Philip Roundy

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga | Chatt · Department of Marketing and Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurial ecosystems are receiving heightened attention from scholars and practitioners. Studies have focused on isolating entrepreneurial ecosystems’ components; however, prior research has not offered a theory of entrepreneurial ecosystems that embraces their complexity. To address this omission in ecosystems research, we contend that entre...

Despite intense scholarly interest in entrepreneurial ecosystems, research has not explicitly emphasized ecosystem-level dynamics or explored sources of variance among ecosystems. We theorize that entrepreneurial ecosystems are heterogeneous in a key, system-level characteristic: resilience. We define entrepreneurial ecosystem resilience and theori...

Entrepreneurial alertness can play a vital role in the identification and creation of opportunities involving early-stage ventures. However, the strategic function of entrepreneurial alertness in more mature organizations has not been explored. In a field study of organizations responding to an environmental disruption, we explore if entrepreneuria...

Purpose Entrepreneurial ecosystems are receiving growing attention from scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers in both developed and developing countries. Studies of this phenomenon have focused almost exclusively on ecosystems in large, urbanized regions and metropolitan areas, located primarily in developed economies. However, the prevalence...

Growing evidence suggests entrepreneurial ecosystems are a potent engine for economic and community development. Prior research has identified an ecosystem’s culture as serving a critical role in its creation and functioning. However, it is not clear how the cultural forces in entrepreneurial ecosystems develop and are shaped by individuals, organi...

While the literature on conventional entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) is large and growing, relatively little has been written about social entrepreneurship ecosystems (SEEs). Yet, because social entrepreneurship is distinct from conventional entrepreneurship, it is reasonable to assume that their respective ecosystems differ in significant ways as...

This study explores the factors that contribute to the text complexity of local government communication and whether text complexity varies with governments' financial performance. We first identify factors associated with text complexity, including the local government's size, external monitoring, organizational complexity, and financial complexit...

The differences between social ventures, traditional for-profit businesses, and nonprofit organizations have important implications for social entrepreneurship communication. To create and scale social ventures, entrepreneurs must mobilize resources from stakeholders that span organizational, industry, and sectoral boundaries and navigate ecosystem...

Purpose Entrepreneurs are increasingly relying on artificial intelligence (AI) to assist in creating and scaling new ventures. Research on entrepreneurs’ use of AI algorithms (machine learning, natural language processing, artificial neural networks) has focused on the intra-organizational implications of AI. The purpose of this paper is to explore...

Technology entrepreneurship research has emphasized digital entrepreneurship and the pursuit of opportunities based on new technologies. However, a different type of entrepreneurship focused on opportunities involving the (re)adoption of analog technologies when digital alternatives are dominant—analog entrepreneurship—is a trend receiving intense...

Social entrepreneurs create hybrid ventures that combine revenue-generating business models with social impact models to produce value for two primary stakeholder groups: consumers and beneficiaries. The interactions between social entrepreneurs and their beneficiaries are heavily studied. However, consumers’ responses to a venture having a social...

Teacher entrepreneurs pursue innovative opportunities to create value for their students and colleagues; however, it is unclear how local communities enable teacher entrepreneurs and why some communities provide fertile ground for teacher entrepreneurship while others stifle teacher entrepreneurs. To address the limited understanding of how communi...

Why do some social entrepreneurs embrace the assistance of their social impact entrepreneurial ecosystems (SIEEs) in creating and scaling social ventures while others go-it-alone and do not capitalize on the resources in their local communities? To explain this difference in social entrepreneurs , we draw from work in leadership and positive organi...

The “entrepreneurial ecosystem” (EE) has become the dominant metaphor in theories explaining how location-specific forces influence entrepreneurship. Despite the progress made by scholars studying EEs, in this essay we contend that the ecosystem metaphor has created an implicit tendency in entrepreneurship theory to emphasize macro-, ecosystem-leve...

Entrepreneurs require human resources to establish and scale their ventures; however, constraints often prevent entrepreneurs from investing in formal human resource systems. How entrepreneurs overcome human resource challenges by leveraging their entrepreneurial ecosystems as informal inter-organizational talent management systems has been overloo...

Research has focused on the ecosystems of forces that influence how organizations pursue opportunities in new industries, nascent markets, and novel technologies. However, there is an emerging, but unstudied, ecosystem supporting entrepreneurial activities in legacy industries, mature markets, and based on (seemingly) obsolete technologies - the an...

