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Partnerships as an enabler of resourcefulness in generating sustainable outcomes
Abstract
Resourcefulness research has provided many insights into how entrepreneurs do more with less, yet these studies are focused primarily on resourceful behaviors undertaken by singular actors. However, partnerships may also behave resourcefully to positively influence venture growth and sustainable outcomes. Through a qualitative study of 11 small enterprises in business partnerships with a common resource-rich partner in Mexico, we show how such partnerships yield uniquely resourceful behaviors. Our analysis also reveals that such partnership-based behaviors require distinct capacity building for resourcefulness. We thus extend theory by creating a process model in which resourcefulness mediates the relationship between nonmarket logics/informal governance and sustainable outcomes.
... This study grew out of a larger research project that sought to examine the resource exchange patterns and behaviors of CSPs (Moss et al., 2022). Place was not a concept of interest identified a priori, but one that emerged from the data as a focal outcome of the CSP growth process. ...
... To identify and select our cases, we used theoretical sampling (Eisenhardt, 1989). We initially identified potential cases through our relationship with 'Miyana' (a pseudonym), one of the largest restaurant chains in Mexico (208 locations in 2021) that has a storied history in sustainability and social responsibility (Moss et al., 2022). Miyana purposely partners with RCEs and USEs in marginalized communities with the goal of assisting their growth. ...
... It was evident that if Miyana purchased 90% of an enterprise's production, that enterprise was in a vulnerable position. Yet, Miyana's VP of CSR would invite enterprise founders to accompany him to industry trade conferences to give the enterprises more exposure and opportunities to build relationships with additional customers beyond Miyana (Moss et al., 2022). And yet the enterprises also understood that Miyana was dependent on them as well. ...
Despite the acknowledged importance of the meanings that people attach to places (e.g., homes, businesses, communities), the literature on cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) provides few insights into how place influences CSPs and how CSPs influence the places where they are enacted. To address this oversight, we explore the role of place using an inductive comparative study of nine CSPs, split across five rural cooperative enterprises and four urban social enterprises that have a common private-sector partner. We inductively derive a process model of place renewal that occurs through CSP growth, and changes the meanings that individuals give to their places. We utilize Penrose’s theory of firm growth to explain how rural CSPs grew in different ways than urban CSPs, and the changed meanings of place that emerged. Both rural and urban CSPs overcome initial perceived restrictions of place through a process of realizing the potential for change, reconfiguring the organization through physical and process changes, and ultimately experiencing renewal that changes how they view their places. Our study contributes to the CSP literature by acknowledging the role of place in theorizing on CSPs, and by including the agency and voice of traditionally marginalized actors in the CSP process. It also contributes to the theory of firm growth by explicitly incorporating place as an outcome of the organizational growth process.
... "Alternative" board skills are affordable for SMEs and address resource shortages. The literature uses a variety of names to refer to alternative governance structures: informal (Estrin and Prevezer, 2010), venture capitalist (Madill et al., 2005), supervisory [2] (Faghfouri et al., 2015;Van Gils, 2005), business group (Tajeddin and Carney, 2019), informal partnerships (Moss et al., 2021) or peer advisory boards. Company secretarial roles are already outsourced in this manner, with skilled advice offered by accounting firms [3]. ...
... Gubitta and Gianecchini (2002) examine reliance on non-family members in growing family firms. Moss et al. (2021) argue that characteristic responses to resource scarcity in entrepreneurs, such as bootstrapping, bricolage and creative resourcing, may create unexpected synergies in partnerships and external governance. Studies find that SMEs backed by VCs have differently structured and more active boards (Gabrielsson and Huse, 2002). ...
Purpose
This paper takes a structured literature review (SLR) approach to identify gaps in the literature and suggest future research opportunities. It focuses on corporate governance (CG) performed outside the formal board of directors’ structure and examines research of alternative CG of small and medium-sized entities (SMEs).
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use the SLR method to search the Scopus database, extracting and synthesising findings relating specifically to SMEs’ CG. These are tabulated and described using bibliometric software.
Findings
The authors highlight an absence of tailored theoretical approaches to understanding CG in SMEs, which differs from the governance of larger entities. They also find evidence of alternative governance structures in SME CG.
Research limitations/implications
Further research should embrace management and other theoretical perspectives and expanded methodologies, nuances in understanding offered in contextualised settings and awareness of practical implications to better understand the specific setting of CG in SMEs.
Practical implications
SMEs seek to access the scarce resources and skills external to their formal CG structures. Regulators and resource providers should mobilise facilitation and training for this expansion.
Originality/value
The authors synthesise a large body of literature to extract findings specific to SMEs. A unique contribution is our focus on alternative forms of CG in SMEs. Evidence of alternative boards points to resolutions for human capital shortages in SMEs.
... This interconnectedness allows rural entrepreneurs to share experiences, seek advice, and form partnerships that can lead to innovative business solutions. Connecting with a broader community enhances resourcefulness and fosters collaboration, which is essential for entrepreneurial success in rural settings (Moss et al., 2022). ...
This paper delves into the transformative impact of digital innovation on rural entrepreneurship, highlighting the opportunities, barriers and challenges rural entrepreneurs face. Digital technologies, including e-commerce platforms, mobile applications, and social media, enable rural entrepreneurs to reach broader markets, enhance operational efficiencies, and develop innovative business models. Despite these benefits, the digital divide—characterised by inadequate technological infrastructure and low digital literacy—presents substantial barriers to these digital advancements. Further complicating the adoption of digital technologies are challenges such as a lack of technological expertise and financial constraints, which impede the full realisation of digital innovation in rural areas. This paper discusses various strategies to overcome the barriers to digital transformation in rural entrepreneurship. The key point among these strategies is the implementation of supportive policies encouraging digital adoption. Investment in digital infrastructure is crucial to bridge the technological gap and provide rural areas with the necessary tools to compete in the digital economy. Additionally, targeted educational programs are essential to improve digital literacy and provide rural entrepreneurs with the skills to effectively leverage digital technologies. The paper underscores the importance of a holistic approach, combining policy support, infrastructure development and education to empower rural entrepreneurs. By adopting these strategies, rural communities can achieve sustainable economic growth, enhance their competitiveness, and improve the quality of life for their residents. Ultimately, this paper aimed to provide a comprehensive understanding of the role of digital innovation in transforming rural entrepreneurship and offered practical solutions to foster inclusive and sustainable economic development.
