Perceptions about corporate ethical behaviour in the founders’ country of origin and ventures’ admission into impact-oriented accelerator programmes: cross-country evidence

Building on the upper echelon and signaling theories, we hypothesize that the perceptions about corporate ethical behavior in the country of origin of a venture’s founders may provide an important piece of information to the selection committees of impact-oriented accelerator programmes that serves as a signal for the trustworthiness and opportunistic behavior of the founding team. In turn, this could have implications for the admission decision into the programmes. Using a sample of over 16,000 early-stage ventures from 131 countries that applied to 287 accelerator programmes, we find evidence consistent with this hypothesis. Our results show that better perceptions about the ethical behavior of the founding team enhance the likelihood to be admitted into an impact-oriented accelerator programme. The role of perceived ethics appears to be stronger in case of programmes that guarantee some kind of financing. Further analysis shows that the strength of both formal and informal institutions moderates the relationship between the ethical perceptions and the admission likelihood.