About

Katrina Brownell is an Assistant Professor of Management in the Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Tech. Her research draws on social psychological theories and perspectives to examine the role of entrepreneurial cognition, emotion, and behaviors in new venture outcomes. She has published in outlets including the Journal of Business Venturing, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Small Business Economics, Journal of Small Business Management, Journal of Business Venturing Insights, and the International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Social Science
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Business
• Public relations

Selected publications

• Community resilience through rural entrepreneurship: the case of Tribal Textiles

  Small Business Economics · 2026-03-13

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Rural communities in developing regions are increasingly vulnerable to economic and social shocks, particularly where institutional support is limited. Through a focused case study of Tribal Textiles in rural Zambia during the COVID-19 pandemic, we adopt a deductive thematic approach to examine how social enterprises can strengthen community resilience during crises. We draw on (1) interviews with entrepreneurs and leadership, (2) field observations, and (3) relevant documentation; we find that effective community resilience emerges through the interaction of two mechanisms—embedded organizational values and adaptive creativity. These operate across four dimensions: resource mobilization, mental outlook, community networks, and economic investment, representing the elements of the community resilience framework that were most strongly evidenced in our data. Using these insights, we develop a framework that demonstrates how social enterprises can bridge institutional gaps while preserving cultural heritage in rural communities. This study advances theory by challenging the view that rural constraints are merely barriers to overcome. Instead, we reveal how deeply embedded social enterprises can transform apparent limitations into sources of community resilience. Our framework offers practical guidance for policymakers and development practitioners seeking to strengthen rural economic ecosystems through culturally authentic, socially embedded enterprise development.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Unmothered at Work: Organizational Silence Around Reproductive Loss

  Gender Work and Organization · 2026-04-17

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT An identity transition refers to changes in self‐concept that can result from professional or personal shifts. Although organizations increasingly support institutionally legible and culturally normative nonwork transitions, others remain professionally stigmatized or culturally unspeakable. This raises important questions about how employees navigate institutionally unrecognized nonwork transitions—such as reproductive loss—amid organizational silence. To investigate this question, I draw on 3 years of autoethnographic data spanning multiple losses and organizations. I find that organizational silence not only produces cross‐domain identity dissonance— a type of identity strain that arises when continuity is required in one domain despite profound disruption in another—but also creates conditions for agency to emerge. Embodied experience provides a channel for this identity work by drawing an anticipated self into the present and making the end of an anticipated transition difficult to contain across domains. This study advances identity transition research by offering new insights into how employees manage profound personal disruption in the workplace.

  PublisherDOI

• What Doesn’t Kill Me, Makes Us Weaker: The Costs and Consequences of Resilience in Organizations (WITHDRAWN)

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2025-07-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Resilience is widely celebrated as inherently beneficial for employees and organizations. However, expecting employees to maintain functioning after adversity may inflict hidden costs that, to date, have gone virtually unexplored. This dynamic is particularly problematic in cases of workplace sexual violence, where pressures to ‘bounce back’ risk amplifying trauma rather than facilitating healing. To examine this possibility, I conducted an inductive study of 19 cases of sexual violence in higher education using a dataset comprised of 1,929 pages of anonymized documents provided by survivors. I find that organizational power dynamics transform resilience from a potential resource into a mechanism of harm, especially when organizational actors explicitly pressure or threaten employees to ‘be resilient.’ This research challenges the unequivocal desirability of resilience by illustrating how its weaponization can perpetuate trauma under the guise of recovery.

  PublisherDOI

• The Freedom Fallacy: A Structuration Approach to Autonomy in New Venture Teams

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2025-07-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Autonomy is considered vital to entrepreneurship, but in the context of a new venture team (NVT), excessive independence in individual team members could disrupt the collective processes necessary for coordinated action. Drawing on structuration theory, we reconceptualize autonomy as a dynamic force that both shapes action and is shaped by the structure of a NVT. Using time-lagged data across two studies (N = 46, 62 teams), we find that autonomy in team members has an inverted U-shaped curvilinear relationship with innovation. Moreover, we demonstrate that certain lead founder personality traits – Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy – create “structuration contexts” that shape how autonomy enables or constrains innovation. Theoretical contributions, practical implications, and promising avenues for future research are discussed.

