No abstract

While theory suggests that management has discretion in manipulating resources in order to build competitive advantage, resource‐based research has focused on the characteristics of resources, paying less attention to the relationship between those resources and the way firms are organized. In explaining performance, entrepreneurship scholars have focused on a firm's entrepreneurial strategic orientation (EO), leaving its interrelationship with internal characteristics aside. We argue that EO captures an important aspect of the way a firm is organized. Our findings suggest that knowledge‐based resources (applicable to discovery and exploitation of opportunities) are positively related to firm performance and that EO enhances this relationship. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

By considering the amount of uncertainty perceived and the willingness to bear uncertainty concomitantly, we provide a more complete conceptual model of entrepreneurial action that allows for examination of entrepreneurial action at the individual level of analysis while remaining consistent with a rich legacy of system-level theories of the entrepreneur. Our model not only exposes limitations of existing theories of entrepreneurial action but also contributes to a deeper understanding of important conceptual issues, such as the nature of opportunity and the potential for philosophical reconciliation among entrepreneurship scholars.

No abstract

By considering the amount of uncertainty perceived and the willingness to bear uncertainty concomitantly, we provide a more complete conceptual model of entrepreneurial action that allows for examination of entrepreneurial action at the individual level of analysis while remaining consistent with a rich legacy of system-level theories of the entrepreneur. Our model not only exposes limitations of existing theories of entrepreneurial action but also contributes to a deeper understanding of important conceptual issues, such as the nature of opportunity and the potential for philosophical reconciliation among entrepreneurship scholars.

This paper develops a hubris theory of entrepreneurship to explain why so many new ventures are created in the shadow of high venture failure rates: More confident actors are moved to start ventures, and then act on such confidence when deciding how to allocate resources in their ventures. Building on theory and evidence from the behavioral decision-making literature, we describe how founders' socially constructed confidence affects the manner in which they interpret information about their prior and current ventures. We then link founders' propensity to be overconfident to their decisions to allocate, use, and attain resources. In our model, founders with greater socially constructed confidence tend to deprive their ventures of resources and resourcefulness and, therefore, increase the likelihood that their ventures will fail.confidence, hubris, entrepreneurship, resources

Informed by the sustainable development and entrepreneurship literatures we offer the following definition: Sustainable entrepreneurship is focused on the preservation of nature, life support, and community in the pursuit of perceived opportunities to bring into existence future products, processes, and services for gain, where gain is broadly construed to include economic and non-economic gains to individuals, the economy, and society. To illustrate the diversity of potential research avenues that will advance this field, we offer a research agenda derived from an economics, an institutional, and a psychology perspective. We suggest research questions exploring "what is to be sustained" and "what is to be developed" in sustainable entrepreneurship research.

Building on the entrepreneurial action and sustainable development literatures, we highlight how the current explanations of opportunity recognition, based on entrepreneurial knowledge and economic motivation, are insufficient for modeling the recognition of opportunities for sustainable development. Our model suggests that entrepreneurs are more likely to discover sustainable development opportunities the greater their knowledge of natural and communal environments become, the more they perceive that the natural and communal environment in which they live is threatened, and the greater their altruism toward others becomes. We propose that entrepreneurial knowledge plays a central role by moderating these effects.