Research summary: Entrepreneurs often need resources controlled by stakeholders to form and exploit opportunities. While many of these resources can be acquired through simple contracts, the acquisition of some may require efforts on the part of stakeholders that go beyond what can be specified contractually. Such efforts-extra-role behaviors-generally involve the formation of deep psychological bonds between stakeholders and entrepreneurial endeavors. In an entrepreneurial context, the process of creating these bonds can be called stakeholder enrollment. Critical attributes of this process are shown to vary by the informational setting (risky or uncertain) within which entrepreneurship takes place.
Managerial summary:Entrepreneurs often need to gain access to resources controlled by other stakeholders to be successful. In some cases, entrepreneurs must induce these stakeholders to form deep psychological bonds in order to obtain the required resources. The process of creating these bonds is called stakeholder enrollment. This article notes that entrepreneurs can use information about the nature of the opportunity they are pursuing, information about themselves (i.e., the entrepreneurs' charisma, trustworthiness, and reputation), or both, to enroll stakeholders. This article suggests that the more uncertain a particular opportunity is, the less entrepreneurs can use information about the opportunity and the more they must rely on information about themselves to successfully enroll stakeholders.
Stakeholder enrollment under uncertaintyOf course, not all entrepreneurial settings are risky. When neither the possible outcomes associated with B. L. Burns et al.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.