One of the major entrepreneurial challenges faced by scaling firms involves changing their internal organization. Our study focuses on a particular aspect of internal organizing—namely, how founder roles evolve in preparation for scaling. By means of an in-depth case study and a combination of data collection methods, we study the evolution of formal and informal founder roles. For both types of roles, we identify a founder-driven and an interaction-driven phase, during which founder and/or joiner role-crafting take place. Through both types of role-crafting, founder roles are (re)shaped. Particularly unique to our study is that we identify three scaling-specific paths through which the role-crafting of joiners shapes founders' roles. Specifically, founders experience a role efficiency increase as they take over some of the joiner-introduced role behaviors, or a role set decrease as joiners take over some of their (formal or informal) roles. We further point to the importance of psychological safety and value fit for successful joiner role-crafting to occur and for founder roles to change following founder-joiner interactions. Our study adds to the literatures on scaling and entrepreneurship as well as to role theory and role-crafting literature.

扩大规模的公司面临的主要创业挑战之一涉及改变其内部组织。我们的研究侧重于内部组织的一个特定方面——即创始人角色如何演变以准备扩展。通过深入的案例研究和数据收集方法的结合，我们研究了正式和非正式创始人角色的演变。对于这两种类型的角色，我们确定了创始人驱动和互动驱动阶段，在此期间，创始人和/或加入者角色塑造发生。通过这两种类型的角色塑造，创始人角色被（重新）塑造。我们的研究特别独特的是，我们确定了三种特定于扩展的路径，通过这些路径，加入者的角色塑造塑造了创始人的角色。具体来说，当创始人接管一些加入者引入的角色行为时，他们会体验到角色效率的提高，或者当加入者接管他们的一些（正式或非正式）角色时，角色集会减少。我们进一步指出了心理安全和价值契合对于成功的加入者角色塑造以及创始人角色在创始人与加入者互动后发生变化的重要性。我们的研究增加了关于扩展和创业的文献以及角色理论和角色塑造的文献。