... Recent literature on SMEs has started to address this gap by expanding the concept of sustainable growth to include a systemic view of business performance and success aimed at achieving sustainability (Moss et al., 2022;Rubio-Andrés et al., 2022). However, this emerging perspective could greatly benefit from the integration of theoretical insights from the management of SEs developed over the past two decades. ...
Purpose
This study aims to expand the concept of business growth by incorporating sustainability demands, particularly in the context of the Anthropocene era. It explores the growth trajectories of social enterprises (SEs) and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), examining how SEs integrate social and environmental objectives into their growth process. Through a systematic literature review (SLR), this study compares these approaches with traditional SME growth paradigms, highlighting the need for a holistic understanding of business growth that addresses contemporary socioenvironmental challenges.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative SLR was conducted, using a structured search algorithm to identify and evaluate research on growth and scaling in SMEs and SEs. The search of the Web of Science database with specific growth-related keywords yielded 5,362 articles, which were narrowed to 194 after filtering by journal relevance. Content analysis, guided by an inductively developed codebook, examined growth definitions, operationalizations, and methodologies. This paper focused on key growth dimensions (economic, social and environmental) and identified whether growth was addressed as an outcome or process, along with its enablers and barriers.
Findings
While there are areas of intersection between the literatures, the findings reveal that traditional SME growth frameworks do not entirely align with SEs growth conception and management. Furthermore, SE’s growth barriers and facilitators, as well as growth trajectories more broadly, emerge as distinct from those of traditional SMEs. The results distill insights from SE growth paths that can be valuable for traditional SME managers, particularly in terms of managing stakeholders and the institutional environment. Social entrepreneurs commonly use strategies for reshaping business norms, influencing consumer culture and raising social issues awareness, leveraging the values of stakeholders to secure essential support.
Originality/value
As SMEs confront escalating pressure to align with the sustainable development agenda, the findings underscore the critical significance of drawing insights from the burgeoning SE growth literature. This suggests that traditional SME growth literature stands to gain invaluable insights from recent SE research, fostering a more nuanced comprehension of sustainability-centric SME growth trajectories.
... Our research contributes to emerging discourse from the RBV, emphasizing the crucial role of entrepreneurial resourcefulness in addressing firm-level issues with limited resources (Moss et al., 2022;Zahra, 2021). We find that within emerging economies, exploitative and exploratory search play crucial roles in entrepreneurial resourcefulness, enabling entrepreneurs to effectively leverage existing and new resources, creating a competitive advantage. ...
Drawing on the entrepreneurial resourcefulness perspective, this study examines how crowdfunding engagement affects small business performance. We theorize that crowdfunding engagement serves resourcefully to enhance small business performance. Moreover, we hypothesize that exploratory and exploitative search act as effective mechanisms through which crowdfunding engagement increases small business performance. We further posit that the effects of crowdfunding engagement on small business performance are contingent on environmental dynamism. We utilize a quantitative approach, specifically partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS‐SEM), for analyzing our data. Using a sample of 310 small businesses in Ghana, the findings from PLS‐SEM support our theorization, showing that both exploratory and exploitative search positively mediate the effects of crowdfunding engagement on small business performance, while environmental dynamism negatively moderates such effects. Our findings provide important theoretical and practical implications.
... Cooperative relationships between enterprises involve long-term cooperative agreements based on reciprocal commitments, and these agreements are often accompanied by resource transactions between subjects [29]. Noncontractual means of knowledge exchange, trust, and commitment among firms are rooted in the social relationship structures of firms, which effectively provide opportunities for firms to integrate internal and external knowledge and resources, generate trust, and establish commitment [30]. Therefore, the ties among supply chain members affect the dissemination of knowledge and management, the creation of trust, and the generation of commitment, and the implementation of corporate strategies and supply chain management of member firms may be affected as a result [31]. ...
The advanced manufacturing industry is located at the top of the manufacturing value chain. Its development is restricted by supply chain collaboration (SCC), the level of which is affected by many factors. Few studies comprehensively summarize what influences SCC and distinguish the impact level of each factor. Practitioners have difficulty isolating the primary factors that affect SCC and managing them effectively. Therefore, based on synergetics and the theory of comparative advantage, this study analyzes what influences SCC in the advanced manufacturing industry and how these influencing factors work, using data from 94 manufacturing enterprises and the Haken model to identify the influencing factors. The results show that China’s advanced manufacturing supply chain underwent a phase change and entered a new stage during 2017–2018. In the new stage, the competitive advantages of enterprises are one order parameter (slow variable) and are primary factors affecting SCC. The interest demands of enterprises are a fast variable and are secondary factors affecting SCC. The competitive advantages of enterprises dominate the interests of enterprises in affecting the collaboration level of China’s advanced manufacturing supply chain. In addition, in the process of influencing SCC, there is a positive correlation between the competitive advantages of enterprises and the interest demands of enterprises, and the two factors have a positive feedback mechanism. Finally, when the enterprises in the supply chain cooperate based on their differential advantages, the collaboration capability of the supply chain is at the highest level, and the overall operation of the supply chain is orderly. In terms of theoretical contribution, this study is the first to propose a collaborative motivation framework that conforms to the characteristics of sequential parameters, which provides a theoretical reference for subsequent studies on SCC. In addition, the theory of comparative advantage and synergetics are linked for the first time in this study, and both of them are enriched and developed. Equally importantly, this study compares the bidirectional influence between firms’ competitive advantages and firms’ interest demands and the ability of both to influence SCC, enriching previous validation studies of unidirectional influence. In terms of practical implications, this study guides top managers to focus on the management practice of collaborative innovation in the supply chain and advises purchasing managers and sales managers on selecting supply chain partnerships.
