Dr Kanze wins Academy of Management Journal‘s Impact Award

Dr Dana Kanze, Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour at London Business School, has won the Academy of Management Journal's Impact Award for the co-authored paper, We Ask Men to Win and Women Not to Lose: Closing the Gender Gap in Startup Funding (Academy of Management Journal Vol. 61, No. 2) at the 83rd Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management in Boston, Massachusetts.

First published in April 2018, the paper offers evidence of gender differences in investor questions posed to male versus female entrepreneurs that can impact their respective startup funding outcomes.

Dr Kanze won the Impact Award together with her co-authors Laura Huang, Distinguished Professor, Management and Organizational Development, Northeastern University; Affiliated Professor Mark A. Conley, London Business School, and E. Tory Higgins, Stanley Schachter Professor of Psychology and Professor of Business, Columbia University.

Drawing upon regulatory focus theory, the authors performed field and experimental studies that revealed investors tend to ask male entrepreneurs promotion-focused questions in the domain of gains and female entrepreneurs prevention-focused questions in the domain of losses. These studies indicated that the difference in the types of questions posed to entrepreneurs has a significant impact on the amount of funding their startups go on to raise.

Although entrepreneurs are apt to match regulatory focus in their responses to investors, the authors found that those who switch focus by responding to prevention-focused questions with promotion-focused answers can raise significantly more funding than those who respond in prevention focus.