Pivoting Enough, Not Too Much: Entrepreneurial Drive, Political Skill, and Post-Pandemic Venture Performance in South America

How do ventures in emerging markets perform after a systemic shock? Drawing on upper echelons and dynamic capabilities perspectives, we examine how founder attributes and strategic pivoting shape post-pandemic venture performance in South America. Using survey data from 500 ventures in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Peru, we find that entrepreneurial drive is positively related to performance and that this relationship is stronger when founders are politically skilled. Strategic pivoting has an inverted U-shaped relationship with performance, and environmental dynamism shifts the performance-maximizing level of pivoting upward. Core results hold with an alternative outcome, without influential observations, and with country-clustered standard errors, although moderation effects weaken with the alternative outcome. We discuss implications for theories of entrepreneurial adaptation and for the “too much of a good thing” logic.