... For example, over time, bridging social capital assists groups to share information that ultimately helps them to have an agreed-upon and clear shared goal and tactics to solve social problems which are useful in explaining how scaling can be successful(Rivero-Villar, 2021). The sharing of knowledge resource between partners may have transformational effect(Moss et al., 2022) and results in social learning which could be crucial in explaining scaling in the longer term(Rivero-Villar, 2021). It is important to study this phenomena over longer time period as social capital helps to create, co-create, and reframe transformational ideas over time(Rivero-Villar, 2021). ...
Social capital and scaling social impact are two of the most important concepts within social entrepreneurship and social enterprise research. However, what role social capital plays in scaling social impact is less understood and academic literatures on the connection of these two crucial concepts are fragmented and scattered. To fill this research gap, we have conducted a bibliometric review to inform academics and researchers the salient agents in the field and categorize the conceptual structure of the knowledge base. Using science mapping techniques, we have analyzed 1549 relevant documents from SCOPUS that are published between 1986 and 2021. The primary objective of this review is to uncover the size, growth trajectory, and geographic distribution of literatures related to social capital's role in scaling social impact. Additionally, we have also analyzed key publishing journals, authors, and documents to map the intellectual structure and research fronts of the domain. The review shows that there is a reasonable accumulation of scientific knowledge concerning social capital's role in scaling social impact in the last three decades. Another key finding is that, some of the keywords identified within the research fronts are closely aligned with a number of UN‐SDG goals. This is the first study to systematically map social capital's role in scaling social impact literature with the help of a science mapping tool called bibliometric analysis. This work provides a clear overview of the evolution of the research field and presents potentially important research gaps that require further attention.
... This approach shifts the focus from structures and governance of collaborations to entrepreneurial "doings" for collaboration. Further, recent research (Moss et al., 2021) has shown that not only social entrepreneurs may act resourcefully but prosocial collaborations and partnerships can also yield resourceful behaviours. Thus, future research would benefit from looking at SEO collaboration from complementary theoretical lenses such as entrepreneurial theories of resourcefulness (Barraket et al., 2019) which can offer novel contributions to the literature. ...
Purpose
The aim of this systematic literature review (SLR) is to map out the current state of the research on collaboration in the context of social entrepreneurship organisations (SEOs), synthesise this line of research and advance a research agenda.
Design/methodology/approach
A SLR of 40 scientific articles found in the Scopus and Web of Science databases built the foundation for an analysis of the state-of-the-art of the research addressing the interplay of SEOs and collaboration. This area of research has been very recent since the selected articles have been published since 2005 and more than half of which have appeared since 2017.
Findings
The findings suggest that collaboration is increasingly perceived as a crucial entrepreneurial activity and process for SEOs. The results indicate that collaboration is a vibrant and rapidly growing line of research which spans different fields of study, contexts, varied theoretical perspectives and multiple units of analysis. Furthermore, a total of five key research themes are identified pertaining to collaboration in the context of SEOs, such as motivations and strategies of collaboration, its antecedents, the interplay of institutional logics and tensions arising in collaboration, the impact of collaboration on the mission of SEOs and collaborative processes and practices.
Originality/value
To lend structure to this fragmented field of inquiry, this study systematically reviews and synthesises research on collaboration in the context of SEOs. In doing so, the study reveals that this line of research is under-researched, offering a significant scope for further scrutiny.
... These partnerships face two interrelated challenges that may affect their effectiveness: (i) transforming relationships in the context of power asymmetries and (ii) stimulating long-term transformative relationship through short-term programs [77]. Sustainable-oriented partnerships are established with the principle of "power balance", where each partner has the opportunity to participate in achieving sustainable change [78,79]. Bitzer and Glasbergen [80] argued, however, that partners tend to differ in terms of their control over resources when their interests are diverse. ...
Goal 17 of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) attracted attention to the importance of partnerships between governments, the private sector, and nonprofit organizations (NPOs) for sustainable development. This paper aims to analyze the processes of establishing and operating the partnerships between NPOs and other actors in terms of governance. The best practices for partnership governance were examined according to the partnering life cycle framework. A simple random sample of 184 NPOs in six regions of Saudi Arabia was selected for data collection. These organizations were analyzed according to their governance practices in 937 partnerships established during 2016–2018. The findings showed that the organizations had strongly implemented the phases of building and scoping and managing and maintaining, while their governance practices regarding phases of reviewing and revising and sustaining outcomes ranged between moderate and low levels. The results also revealed significant differences between the overall implementation of the partnering life cycle practices and the NPO’s year of establishment. It was concluded that analyzing the current situation of implementing the best practices of partnership governance is useful to explore the efficiency and effectiveness of partnerships between NPOs and other actors, as well as the existing policy gaps, so as to create and implement sustainable-oriented partnerships.
Entrepreneurial resourcefulness is frequently invoked as an essential quality needed to succeed in the entrepreneurship processes. As such, recent years have seen a proliferation of a diverse body of scholarship on entrepreneurial resourcefulness. While this diversity demonstrates the promise and depth of entrepreneurial resourcefulness, this research is fragmented across disciplines, theories, and levels of analysis, which limits our understanding of when, why, and how entrepreneurial resourcefulness occurs and its effect on the entrepreneurial process. This study reviews and integrates the literature on entrepreneurial resourcefulness, providing a common foundational grounding that coheres diverse yet related streams of research. As an outcome of the review, we offer a definition of entrepreneurial resourcefulness that is anchored in its diverse theoretical origins and synthesize relevant research. In building on the foundation offered by the review, we identify the most critical areas for future research with the potential to build upon and extend the theoretical insights derived from the review.
By following 17 entrepreneurial ventures throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we show how entrepreneurial ventures can resourcefully mobilize resources throughout crisis—when resource constraints and opportunities for resource mobilization shift erratically. In a period marked by significant resource constraints, a temporary field emerged, centered around societal consequences of the crisis and temporarily offered opportunities for resource mobilization. We identified two types of resourcefulness, both of which were successful immediately after the crisis struck. Surprisingly, only leveraging the temporary field enabled resource mobilization throughout the crisis and fostered venture survival, while, despite initial successes, absorbing the temporary field did not.
