This study explores which founder personality traits contribute to the innovativeness of new ventures, with a particular emphasis on understanding how diversity in the founding team mediates this relationship. In a sample of 2,169 young ventures between 2011 and 2022 in Germany, our results show that founder personality affects venture innovativeness directly and indirectly via team diversity. Openness to new experiences and agreeableness strongly and positively influence innovation output and input, whereas conscientiousness negatively affects both dimensions. Founding team diversity modestly mediates the effects of extraversion, conscientiousness, and agreeableness on venture innovativeness, often opposing their direct impacts. These findings offer theoretical and practical implications. Personality assessments can guide more deliberate team-building decisions and drive venture innovativeness.

The ability of organizations to manage and cope with economic crises is central to the direction and severity of their impact. We explore an underidentified determinant of strategic crisis management by focusing on the role of decision-makers’ non-cognitive and cognitive traits. In a representative sample of 1,408 young German companies, we find that founders’ personality impacts the choice of crisis management strategies in the COVID-19 context. Risk-tolerant founders respond with operative innovation rather than retrenchment. Higher conscientiousness is linked to choosing a perseverance strategy and greater openness to experience increases the likelihood of implementing strategic innovation. More agreeable founders, however, are generally less responsive. Finally, migration experience and education are positively associated with innovative crisis responses. Our results have implications for policymakers and practitioners when designing measures to cope with economic distress.

Seven European countries have implemented mandatory board gender quotas in the last two decades. I examine how this exogenous shock to the board of directors in publicly-listed firms impacts board- and firm-level outcomes. My analysis is the first to exploit the scattered implementation of these seven European quotas between 2008 and 2019, using a staggered difference-in-differences design. I document an economically meaningful decrease in firm performance and monitoring quality, measured by the level of earnings management. Evidence from moderation analyses show that the negative quota effect on performance is stronger in firms with higher ex-ante monitoring quality. My results suggest that imposing restrictions on specific board attributes can produce inefficient board structures and negative real effects.