Entrepreneurial success under corruption depends on generation and experience, new study finds

A new article in the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal offers a nuanced view of how corruption affects entrepreneurial performance by showing that entrepreneurs’ generational backgrounds play a critical role in shaping outcomes. Moving beyond debates about whether corruption universally harms or helps entrepreneurship, the study adopts a contingency approach grounded in imprinting theory.

Using a proprietary dataset from China, the research finds that entrepreneurs who came of age after the country’s transition to a market economy—developing more transactional, market-oriented imprints—tend to outperform older, pre-transition entrepreneurs in environments characterized by collusive corruption. However, this generational performance gap narrows among entrepreneurs with rural living experience or higher education, suggesting that personal life experiences can moderate the effects of generational imprinting.

By integrating individual-level differences with institutional context, the study highlights why entrepreneurs respond differently to the same corrupt environment and why one-size-fits-all conclusions about corruption and entrepreneurship can be misleading. The findings have implications for scholars, policymakers, and practitioners seeking to support entrepreneurship in institutionally challenging settings.

To read the full context of the study and its methods, access the full paper available in the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal.

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