Purpose
Literature on entrepreneurial resourcefulness (ER) has grown constantly in the last two decades. ER is a construct that describes the specific behavior of entrepreneurs, focusing on the generation and deployment of resources to pursue an opportunity. Since the ER literature has expanded and diversified, the purpose of this study is to integrate its findings with existing knowledge about the construct.
Design/methodology/approach
The study applies a systematic literature review approach, following the methodology of Tranfield et al . (2003). The authors identify and synthesize 31 studies focusing on ER.
Findings
The literature on ER can function on four different levels: (1) individual, (2) organizational, (3) contextual, and (4) effectual level. Studies on ER concentrate on either the individual or the organizational level, with the contextual and effectual levels appearing as additional study categories for the studies. Behind this categorization, research views ER either as an antecedent influencing a specific effect or as an outcome resulting from a particular context.
Originality/value
This paper is the first of its nature, structuring the existing ER research and proposing a research agenda on ER with seven concrete research avenues and their research questions. Based on the systematic literature review, the authors develop a framework consolidating the interrelations of the different levels.
The main idea of the presented work is the assumption that innovative behavior is largely predetermined by the synthesis of values and motives, the relationship of which has not been sufficiently studied. The article presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of the value-motivational characteristics of managers with different levels of expression of innovativeness. On the basis of the theoretical study, the authors of the article formulated a hypothesis about the presence of significant differences in value-motivational characteristics among managers with different levels of innovativeness. The hypothesis determined the goal of the empirical study, which was to establish links between value-motivational characteristics and the specificity of the severity of innovativeness among middle managers working in manufacturing companies. The study involved 83 respondents from 25 to 50 years old, working in manufacturing companies in the Moscow region. The survey was carried out using the following methods: (1) methodology "Diagnostics of the real structure of personal value orientations" by S.S. Bubnova; (2) questionnaire "Diagnostics of the motivational structure of personality" by V.E. Milman; (3) "Scale of self-assessment of innovative personality traits" (N.M. Lebedeva, A.N. Tatarko). For statistical verification of the results, the Kruskal-Wallis H-test and Spearman's rank correlation coefficient were used. The empirical results obtained made it possible to identify managers with different levels of self-assessment of innovativeness among the respondents and to obtain in each of the groups specific data on the manifestation of value-motivational characteristics of behavior and activity. At the end of the article, the authors formulated recommendations to enhance the professional activity of managers with different levels of self-assessment of innovativeness. In particular, it is important to develop training programs that correct the value-motivational sphere of the individual, taking into account the synthesis of those values and motives of activity that are characteristic of groups with high, medium and low self-esteem of innovativeness.
Entrepreneurial resourcefulness is a concept that resonates with practitioners and scholars alike from a diverse set of theoretical and empirical backgrounds. Despite the prevalence and promise of this concept, the literature on entrepreneurial resourcefulness is fragmented and lacks cohesion in how it is labeled, conceptualized, measured, and deployed. In many cases, it appears that raw-material-resource conversion is taken for granted, which limits theoretical development of if and how ventures emerge and grow. In this editorial, we explore the theoretical underpinnings of resourcefulness, offer a definition, and provide a roadmap for future scholarship. In addition, we introduce the six articles that comprise the special issue on entrepreneurial resourcefulness, discuss their contributions, and explore how they relate to our overall perspective on resources and resourcefulness. It is our hope that this special issue will mobilize additional scholarship to enhance our knowledge on resourcefulness, which we view as a fundamental part of entrepreneurship.
The mobilization of resources is a central and defining feature of entrepreneurship. As the body of empirical research on entrepreneurial resource mobilization has grown, the literature has become increasingly fragmented. We review the literature on entrepreneurs’ mobilization of resources, spanning human, social, financial, and other forms of capital. We identify five critical issues that hold back progress in resource mobilization research. We then propose a path ahead for future research guided by two overarching goals. First, we advocate for a process perspective, focusing attention on how an individual actor’s disposition and situation shape her responses, how these responses interact with those of other actors, and how these individual and collective responses unfold over time to generate outcomes. Second, we call for stronger unification of theory within the entrepreneurial resource mobilization literature and across contiguous conversations in strategy and organization theory. Theoretical consilience will enable the accumulation of empirical research into a cohesive body of knowledge on entrepreneurial resource mobilization.
This paper explores the role of bricolage in the growth of social entrepreneurship organisations (SEOs). Building on the premises that (1) bricolage is based on the resources at hand and the subjective perspectives that individuals have of these resources, and (2) the characteristics of the top management team (TMT) are an indicator of the resources they make available to the organisation and their ability to put different perspectives into play to interpret resource environments, we seek to determine which configurations of resource endowment, autonomy in the use of resources, TMT diversity and bricolage promote organisational growth. Using a fuzzy-set theoretical technique (fsQCA), we show that the effect of bricolage on organisational growth is contingent on the availability of resources, the degree of autonomy in using these resources and TMT diversity in organisational tenure. Our findings also indicate that TMT gender diversity is not a relevant condition to the growth of SEOs that use bricolage and that TMTs incorporating members with differing levels of previous experience in for-profit organisations exert a negative impact on organisational growth.
While Porter and Kramer’s Creating Shared Value (CSV) works well as a management framework to address “win-win” business and society issues, it leaves managers ill-equipped to legitimately manage issues where they face the prospect of “win-lose” or “lose-win” social engagements. For legitimacy, managers need to bolster CSV with ethical frameworks—specifically, norm-taking and norm-making frameworks. Managers can be better positioned to create shared value through CSV+, a multi-part framework built around CSV and augmented by ethical frameworks.
"Grand challenges" are formulations of global problems that can be plausibly addressed through coordinated and collaborative effort. In this Special Research Forum, we showcase management research that examines societal problems that individuals, organizations, communities, and nations face around the world. We develop a framework to guide future research to provide systematic empirical evidence on the formulation, articulation, and implementation of grand challenges. We highlight several factors that likely enhance or suppress the attainment of collective goals, and identify representative research questions for future empirical work. In so doing, we aspire to encourage management scholars to engage in tackling broader societal challenges through their collaborative research and collective insight.
