The growing use of collaborative methods of governance raises concerns about the relative power of participants in such processes and the potential for exclusion or domination of some parties. This research offers a framework for assessing power that considers authority, resources, and discursive legitimacy as sources of power and considers the participants, the process design, and the content of collaborative governance processes as arenas for power use. A case study of a collaborative governance process is presented and analyzed using the power framework. Implications for the design of collaborative governance processes are discussed, including the benefits of a multidimensional definition of power, tools for managing power imbalances among participants, and strategies that participants can use to participate more fully in collaborative governance processes.

We examine the evolution of a new population of organizations (state offices of dispute resolution) in an emerging institutional field, focusing on how actions at multiple levels interact recursively to enable multiple logics to diffuse. Logics became institutionalized as organizational practices within the field of alternative dispute resolution through four diffusion mechanisms: transformation, grafting, bridging, and exit. By describing the interplay among entrepreneurial efforts, strategic responses to resource dependencies, and mechanisms of institutionalization over 22 years, we identify the conditions that enabled multiple practices supported by conflicting logics, rather than a single, dominant organizational form, to be institutionalized.

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Research Summary: This research uses insights from field theory to explore the early moments of how entrepreneurial ecosystems form through everyday interactions. We examine the cultural‐cognitive and material micro‐dynamics of activities occurring in support of social impact entrepreneurs and businesses from 2000 to 2014 in the Seattle, Washington, region using archival and interview data sources. The pattern of results about what actors do and how interactions change over time supports a two‐period model of ecosystem formation where initial distributed and disparate activity undergoes a phase transition to coalesce into a more coordinated and integrated social order. The findings point to endogenous sources of structuring, including language and interaction, rather than exogenous sources such as government action or instrumental policy goals. Managerial Summary: How do the ecosystems that support entrepreneurs form? Rather than being created through top‐down actions of governments and other powerful actors, we argue that entrepreneurial ecosystems form through the everyday interactions of individuals striving to create shared meaning, resources, and infrastructure needed to support their new ventures. This is especially true in ecosystems focused on creating social impact, which do not always offer the high returns expected in a market‐based capitalistic system. Our study shows how the initial activities of distributed, disparate individuals and groups rather suddenly coalesce into more coordinated, integrated, and durable patterns of social interaction, creating the methods, resources, and legitimacy needed for an entrepreneurial ecosystem for social impact businesses to coexist with or change existing conventions of market‐based capitalism.