Through a study of the emergent U.S. wind energy sector, 1978–1992, this paper examines how large-scale social movements external to an industry can influence the creation of new market opportunities and hence encourage entrepreneurship. We theorize that through the construction and propagation of cognitive frameworks, norms, values, and regulatory structures, and by offering a preexisting social structure, social movement organizations influence whether entrepreneurs attempt to start ventures in emerging sectors. We find that the direct and indirect effects of social resources (e.g., environmental groups) had a larger impact on entrepreneurial activity in this sector than the availability of natural resources such as land with high-quality wind. Greater numbers of environmental movement organization members increased nascent entrepreneurial activity, and this effect was mediated by favorable state regulatory policy. Greater membership numbers also enhanced the effects of important natural resources, market conditions, and skilled human capital on entrepreneurial activity. Taken together, these results have important implications for the study of social movements, entrepreneurship, and institutional theory.

This study examines the effects of formal structure on the performance of new ventures in the emergent Internet sector during the years 1996-2001. Burns and Stalker (1961) argued that in dynamic economic sectors, firms with organic structures are more effective than those with more mechanistic structures. We suggest this proposition does not hold for new ventures in turbulent, emergent economic sectors. Building on Stinchombe's (1965) arguments concerning new ventures' liability of newness, we hypothesize that new ventures with higher founding team formalization, specialization, and administrative intensity outperform those with more organic organizational structures. Results support these hypotheses.

In this paper, we examine the dual role that social movement organizations can play in altering organizational landscapes by undermining existing organizations and creating opportunities for the growth of new types of organizations. Empirically, we investigate the impact of a variety of tactics employed by the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), the leading organizational representative of the American temperance movement, on two sets of organizations: breweries and soft drink producers. By delegitimating alcohol consumption, altering attitudes and beliefs about drinking, and promoting temperance legislation, the WCTU contributed to brewery failures. These social changes, in turn, created opportunities for entrepreneurs to found organizations producing new kinds of beverages by creating demand for alternative beverages, providing rationales for entrepreneurial action, and increasing the availability of necessary resources.

W e draw on the early history of the management consulting field to build theory about how institutional entrepreneurs legitimate new kinds of organizations in emerging fields. We study the professional form of management consulting organization, which came to dominate other alternatives. Pioneers of this organizational form seized opportunities arising from broad institutional change to discredit the status quo and legitimate their model of how to advise organizations on strategic and operational issues. Similar to institutional entrepreneurs seeking to change mature fields, those in this emerging field engaged in theorization, undertook collective action, and established affiliations with recognized authorities and elites. But unlike institutional entrepreneurs in mature fields, the actors we studied could not leverage logics, positions, or collectivities within their emerging field; instead, they drew on logics from outside their field, sought affiliations with external authorities and elites, and emphasized the benefits of their activities for society at large. Our analysis thus suggests important differences in how actors legitimate novel organizational forms in emerging versus mature fields and underscores the need for theories of institutional entrepreneurship that explicitly account for field context.

Building on sociological research on institutions and organizations and psychological research on risk and decision making, we propose that the development of institutions that reduce the risks of entering new sectors has a stronger effect on the founding rates of firms using novel technologies than on firms using established technologies. In an analysis of the independent-power sector of the electricity industry from 1980 to 1992, we found that the development of regulative and cognitive institutions legitimated the entire sector and provided incentives for all sector entrants; thus, foundings of all kinds of firms multiplied rapidly but had a stronger impact on those using risky novel technologies. In contrast, the central normative institutions that developed in this sector, state-level trade associations, provided greater support for particular forms (those using established technologies) and thus increased foundings of those favored forms more than foundings of less favored forms (those using novel technologies). Our study demonstrates how institutional forces can alter the mix of organizations entering a new industry and thus contribute to diversity, as well as similarity, among organizations.