The prevalence and complexity of local sustainable development challenges require coordinated action from multiple actors in the business, public, and civil society sectors. Large multi-stakeholder partnerships that build capacity by developing and leveraging the diverse perspectives and resources of partner organizations are becoming an increasingly popular approach to addressing such challenges. Multi-stakeholder partnerships are designed to address and prioritize a social problem, so it can be challenging to define the value proposition to each specific partner. Using a resource-based view, this study examines partner outcomes from the perspective of the strategic interest of the partner as distinct from the strategic goal of the partnership. Based on 47 interviews with representatives of partner organizations in four Canadian case studies of community sustainability plan implementation, this article details 10 resources partners can gain from engaging in a multi-stakeholder partnership.
Given the ever-changing nature of contemporary organizations, members often renegotiate how they view the identity of their organization. One way they do so is by expanding or contracting their conception of organizational identity. In studying these processes, we develop the construct of "identity elasticity" - the tensions that simultaneously stretch, while holding together, social constructions of identity. To explicate the parameters of elasticity, we problematize previous conceptions of the three foundations of organizational identity - centrality, endurance, and distinctiveness - and document the dialectic tensions experienced in their social constructions. We show how identity is experienced not only through a listing of attributes but also by negotiating a set of processual tensions. In so doing, we also bring together two competing views on organizational identity - process and characteristic. We show how experiencing and navigating the tensions of elasticity is a type of organizational identity work (process) that changes organizational members' constructions of identity (characteristic). We develop our findings as a result of a ten-year-long multiple method study of an organization undergoing significant growing pains in its identity - the Episcopal Church. Further, we position elasticity as a crucial construct with implications for how organizational identity is viewed.
Project-based cross-sector partnerships to address social issues (CSSPs) occur in four “arenas”: business-nonprofit, business-government, government-nonprofit, and trisector. Research on CSSPs is multidisciplinary, and different conceptual “platforms” are used: resource dependence, social issues, and societal sector platforms. This article consolidates recent literature on CSSPs to improve the potential for cross-disciplinary fertilization and especially to highlight developments in various disciplines for organizational researchers. A number of possible directions for future research on the theory, process, practice, method, and critique of CSSPs are highlighted. The societal sector platform is identified as a particularly promising framework for future research.
The purpose of this work is to develop a systematic understanding of embeddedness and organization networks. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted at 23 entrepreneurial firms, I identify the components of embedded relationships and explicate the devices by which embeddedness shapes organizational and economic outcomes. The findings suggest that embeddedness is a logic of exchange that promotes economies of time, integrative agreements, Pareto improvements in allocative efficiency, and complex adaptation. These positive effects rise up to a threshold, however, after which embeddedness can derail economic performance by making firms vulnerable to exogenous shocks or insulating them from information that exists beyond their network. A framework is proposed that explains how these properties vary with the quality of social ties, the structure of the organization network, and an organization's structural position in the network.
Nonprofit organizations that engage in social enterprises can have difficulty reconciling the social service and business identities of their organization. In this exploratory qualitative interview study, we examine how social enterprises affect this organizational identity tension and how executive directors of nonprofits manage these multiple identities. Findings suggest that identity tension varied dependent upon the timing of conception of the social enterprise. Nonprofit leaders used different approaches to identity management and identity marketing for social enterprises: after conception and social enterprises: at conception. Initial guidance is provided about how nonprofits engaged in social enterprises can manage identity tension issues.
A field study of 29 resource-constrained firmsthat varied dramatically in their responses to similar objective environmentsis used to examine the process by which entrepreneurs in resource-poorenvironments were able to render unique services by recombining elements athand for new purposes that challenged institutional definitions and limits.We found that Lévi-Strauss’s concept of bricolage—making do with what isat hand—explained many of the behaviors we observed in small firms that wereable to create something from nothing by exploiting physical, social, orinstitutional inputs that other firms rejected or ignored. We demonstrate the socially constructed nature of resource environments andthe role of bricolage in this construction. Using our field data and theexisting literature on bricolage, we advance a formal definition ofentrepreneurial bricolage and induce the beginnings of a process model ofbricolage and firm growth. Central to our contribution is the notion thatcompanies engaging in bricolage refuse to enact the limitations imposed bydominant definitions of resource environments, suggesting that, forunderstanding entrepreneurial behavior, a constructivist approach to resourceenvironments is more fruitful than objectivist views. (Publisher’sAbstract)
Current theorizations of bricolage in entrepreneurship studies require refinement and development to be used as a theoretical framework for social entrepreneurship. Our analysis traces bricolage's conceptual underpinnings from various disciplines, identifying its key constructs as making do, a refusal to be constrained by limitations, and improvisation. Although these characteristics appear to epitomize the process of creating social enterprises, our research identifies three further constructs associated with social entrepreneurship: social value creation, stakeholder participation, and persuasion. Using data from a qualitative study of eight U.K. social enterprises, we apply the bricolage concept to social entrepreneurial action and propose an extended theoretical framework of social bricolage.
