UF Alumni Research Project

Hello! Welcome to the web site for the UF Alumni Research Project, which we launched in Fall 2018. We will use this site to share with you our research and other information based related to the project. If you’re here because you received a letter from us, you are in the right place. Please start with the intro video below. The Google sheet link, which will help you interpret your score card, is right beneath the video.

Introductory video from Chris Pryor

This link will take you to a Google sheet, which contains descriptive information of the measures collected in the research project. This is where you can use your individual score cards to better understand your place within the sample.

The information on your score cards and at this Google sheet are only a general summary of the data we obtained in the study. If you would like to know more, please don’t hesitate to contact Chris Pryor at 352-273-0331 or email at cgp@warrington.ufl.edu.

Published research & conference presentations

The impact of work passion on retirement and succession planning of older entrepreneurs, Alterman, Pryor, & Wang, 2019, presented at the European Association of Work and Organizational Psychology Conference, Turin, Italy.

            Abstract: In the retirement literature, scholars have examined how various individual attributes and organizational factors affect employees’ retirement processes. Nevertheless, the unique characteristics that might be important for entrepreneur’s retirement process are not sufficiently understood. The purpose of our study was to incorporate work passion as a unique factor for older entrepreneurs who are motivated by their own excitement for their organizations (i.e., high entrepreneurial passion) and determine whether their late career trajectories and retirement transitions differ from those of older entrepreneurs who are less passionate about their careers. We are in the process of collecting multiple-wave longitudinal data from University of Florida alumni who are entrepreneurs. The preliminary data we collected showed that entrepreneurial passion was negatively related to retirement planning and positively related to succession planning. This finding pattern is interesting, as it highlights entrepreneurs’ dual focuses in preparing for retirement. On the one hand, those with higher levels of entrepreneurial passion resisted retirement by not engaging in retirement planning. On the other hand, they invested more effort in succession planning to make sure that their business would be sustainable in the event of their retirement.  From a theoretical standpoint, our findings emphasize the unique nature of entrepreneurs’ retirement decision-making, which includes a component of considering business continuity.  From a practice standpoint, our findings suggest that entrepreneurs’ personal characteristics (e.g., entrepreneurial passion) not only has the potential to influence how they prepare themselves for the retirement, but also has the potential to influence the continuing success of the business.

Top decision makers’ political orientation, nonmarket strategy, and the pursuit of opportunity (links to extended abstract), Pryor, Alterman, & Wang, 2019, presented at the Babson College Entrepreneurship Research Conference, Babson Park, MA.

            Abstract: Heretofore, research has generally overlooked the role of the top executive and their personal political orientations in shaping how firms target government rules for change. We draw on upper echelons theory to describe how top executives’ political orientations – particularly, their belief that government and society does not value the role of the top executive – influence firms’ nonmarket strategies and, in turn, their firms’ exploitation of new opportunities. We also explore the role that top executives’ status as political insiders or outsiders may enable them to maximize the benefits of nonmarket strategies.