Cultural diversity in new venture founding teams and accelerators’ selection decisions
Cultural diversity in new venture founding teams and accelerators’ selection decisions
We used a cross-country sample of more than 9,000 startup ventures from over 100 countries to examine the relationship between the cultural diversity in the founding team and the likelihood of admission into impact-oriented acceleration programs. Building on signaling theory, we hypothesized that the formation of multi-cultural founding teams sends a signal from the applicants to the decision-makers of social impact accelerators. The results confirm this hypothesis, showing that cultural diversity has a positive and statistically significant association with the likelihood of being admitted. This finding is robust across several specifications and accounts for the potential endogeneity of cultural diversity. In further analysis, we examined whether and how cultural diversity interacts with other signals concerning the human capital and demographical characteristics of the founding team. We found that these signals not only have an individual effect on the admission likelihood, but their interaction effects are also statistically significant.
Accelerators, founding team diversity, national culture, new ventures, signaling theory
Gaganis, Chrysovalantis
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Papadimitri, Panagiota
b7edf14e-3b00-4317-a6ce-8741b593d5b0
Pasiouras, Fotios
48097419-7f9d-4bd4-93a0-6ae59bdf9a0e
Tasiou, Menealos
f17e726f-884e-4527-87fc-7037073af351
Gaganis, Chrysovalantis
a66db976-d7d1-4a85-8057-d2cde46f0d33
Papadimitri, Panagiota
b7edf14e-3b00-4317-a6ce-8741b593d5b0
Pasiouras, Fotios
48097419-7f9d-4bd4-93a0-6ae59bdf9a0e
Tasiou, Menealos
f17e726f-884e-4527-87fc-7037073af351
Gaganis, Chrysovalantis, Papadimitri, Panagiota, Pasiouras, Fotios and Tasiou, Menealos
(2026)
Cultural diversity in new venture founding teams and accelerators’ selection decisions.
Journal of Small Business Management.
(doi:10.1080/00472778.2026.2628637).
Abstract
We used a cross-country sample of more than 9,000 startup ventures from over 100 countries to examine the relationship between the cultural diversity in the founding team and the likelihood of admission into impact-oriented acceleration programs. Building on signaling theory, we hypothesized that the formation of multi-cultural founding teams sends a signal from the applicants to the decision-makers of social impact accelerators. The results confirm this hypothesis, showing that cultural diversity has a positive and statistically significant association with the likelihood of being admitted. This finding is robust across several specifications and accounts for the potential endogeneity of cultural diversity. In further analysis, we examined whether and how cultural diversity interacts with other signals concerning the human capital and demographical characteristics of the founding team. We found that these signals not only have an individual effect on the admission likelihood, but their interaction effects are also statistically significant.
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Accepted/In Press date: 3 February 2026
e-pub ahead of print date: 4 March 2026
Keywords:
Accelerators, founding team diversity, national culture, new ventures, signaling theory
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 510374
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/510374
ISSN: 0447-2778
PURE UUID: 2ad3285d-1ce9-4657-a2e4-26e0e3b9ce8b
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Date deposited: 27 Mar 2026 18:07
Last modified: 28 Mar 2026 03:08
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Contributors
Author:
Chrysovalantis Gaganis
Author:
Panagiota Papadimitri
Author:
Fotios Pasiouras
Author:
Menealos Tasiou
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