Studies the theory of effectual reasoning with focus on the creation of firms in nonexistent or not-yet-existent markets. Effectuation takes "a set of means as given" and focuses "on selecting between possible effects that can be created with that set of means." The effectuation process is actor dependent whereas the causation process is effect dependent. Some key characteristics of effectuation are: selection criteria based on affordable loss or acceptable risk, excellence at exploiting contingencies, and explicit assumption of dynamic, nonlinear, and ecological environments. The theoretical works of March, Mintzberg, and Weick are explored to identify connections between their work and the proposed theory of effectuation. Recent empirical works that fall outside of the traditional causation models are also discussed. The four principles of effectuation are affordable loss, strategic alliances, exploitation of contingencies, and control of an unpredictable future. Based on these principles, a series of testable hypotheses are presented. The hypotheses consider the role of effectuation at different levels including the economy, the market or industry, the firm, and the founders/decision makers. The theory of effectuation advanced in this analysis concludes that the essential agent of entrepreneurship is the effectuator. (SRD)
Unlike traditional start-ups, innovative start-ups and their respective market partners are faced with severe problems of asymmetric information due to their lack of prior production history and reputation. Here, we study whether and how entrepreneurial signaling via education can help innovative entrepreneurs signal their abilities to banks and prospective employees. We argue that innovative entrepreneurs signal their quality by means of certain characteristics of their educational history. In particular, we expect potential employees to use an entrepreneur’s university degree as a quality signal when deciding whether to accept a job at an innovative start-up, and we expect banks to use a more precise indicator, namely the actual length of study in relation to a standard length, as a signal when deciding to extend credit to an innovative founder. By contrast, traditional start-ups are not faced with the same problems of asymmetric information, so we do not expect employees or banks to require the same signals from them. We empirically test our hypotheses using a dataset of more than 700 German start-ups collected in 1998/99. All hypotheses are borne out by the data. Copyright Springer 2007
The mark of a capitalistic society is that resources are owned and allocated by such nongovernmental organizations as firms, households, and markets. Resource owners increase productivity through cooperative specialization and this leads to the demand for economic organizations which facilitate cooperation. When a lumber mill employs a cabinetmaker, cooperation between specialists is achieved within a firm, and when a cabinetmaker purchases wood from a lumberman, the cooperation takes place across markets (or between firms). Two important problems face a theory of economic organization – to explain the conditions that determine whether the gains from specialization and cooperative production can better be obtained within an organization like the firm, or across markets, and to explain the structure of the organization. It is common to see the firm characterized by the power to settle issues by fiat, by authority, or by disciplinary action superior to that available in the conventional market. This is delusion. The firm does not own all its inputs. It has no power of fiat, no authority, no disciplinary action any different in the slightest degree from ordinary market contracting between any two people. I can “punish” you only by withholding future business or by seeking redress in the courts for any failure to honor our exchange agreement. That is exactly all that any employer can do. He can fire or sue, just as I can fire my grocer by stopping purchases from him or sue him for delivering faulty products.
Cross-sector partnerships have the capacity to bring together partners from very different backgrounds and circumstances toward collective prosocial efforts. We conducted a longitudinal inductive field study of eight cross-sector partnerships formed as new ventures addressing a variety of fundamental social challenges in the context of deep inequality in post-Apartheid South Africa. This allowed us to develop theory and a process model that explains how some partnerships are able to achieve collective prosocial efforts while others engage in only one-sided efforts or become inactive. The key differences hinge on processes of enacting or failing to enact conflicting material interests among relevant stakeholders. Our results have implications for the inclusion of material interests in theories of cross-sector partnering and for our understanding of entrepreneurship under conditions of inequality. The theory we develop provides a platform for future research on collective prosocial organizing in the contexts that need it most.
Bootstrapping, the pursuit of creative ways of acquiring resources in non-traditional ways, is a defining entrepreneurial behavior in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). However, after nearly three decades of research there is no quantitative synthesis of the literature. We meta-analyze data from 22 empirical samples, across 62 effect sizes, and find no significant overall relation between bootstrapping and SME performance. We examined a set of moderators (i.e., type of performance, type of bootstrapping, and bootstrapping measures). Some moderators alter the direction and influence the statistical significance of the bootstrapping-SME performance relation, but none of these moderators were statistically significant.
We provide an overview of the grounded theory approach, a methodology with significant (and largely untapped) potential for human resources (HR) research. Grounded theory is an abductive, data-driven, theory-building approach that can serve as a conceptual link between inductive and deductive research approaches. We begin by explaining the grounded theory approach in detail and outlining two versions of the method that have been used in high-impact management publications—the Gioia approach and the Tabula Geminus (twin slate) approach. We then provide an overview of the similarities and differences between grounded theory and other inductive and/or qualitative methodologies, namely, ethnography, discourse analysis, rhetorical analysis, and content analysis. Following this discussion, we offer a step-by-step guide to using grounded theory in human resources research, illustrating these principles with data and processes from extant research. Finally, we conclude by discussing best practices for achieving rigor with the grounded theory approach.
Researchers have suggested that employees assess the fairness of important social entities such as supervisors and organizations, but little empirical research has examined the rules used in forming such justice judgments. Utilizing a qualitative design, we asked new job entrants to assess the fairness of their supervisor and organization, and to elaborate on the reasons underlying their assessments. Our results reveal that, although individuals did use rules reflecting the four traditional justice dimensions in assessing entity-based fairness, they more frequently used other rules, drawing on such information as the entity's attributes, their own affective state, and social information.
Theoretical and empirical work on collaboration has proliferated in the last decade. The authors’ 2006 article on designing and implementing cross-sector collaborations was a part of, and helped stimulate, this growth. This article reviews the authors’ and others’ important theoretical frameworks from the last decade, along with key empirical results. Research indicates how complicated and challenging collaboration can be, even though it may be needed now more than ever. The article concludes with a summary of areas in which scholarship offers reasonably settled conclusions and an extensive list of recommendations for future research. The authors favor research that takes a dynamic, multilevel systems view and makes use of both quantitative and qualitative methods, especially using longitudinal comparative case studies.
This paper examines organizational boundary choice from an entrepreneurial perspective. Entrepreneurs create new profit opportunities by recombining existing assets into novel combinations based on their subjective judgment under conditions of uncertainty. In doing so, they become vulnerable to ex post appropriation by owners of uniquely complementary assets, especially where ex ante uncertainty translates into ex post causal ambiguity. Firms are a means by which entrepreneurs overcome this problem, maximizing the appropriation of pure profits from their actions. The paper formalizes this insight in an integrative model of entrepreneurial governance choice, highlighting the trade-offbetween the risk of appropriation and the incremental cost of asset ownership. Comparative statics from this model provide predictions about the conditions under which hierarchical governance will be preferred. In particular, they suggest that firms are preferred where entrepreneurial action results in the creation of combinations of assets that are rare, valuable, and difficult to imitate (i.e., the creation of strategic capabilities). The paper thus contributes to work on the dynamics of capabilities and transaction costs, highlighting the structurally uncertain nature of capability creation and its implications for the theory of the firm.
