Identity of Entrepreneurs in the Evolution of a New Organizational Form: The Emergence and Growth of eBook Publishers Population in Korea

The current paper examines the role of the identity of entrepreneurs in the emergence and evolution of a new organizational form by empirically analyzing the evolution of eBook publishers in Korea from 1996 to 2011. Drawing on the recently developed identity-based theory of organizational form in the organizational ecology literature, we test hypotheses on the effects of focused and diffused organizational identities on organizational founding in an emergent organizational population. The results of our empirical analysis that tested three hypotheses about a positive relationship between focused identity and form emergenceand negative relationships between diffused (horizontal and vertical) identity and form emergence largely supported the argument of identity-based entrepreneurship. General implications are discussed.