Founder role identity and firms’ strategic responses to crises

Purpose This study adopts an identity perspective to investigate the cognitive and behavioral processes by which founders’ role identity shapes their firms’ responses to crisis through considering its function as an interpretative lens and as an information filter, and the influence these cognitive functions have on founders’ decision-making behavior to respond to crises. Design/methodology/approach Founders of 15 high-technology firms were interviewed to investigate their expectations defining their role within their firms, how these expectations filter and frame the information they perceive relative to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their firm, the ensuing response behaviors and their outcomes on the firm. Findings The analysis distinguishes three crisis response behaviors: surviving, mitigating and aligning, each leading to a different degree of change in firms’ product development: minor, incremental and major. Two mechanisms connect founders’ role identity with their response behaviors and outcomes: identity as a cognitive schema shaping the information founders perceive from their environment and identity affirmation encouraging decision-making behaviors that re-affirm the salient identity. Originality/value These findings contribute to entrepreneurial behavior research at the intersection of identity and crisis management studies. They show empirically the different pathways (interpretation and filter focus) through which entrepreneurial cognition links founders’ identity with their firms’ responses to crises. The findings indicate that crises encourage founders to double down on their identity rather than triggering identity changes.