Through two qualitative studies, we examine how members of a particularly demanding occupation conduct identity work to negotiate an optimal balance between personal and social identities. Findings are based on open-ended survey responses from and in-depth interviews with Episcopal priests. We first explore the situational and vocational demands placed on those in challenging occupations, along with the identity tensions that often result from those demands. We then specify and classify several identity work tactics that ameliorate these demands and tensions by differentiating or integrating personal and social identities. To synthesize findings, we develop a theoretical model of identity work.
Using a multi-year qualitative study, I explain how employees at a fast-growing retail organization used creative resourcing - that is, the manipulation and recombination of objects in novel and useful ways to solve problems. I induce two core organizational processes (autonomous resourcing and directed resourcing) that explain how organizations foster ongoing creative activities in response to different perceived resource endowments. In doing so, I add clarity to a mixed literature that argues on the one hand that limited resources foster creativity, and on the other, that abundant resources foster creativity. Instead, I reorient the questions that scholars ask by shifting the conversation away from variance-explanation models and towards understanding organizational processes, specifically around how employees use resources in dynamic ways and how managers enable them to do so. My study unpacks how the link between resources and creativity is rooted deeply in the actions of managers and employees embedded in organizations over time. In elaborating theory around these actions, I contribute to scholarly and practitioner understanding around how organizations foster creativity in a variety of resource environments. © Academy of Management, all rights reserved. Contents may not be copied, emailed, posted to a listserv, or otherwise transmitted without the copyright holder's express written permission. Users may print, download, or email articles for individual use only.
This paper examines the process through which ventures scale their social impact in base-of-the-pyramid communities. A careful review of extant literature reveals two distinct modes of scaling social impact – breadth and depth scale. Drawing on a longitudinal study of Naandi and Drishtee – two exemplary social ventures in rural India – it is suggested that the depth and breadth scale develop through different processes. Each venture dynamically balances a minimum critical specification of social innovation, affordability, and market penetration while scaling social impact. We chart this path to scale in the two social ventures, and find that the relationship between minimum critical specifications and social impact is mediated by contrasting approaches to resource mobilization, operating routines, and entrepreneurial adjustment. The findings suggest that the process of scaling social impact can be characterized by a punctuated equilibrium model of system change.
The authors review the corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature based on 588 journal articles and 102 books and book chapters. They offer a multilevel and multidisciplinary theoretical framework that synthesizes and integrates the literature at the institutional, organizational, and individual levels of analysis. The framework includes reactive and proactive predictors of CSR actions and policies and the outcomes of such actions and policies, which they classify as primarily affecting internal (i.e., internal outcomes) or external (i.e., external outcomes) stakeholders. The framework includes variables that explain underlying mechanisms (i.e., relationship- and value-based mediator variables) of CSR–outcomes relationships and contingency effects (i.e., people-, place-, price-, and profile-based moderator variables) that explain conditions under which the relationship between CSR and its outcomes change. The authors’ review reveals important knowledge gaps related to the adoption of different theoretical orientations by researchers studying CSR at different levels of analysis, the need to understand underlying mechanisms linking CSR with outcomes, the need for research at micro levels of analysis (i.e., individuals and teams), and the need for methodological approaches that will help address these substantive knowledge gaps. Accordingly, they offer a detailed research agenda for the future, based on a multilevel perspective that aims to integrate diverse theoretical frameworks as well as develop an understanding of underlying mechanisms and microfoundations of CSR (i.e., foundations based on individual action and interactions). The authors also provide specific suggestions regarding research design, measurement, and data-analytic approaches that will be instrumental in carrying out their proposed research agenda.
This study provides a critical examination of how different theoretical perspectives in entrepreneurship research translate into individual behavior, and whether such behavior is evident in the creation and development of new ventures. Using an alternative templates research methodology, the behaviors underlying the theories of effectuation, causation, and bricolage are evaluated to see whether such behaviors are observable in case study data describing the early development of six new ventures. The analysis highlights behavioral similarities and differences between the various theoretical perspectives in entrepreneurship research, providing insight into how these perspectives contrast and complement one another, and how they could be integrated in future research.
International entrepreneurs are often confronted with unfavorable normative, regulatory, and cognitive institutional environments. Those entrepreneurial firms that successfully navigate this uneven terrain appear to defy institutional constraint and create economic growth. Yet little is known about how ventures develop in unfavorable institutional environments, particularly in terms of social entrepreneurship. Contrary to the predominant view of resource mobilization, this article finds that social entrepreneurs confronted with institutional constraints engage in bricolage to reconfigure existing resources at hand. In the process, bricolage can act as a legitimating mechanism for institutional change. This article examines how regulatory, political, and technological institutions affect resource‐mobilization in 202 technology social ventures from 45 countries. The implications for social entrepreneurship and for institutionally embedded entrepreneurial action are discussed.
Resources play a vital role in the development of an entrepreneurial venture. For ventures operating in the public interest, the process of effective resource mobilization can be especially critical to the social mission. However, there has been limited empirical examination of the approaches used by social ventures to mobilize critical resources. We study two processes of resource mobilization -- optimization and bricolage, and examine the antecedent conditions that influence a venture’s selection of these processes. Our theory predicts that environmental munificence and organizational prominence have U-shaped associations with the use of bricolage and positive associations with the use of optimization. We test our hypotheses on a sample of 202 technology social ventures from 42 countries, and discuss implications for the social entrepreneurship and broader entrepreneurship literatures.
We test the relative influence of power and social embeddedness in mobilizing resources between newly-formed businesses and other organizations by re-examining longitudinal data from the Van de Ven and Walker (1984) study of interorganizational relations. We find that resource flows to entrepreneurial ventures are predicted by the total dependence between parties engaged in the creation of value; they are not predicted by dependence advantage (or disadvantage) between the parties. We discuss the implications and propose that a theory of joint resource mobilization may be more useful than a theory of unilateral resource acquisition for understanding how new ventures access external resources.
