Abstract: Entrepreneurial actors’ abilities to shape organizational fields are important initiators of opportunities. We explore which aspects of organizational fields entrepreneurs influence when attempting to re-configure these fields. Our analysis of 12 case companies identifies 13 second order themes and four aggregate dimensions of fields: exchange, usage context, representation and norms. The findings offer insights about how entrepreneurial actors deal with the paradox of embedded agency to overcome institutional determinism. In exercising their capacity for action, entrepreneurial actors choose to focus on themes and dimensions that have the greatest potential influence over the organizational field. The results also illustrate that changes induced by entrepreneurial actors often are beneficial to all actors in the field, thus creating a logical link to value-creating strategies.

Abstract: Though business strategy research studies firm-level decisions and behaviors, it is individual executives who generate business ideas and chart the course for the firm. This proposal presents a model of entrepreneurial cognition combining experience with a typology of institutional logics and a cognitive ability, frame-switching, that enables creative thinking. The study sample includes 80 entrepreneurs participating in a think-aloud new product marketing protocol, a valid measure of frame-switching ability, and survey/interview methods to measure their access to institutional logics. We expect that individuals with greater access to institutional logics will generate more feasible business ideas, and that business idea generation will be mediated by frame-switching ability. The model can explain why some individuals generate or recognize entrepreneurial opportunities while others do not.

Abstract: The absence of specialized intermediaries, regulatory systems, and contract-enforcing mechanisms, more commonly known as institutional voids, plague emerging markets. In this paper, we contend that the social structure of the family helps entrepreneurs to overcome some of the challenges of competing in markets in which specialized intermediaries are absent, thereby enabling new venture start-up activities. To test our ideas we use a sample of 31,429 student nascent entrepreneurs, drawn from the 2011 “Global University Entrepreneurial Spirit Students’ Survey” (GUESSS) project. Our findings indicate significant family social support for young entrepreneurs in all institutional contexts and particularly strong social support in countries with weak institutional development; however, family financial support has a significant negative relationship in all institutional contexts and exacerbated in those with institutional voids.

Abstract: One of the central findings among entrepreneurship studies is that resources in social networks play a central role. We argue that when firms are locally embedded, it affects the objectives they pursue. This strategic choice of surviving versus thriving can lead to conflicting success measures, such as preserving jobs rather than growing profits. We employ a matched sample of ventures to examine the separate effects of locally embedded resources on survival and growth. We find that when the firm and founder originate in a minor city, survival and employment increase. When the firm and founder originate in major cities, we find growth increases. These results inform the role of community in venture outcomes to provide a theoretical separation of survival from growth.