Purpose Scholars are increasingly adopting an ecosystems perspective focused on the complex systems of factors that influence organizations. A type of ecosystem that is receiving significant academic and practitioner attention is the entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE): the interconnected system of actors and forces that supports or hinders entrepreneur...

Entrepreneurs pursue opportunities in a variety of contexts. Research has focused on opportunity creation and recognition in new and emerging industries. However, how entrepreneurs pursue opportunities in struggling industries at the end of their lifecycles is not clear. To investigate this phenomenon and induce an empirically grounded theoretical...

The contextual turn in entrepreneurship research has shifted scholars' attention to the place‐based forces that shape entrepreneurship in vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystems, such as Silicon Valley, Stockholm, and Bangalore. Studies find that an important component of ecosystems is the knowledge they contain about the entrepreneurship process. Howev...

Innovations are produced by entrepreneurs’ imaginations. To turn imagined ideas into realized innovations, entrepreneurs must attract the resources necessary to create the innovations they envision. Resource acquisition involves crafting and communicating compelling narratives that persuade stakeholders to provide resources. However, there is not a...

Entrepreneurial ecosystems are the systems of forces that encourage and sustain entrepreneurship in geographic areas. Vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystems exhibit coordination—participants engage in explicit attempts to organize, develop, and promote the ecosystem. Coordination involves ecosystem leaders; however, there is not a theory explaining the...

Academics and practitioners are increasingly lauding the economic and community benefits of entrepreneurial ecosystems: the interrelated forces that promote and support entrepreneurship in geographic areas. Most researchers examining entrepreneurial ecosystems have sought to identify their core attributes rather than isolating the concrete mechanis...

Despite the ubiquity of small towns, the forces that shape entrepreneurship in cities of limited size, reach, and scope are unexamined. To address the lack of attention to small town entrepreneurship, a comparative-case study of two small towns (Newton Falls, Ohio and Geneva, Ohio) was conducted. The study examines how and to what extent entreprene...

Entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) are receiving intense attention. However, the revitalization of inactive EEs in unmunificent contexts is understudied. To investigate this phenomenon, an inductive study was conducted of a once-vibrant EE that became dormant because of an undiversified industrial base and a precipitous decline in its regional econom...

Academics, practitioners, and policymakers are devoting heightened attention to social entrepreneurship: the creation and pursuit of innovative opportunities to produce positive externalities that improve conditions harmful to society. Scholars from across the behavioral, managerial, and organizational sciences are increasingly studying social entr...

Purpose Vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystems, systems of inter-related forces that promote and sustain regional entrepreneurship, are increasingly viewed as sources of innovation, economic development and community revitalization. Regions with emerging, underdeveloped or depressed economies are attempting to develop their nascent entrepreneurial ecos...

Purpose Impact investing, a type of values-based investing that combines financial investment with philanthropic goals, is receiving heightened scholarly and practitioner attention. The geography of impact investing, however, is largely unexamined, and it is not clear why some regional impact-investing communities are more vibrant than other commun...

Purpose Entrepreneurship is an activity with far-reaching economic and cultural implications. Research seeking to understand the cognition and behavior of entrepreneurs is devoting increasing attention to how entrepreneurs construct and utilize discourse. However, word-level analysis of the specific language used by entrepreneurs has not received...

Entrepreneurship is an activity with far-reaching economic and cultural implications. Research seeking to understand the cognition and behavior of entrepreneurs is devoting increasing attention to how entrepreneurs construct and utilize discourse. However, word-level analysis of the specific language used by entrepreneurs has not received significa...

Entrepreneurial ecosystems, the set of forces that generate and sustain regional entrepreneurial activity, are a growing focus of scholars and practitioners. Studies are beginning to draw attention to the role of cultural artifacts, including narratives, in the functioning of entrepreneurial ecosystems. However, the mechanisms driving narratives’ e...

Purpose Entrepreneurial ecosystems, the inter-connected set of organizing forces that produce and sustain regional entrepreneurial activity, are receiving heightened attention. This research finds that narratives about ecosystem participants discursively construct entrepreneurial ecosystems. However, the studies do not emphasize ecosystem and regio...

