Cross-cultural experience unlocks entrepreneurial tendencies for rule-breaking: a priming experiment

Purpose Drawing on covariance attribution theory, this study investigates how and when cross-cultural experience develops the entrepreneurial aptitude for rule-breaking. The authors sought to replicate findings in general psychology that morally relativistic thinking mediates these relationships. Further, extant ideas surrounding rebel-like archetypes of successful entrepreneurs were tested: that is, the more entrepreneurial a person considers themselves to be, the more likely they adopt such modes of thinking. Design/methodology/approach A second-stage moderated mediation model is applied using a novel between-subjects experimental priming design. Participants were recruited to reflect a generalizable sample of prospective entrepreneurs from the United States. Participants engaged in a randomly assigned priming activity to re-active their prior cultural immersion experiences. They then completed a context-adjusted experimental judgment task to assess rule-breaking. Findings Results show that reflection on prior cross-cultural experience is positively related to proximal scores in morally relativistic cognition. Moderating effects of entrepreneurial intention provide robust evidence that those high in entrepreneurial intention are more likely to rule-break when morally relativistic thinking is high, but that those low in entrepreneurial intention are not. Originality/value A growing research stream suggests cross-cultural experience can uniquely instill a range of entrepreneurial aptitudes. While psychology research has found evidence for “dark side” implications of cross-cultural experience, the authors posit that entrepreneurship scholars in this domain have been reluctant to tackle this due to the ethical grey areas between breaking rules constructively and breaking rules in more nefarious ways. This study provides evidence that morally relativistic cognition is more likely to drive people who consider themselves highly entrepreneurial to engage in rule-breaking tendencies.