tello, Ed.D., Department of Marketing, Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Manning School of Business, UMass Lowell

Abstract
Founders who receive similar negative feedback respond very differently: some hold course, some adjust at the margins, and some reorient the venture wholesale. This dissertation asks what determines the magnitude of a founder's pivot in response to negative feedback. Integrating identity control theory and construal-level theory, it develops a model in which role-congruent negative feedback increases perceived identity threat, the sense that feedback calls into question what the founder's role identity means; venture identification moderates the link between congruent feedback and threat; and founder–venture construal, the founder's momentary mode of perceiving the venture, moderates the link between threat and pivoting.

The model was tested in three studies: a scenario experiment (N = 765), an experiment that directly manipulated identity threat and construal (N = 400), and a field survey of practicing founders (n = 74). Three findings stood out. Among founders in the field, feedback that matched a salient role identity was associated with greater perceived identity threat. Under higher threat, founders were less likely to pivot at all, a result that held in both an experiment and the field. And in the field, how far founders moved turned not on threat but on how abstractly they perceived their ventures and on the founding experience they brought. The dissertation closes with conjectures about what this pattern of findings and non-findings could mean: identity threat bears on whether founders pivot, while the scope of change appears to depend on how founders perceive the venture and the experience founders bring.

All interested students and faculty members are invited to attend.