The general topic of this chapter is the relation of the society outside organizations to the internal life of organizations. Part of the specific topics have to do with the effect of society on organizations, and part of them concern the effects of organizational variables on the surrounding social environment. I intend to interpret the term “social structure” in the title in a very general sense, to include groups, institutions, laws, population characteristics, and sets of social relations that form the environment of the organization. That is, I interpret “social structure” to mean any variables which are stable characteristics of the society outside the organization. By an “organization” I mean a set of stable social relations deliberately created, with the explicit intention of continuously accomplishing some specific goals or purposes. These goals or purposes are generally functions performed for some larger structure. For example, armies have the goal of winning possible military engagements. The fulfillment of this goal is a function performed for the larger political structure, which has functional requirements of defense and conquest. I exclude from organizations many types of groups which have multiple purposes (or which perform multiple functions for larger systems, whether these are anyone's purposes or not), such as families, geographical communities, ethnic groups, or total societies. 1 also exclude social arrangements built up on the spur of the moment to achieve some specific short-run purpose. For instance, I will not consider a campaign committee for some political candidate as an “organization,” although a political party would definitely meet the criterion of continuous functioning and relatively specific purposes.
This study examines motives for using financial bootstrapping in new businesses. First, it identifies and labels groups of new business founders based on their motives for using bootstrapping. Second, it examines the relation between variables referring to the founder and the business and the motives. The data were collected in a questionnaire sent by post to 120 new business founders in Swedish business incubators. The results show that ‘lower costs’ is the most important motive, followed by ‘lack of capital’, and, surprisingly, ‘fun helping others and getting help from others’. On the basis of a cluster analysis three groups of founders were identified, based on differences in their motives for using bootstrapping. The groups were labeled cost-reducing bootstrappers, capital-constrained bootstrappers and risk-reducing bootstrappers. The relative experience of the founder is the most significant influence for using bootstrapping. As experience is gained the new business founder learns more about the advantages and motives for using bootstrapping. The resource acquisition behavior changes from initially focusing on reducing costs towards a proactive focus on reducing the risk in the business.
We investigate the investment behavior and exit performance of VCs that have pursued expansion outside their home locations, specifically, in Asia. Our findings indicate that, in the Asian VC markets, foreign VCs have relative advantages over local VCs in terms of size and experience while they are at a disadvantage in information collection and monitoring due to both geographic and cultural distances. When investing alone, foreign VCs are more likely to invest in more information-transparent ventures. Partnership with local VCs helps alleviate information asymmetry and monitoring problem and has positive implication for the exit performance of local entrepreneurial firms. Specifically, we find that after controlling for the endogeneity of selection, firms with both foreign and local VC partnership are about 5% more likely to successfully exit.
By highlighting conditions under which viable interorganizational relationships do not materialize, we explore the limitations of interorganizational knowledge acquisition. In the empirical context of corporate venture capital (CVC), we analyze a sample of 1,646 start-up-stage ventures that received funding during the 1990s. Under a regime of weak intellectual property protection (IPP), an entrepreneur-CVC investment relationship is less likely to form when the entrepreneurial invention targets the same industry as corporate products. In contrast, under a strong IPP regime, industry overlap is associated with an increase in the likelihood of an investment relationship. Our findings suggest that many relationships do not form because the corporation will not invest unless the entrepreneur discloses his or her invention, and the entrepreneur may be wary of doing so, fearing imitation. To the extent that a CVC has greater capability and inclination to target same-industry ventures, such industry overlap would exacerbate imitation concerns under a weak IPP regime, yet facilitate an investment relationship under a strong IPP regime. Beyond CVC, this insight may explain patterns of other interorganizational relationships, including research and development alliances and technology licensing between start-ups and incumbents. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
We develop and validate measures of causation and effectuation approaches to new venture creation and test our measures with two samples of entrepreneurs in young firms. Our measure of causation is a well-defined and coherent uni-dimensional construct. We propose that effectuation is a formative, multidimensional construct with three associated sub-dimensions (experimentation, affordable loss, and flexibility) and one dimension shared with the causation construct (pre-commitments). As specified by Sarasvathy (2001), we also show that causation is negatively associated with uncertainty, while experimentation, a sub-dimension of effectuation, is positively correlated with uncertainty. The major contribution is the resulting validated scales that measure causation and effectuation.
Why firms exist and how their boundaries should be drawn are central issues in several academic disciplines. The field of entrepreneurship continues to struggle with a theory of the firm. This paper suggests a theory of the entrepreneurial firm grounded in organizational economics and bounded by the rent generation and appropriation of entrepreneurial knowledge.
Most writing on sociological method has been concerned with how accurate facts can be obtained and how theory can thereby be more rigorously tested. In The Discovery of Grounded Theory, Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss address the equally Important enterprise of how the discovery of theory from data--systematically obtained and analyzed in social research--can be furthered. The discovery of theory from data--grounded theory--is a major task confronting sociology, for such a theory fits empirical situations, and is understandable to sociologists and laymen alike. Most important, it provides relevant predictions, explanations, interpretations, and applications. In Part I of the book, "Generation Theory by Comparative Analysis," the authors present a strategy whereby sociologists can facilitate the discovery of grounded theory, both substantive and formal. This strategy involves the systematic choice and study of several comparison groups. In Part II, The Flexible Use of Data," the generation of theory from qualitative, especially documentary, and quantitative data Is considered. In Part III, "Implications of Grounded Theory," Glaser and Strauss examine the credibility of grounded theory. The Discovery of Grounded Theory is directed toward improving social scientists' capacity for generating theory that will be relevant to their research. While aimed primarily at sociologists, it will be useful to anyone Interested In studying social phenomena--political, educational, economic, industrial-- especially If their studies are based on qualitative data.
I modify the uniform-price auction rules in allowing the seller to ration bidders. This allows me to provide a strategic foundation for underpricing when the seller has an interest in ownership dispersion. Moreover, many of the so-called "collusive-seeming" equilibria disappear.
Getting more for less: The role of resourcefulness in entrepreneurship
- T Williams
- E Zhao
- G George
- S Sonenshein
- D Ucbasaran
Capacity building in health promotion, part 1: for whom? And for what purpose?
- Labonte
Tabula Geminus. A “Both/And” Approach to Coding and Theorizing
- G E Kreiner
“Blinded by the light” or “seeing the light”? Journeys of positivist scholars into qualitative inquiry
- Kreiner