Entrepreneurial ecosystems – the inter-related forces that promote and sustain regional entrepreneurship – are receiving intense academic, policy-maker, and practitioner attention. Research focuses on mature entrepreneurial ecosystems in large, urban areas. Scholars are slow to examine the functioning of entrepreneurial ecosystems in small towns, w...

Scholars are devoting heightened attention to the language of entrepreneurship and to its influence on the cognition, behaviors, and outcomes of entrepreneurs and their stakeholders. However, the primary themes that constitute entrepreneurs’ language are unexamined. In this partially-inductive study, we identify the most common themes in entreprene...

In pursuit of the beneficial outcomes of entrepreneurship, governments and regional development organizations enact policies to stimulate entrepreneurial activity. A growing focus of policymakers in emerging and developed economies is the promotion of entrepreneurial ecosystems: the inter-connected system of forces that generate and sustain regiona...

Purpose Social entrepreneurship represents an unconventional, but increasingly prevalent, activity in developed and emerging economies. Social entrepreneurs devise novel business models that blend business and social missions with the aim of (co-)producing value with two primary stakeholder groups, beneficiaries and customers. Although interaction...

Structured abstract Purpose – Scholars are devoting increasing attention to understanding a specific type of strategic initiative in family firms: corporate social responsibility (CSR). Prior studies have focused on the strengths of family firms’ CSR performance. However, it is argued that to better understand family firms and their engagement in...

Purpose The growing prevalence of social entrepreneurship has been coupled with an increasing number of so-called “impact investors”. However, much remains to be learned about this nascent class of investors. To address the dearth of scholarly attention to impact investing, this study seeks to answer four questions that are central to understanding...

Purpose The formation of entrepreneurial ecosystems is recognized as an activity that can produce economic development and community revitalization. Social entrepreneurship is also an activity that is receiving growing attention because of its potential for addressing social and economic problems. However, while scholars have focused on how the pa...

Social entrepreneurship is an activity that is receiving intense scrutiny from scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers. However, research is only beginning to explore the unique function social entrepreneurs fill in the marketplace. This conceptual paper examines if social entrepreneurs indeed represent a novel category of market actor. Building...

Social entrepreneurs adopt a variety of business models in their quest to alleviate social problems and create value for beneficiaries. Among these models, fundamental but largely unacknowledged differences exist between product-based ventures, which create value by producing goods and services and donate a portion of profits to beneficiaries, and...

The formation of entrepreneurial ecosystems is recognized as an activity that can produce economic development and community revitalization. Social entrepreneurship is also an activity that is receiving growing attention because of its potential for addressing social and economic problems. However, while scholars have focused on how the participant...

Purpose Board interlocks are a phenomenon of widespread prevalence and one of the most vibrant topics in corporate governance research. However, despite sustained academic interest in interlocks, there has not been a comprehensive review of the literature in nearly two decades. To address this need for an up-to-date review, this paper aims to condu...

Purpose This paper aims to introduce the concept of top management team (TMT) regulatory focus to explain the differences in executive motivation. Upper echelons research has demonstrated that top managers’ willingness to deviate from their current strategies is a key determinant of organizational success. However, it is not clear why some TMTs are...

Entrepreneurial ecosystems are receiving growing attention. However, prior research has primarily focused on the physical characteristics and artifacts of such systems. The social construction of entrepreneurial ecosystems, and particularly the discourse involved in their creation, evolution, and promotion, has not been examined. To address this om...

The increasing importance of entrepreneurial behaviour has led scholars to embrace the idea that an entrepreneurial orientation (EO) is an important predictor of firm performance. While EO occupies a central position in strategic entrepreneurship research, scholars have yet to explore its origins in new ventures. Drawing on the knowledge-based and...

New ventures are increasingly being founded in a novel context: within the boundaries of traditional nonprofit organizations. This phenomenon represents a type of social entrepreneurship. Despite the emerging prevalence of this activity, it has received very little academic attention. This study examines the topic through an exploratory, partially-...

Social entrepreneurship is an increasingly prevalent subcategory of entrepreneurship that is being used to tackle some of society’s most intractable problems. However, it is unclear what motivates individuals to become social entrepreneurs. In a partially-inductive, exploratory study, we examine what drives entrepreneurs to found social ventures. W...

Social entrepreneurship is an increasingly prevalent subcategory of entrepreneurship that is being used to tackle some of society’s most intractable problems. However, it is unclear what motivates individuals to become social entrepreneurs. In a partially-inductive, exploratory study, we examine what drives entrepreneurs to found social ventures. W...

