Achieving harmony: Social identification in academic entrepreneurs' role transition

Academic entrepreneurs often shift back and forth between "scholar" and "entrepreneur." This identity shift creates a "Who am I?" type of question. Can academic entrepreneurs achieve harmonious roles during their career transition? Drawing on identity theory and social identity theory, we predict an inverted U-shaped relationship between academic entrepreneurs' entrepreneurial identification and role harmony. We found a U-shaped relationship between scholarly identification and role harmony. Additionally, the role of entrepreneurial narrative as a sense-making process is examined, as it could potentially exacerbate or ameliorate the afore-mentioned relationship between the identification of the two identities and role harmony. The analysis of survey data from 246 Chinese academic entrepreneurs supports our hypotheses. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and policy implications of our findings.