What determines the entrepreneurial success of academics? Navigating multiple social identities in the hybrid career of academic entrepreneurs

Institutional support and pressure for academic researchers to engage with industry and business stakeholders have increasingly enabled and incentivized academics to embrace an entrepreneurial identity. Based on social identity theory, this study examines the mediated relationship among entrepreneur identification, role integration, and entrepreneurship performance of academics. We also propose that this mediated relationship is moderated by academic entrepreneur's social capital inertia and adaptability of task approach. We tested our model using a sample of 248 academic entrepreneurs from China over three measurement periods. Our empirical results indicate that role integration mediates the positive relationship between entrepreneur identification of academics and academic entrepreneurship performance. This mediated relationship is weakened by academic entrepreneurs’ social capital inertia and is strengthened by their adaptability of task approach. These findings offer important implications for individual academics and academic institutions to effectively promote academic entrepreneurship.