Often, entrepreneurs of different ages team up for a social impact; yet, current literature is evasive of how age diversity impacts social venture performance (financial performance and social mission breadth). This work dives deeper into the cognitive realm of entrepreneurial team dynamics and offers a fresh perspective informed by neuroscience literature integrated with the upper echelons theory. Further, this paper highlights the important boundary conditions by depicting the moderating role of human capital.
The study uses a cross-country multi-wave sample of over 20,000 early-stage social ventures to perform regression analysis, understanding the impact of age diversity on social enterprise performance (financial performance and social mission breadth), alongside the moderating impact of human capital on the relationship. Several robustness checks lend greater confidence to the results.
This study finds that age diversity is negatively associated with social enterprise financial performance, while it does not independently affect social mission breadth. At the same time, the study demonstrates a positive moderating effect of general human capital on the age diversity–social mission breadth relationship.
By leveraging a neuroscience lens, this paper makes a fresh attempt to examine how the founding team’s age diversity is associated with social enterprise performance (financial performance and social mission breadth), including its boundary conditions.