This paper uses narrative theory to examine the role of narratives in legitimating organizational change. Specifically, the author examines the influence of organizational narratives – narratives from an organization's management to its employees – on the legitimacy employees give to merger or acquisitions (M&A). It is argued that as the narrativit...

A growing number of small businesses are being founded in a novel context: within the boundaries of traditional nonprofit organizations. This phenomenon represents a type of social entrepreneurship referred to as social enterprise. Despite the increasing prevalence of social enterprise, it has received very little academic attention. This study exa...

Management scholars increasingly recognize that narrative communication can have a pivotal influence on organizational stakeholders. However, studies have yet to examine narrative’s influence on stakeholders’ emotional responses. The lack of attention to the complex linkages between narrative and emotion is puzzling given that the ability to influe...

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to focus on how narratives are used to acquire social venture resources. Social entrepreneurship is a phenomenon of increasing significance. A key challenge for social ventures is resource acquisition. However, how social entrepreneurs gather the resources necessary to grow their organizations is not clear. D...

Despite growing academic interest in social entrepreneurship, a critical challenge facing social ventures has yet to receive attention: how do social entrepreneurs communicate with their diverse groups of stakeholders? This topic is examined using an exploratory, partially-inductive study consisting of semi-structured interviews, ethnographic obser...

Despite growing academic interest in social enterprises, a critical challenge facing such organizations has yet to receive attention: how do social enterprise managers communicate with their diverse groups of stakeholders? This topic is examined using an exploratory, partially-inductive design consisting of semi-structured interviews, ethnographic...

Separate logics inform the perceptions and behaviors of entrepreneurial ventures and family businesses. These logics are distinct and often in conflict. Prior work, however, has devoted limited attention to understanding family technology ventures (FTVs) – technology ventures combining both “familial” and “entrepreneurial” logics. Moreover, it is n...

Like all entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs construct communication to persuade stakeholders to provide resources. However, unlike conventional entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs must develop a complex message that balances both business and social-good themes. Yet it is unclear precisely how such communication influences entrepreneurs’ success i...

Despite progress made by prior research in understanding how information is used in strategic decision making, most studies are grounded on a similar, unstated assumption: information is homogeneous. We examine the influence of an important source of information heterogeneity: strategic information can be structured in narrative or non-narrative fo...

Narcissism among CEOs has received considerable attention in recent years, but research has not examined the influence of narcissism at the TMT-level. To promote discussion and facilitate such research, this paper draws on work on collective (i.e. group) narcissism to argue that this phenomenon influences interactions between TMTs directly by affec...

As researchers who often work with qualitative data, we are frequently asked to review qualitative papers and to speak about how to conduct qualitative research. Through these experiences, we have come to believe that there are prevalent misconceptions about the range of roles that qualitative data can play in research on strategic organization. Mo...

One determinant of merger and acquisition (M&A) success is the extent that an organization’s employees commit to the combination. However, employees often have low commitment to merger and acquisition activity. This paper examines the relationship between organizational commitment, regulatory focus, and M&A narratives. It is argued that employees w...

Technology acquisitions can benefit firms by providing valuable resources, increasing market power, and initiating strategic renewal. Yet despite these opportunities, technology acquisitions often present a significant challenge for both buyers and sellers. In this article, we review the research on technology acquisitions and outline what is known...

This paper examines the influence of communication form on employee uncertainty during mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Specifically, the author uses narrative theory to analyze how narrative organizational communication affects the three components of uncertainty - decreased predictive, explanatory, and descriptive ability. It is hypothesized that...

Fluency is a skill that, unfortunately, many students lack. This deficiency causes students to be frustrated with, and overwhelmed by, the act of reading. However, research suggests that the repeated reading method may help students to improve their fluency. This study examines the effects of repeated readings on student fluency. The study's overar...

Research has examined the relationship between religiosity, religious involvement, and participation in secular, civic organizations (i.e., voluntary organizations). However, research has not examined the influence of religious involvement on secular, non-civic organizations (i.e., work organizations). Drawing from theories in organizational behavi...

Research has examined how viewing one’s work as a “job,” a “career,” or a “calling” influences the satisfaction individuals derive from their employment. However, prior work has considered only non-religious (secular) connotation of callings. This paper examines the link between perceiving one’s work is a calling in the religious sense and an indiv...