  PublisherDOI

• Baking In Purpose: How Activist Pedagogies Can Transform Entrepreneurship Education for Collective Impact

  Entrepreneurship Education and Pedagogy · 2025-07-31 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  Entrepreneurship education stands at a crossroads. Societal challenges, such as climate collapse, deepening inequality, and systemic instability, require creative collaboration and interdisciplinary solutions. Yet, the dominant model of entrepreneurship education is grounded in venture creation-focused models that privilege economic growth as its primary determinant of success. As this approach may be insufficient to equip students for the complex realities of entrepreneurship, this editorial calls for a reexamination of the purpose of entrepreneurship education. Drawing on activist pedagogies that challenge conventional paradigms, we propose baking in social and sustainability considerations as fundamental components, rather than optional add-ons to entrepreneurship education. Activist pedagogies may offer a path to shift from extraction to regeneration, from individual gain to collective impact. Instead of teaching students how to win in a structurally imbalanced system, entrepreneurship educators must teach them how to transform it. Through a synthesis of emerging frameworks, practical strategies, and entrepreneurship education scholarship, we outline what it means to prepare agentic, critically conscious entrepreneurs and leaders for a world in crisis. Business as usual is not only outdated but dangerous, and entrepreneurship education must become a site of purpose-driven and transformative action.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Strategic learning self-efficacy, strategic decision-making style, and environment as determinants of firm growth

  Journal of Innovation & Knowledge · 2025-01-01 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access

  Strategic learning self-efficacy reflects the confidence of managers in their ability to learn from the outcomes of past strategic decisions and apply that knowledge to new decisions. This research examines the relationship between strategic learning self-efficacy and a firm's industry-adjusted sales growth rate and specifies strategic decision-making style (ranging from autocratic to participative) and environmental dynamism (ranging from stable to dynamic) as contingency factors that affect this relationship. Primary and secondary data collected from 101 manufacturing firms were used to test hypothesized relationships. Results indicate that strategic learning self-efficacy is not significantly related to firm growth as a main effect. However, strategic decision-making style and environmental dynamism were both found to negatively moderate the relationship between strategic learning self-efficacy and firm growth. Moreover, strategic learning self-efficacy, strategic decision-making style, and environmental dynamism were found to have a three-way interactive effect on firm growth. Thus, dimensions of the learning context strongly influence the degree to which strategic learning self-efficacy is associated with firm growth.

  PublisherDOI

• When Darkness Dims the Social Light: The Dark Triad and Prosociality in Latin America

  Journal of Business Ethics · 2025-12-09 · 1 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Keeping it Real: How Entrepreneurs Effectively Disclose Risk

  2025-02-06 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Development of Social or Economic Entrepreneurial Intentions: A Self-Actualization Perspective

  Journal of Small Business Strategy · 2025-03-21 · 8 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Entrepreneurship enables diverse paths to self-actualization through individual achievement, social impact, or community advancement. And although research has examined entrepreneurial motivations through either identity theory or self-actualization needs separately, their interaction in shaping venture choice remains unexplored. Through a survey of graduate students (N = 517), we find that self-actualization more strongly predicts social than economic entrepreneurial intentions. This relationship is amplified for individuals with Missionary identities but manifests differently for those with Communitarian identities, who pursue collective rather than individual forms of actualization. By integrating self-actualization theory with founder identity research, we demonstrate how identity orientation fundamentally shapes entrepreneurial motivation pathways, advancing our understanding of why entrepreneurs choose social versus economic ventures.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Toxic or transformative? How lead founder machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy shape new venture team survival

  Journal of Managerial Psychology · 2025-09-24 · 4 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Purpose Drawing on conservation of resources theory, this study theorizes and tests the relationships between lead founder Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy and new venture team survival, as channeled through the mediating role of individual team member burnout. Design/methodology/approach Hypotheses are tested using time-lagged data from 52 new venture teams (N = 52 lead founders and 198 team members). Findings Lead founder narcissism is positively associated with team survival, psychopathy is negatively associated with survival, and each of these relationships is mediated by burnout. No support was found for a relationship between lead founder Machiavellianism and burnout, but post hoc analyses revealed a U-shaped curvilinear relationship with burnout. Originality/value This study extends existing research on the Dark Triad traits by shifting focus from solo entrepreneurs or traditional organizational leaders to new venture teams. By highlighting the complex and context-dependent nature of each of these traits, this research offers novel insights into how leader personality impacts new venture team survival, channeled through burnout, in high-interdependence, resource-constrained environments.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Mark Bolinger

  Appalachian State University

  7 shared

• Sascha Kraus

  Free University of Bozen-Bolzano

  3 shared

• Glenn M. Fox

  University of Southern California

  2 shared

• Ricarda B. Bouncken

  University of Bayreuth

  2 shared

• Jeffrey G. Covin

  University of Wyoming

  2 shared

• Daniel Lerner

  IE University

  2 shared

• Till Marius Gantert

  2 shared

• Jill Kickul

  2 shared