When in Doubt, Act! How Entrepreneurs’ Perceived Uncertainty Promotes Community Engagement

Keywords

entrepreneurial communities of inquiry, opportunity co-construction, perceived uncertainty

Abstract

There is increasing scholarly interest in entrepreneurial communities of inquiry, which are evolving, informal bodies of stakeholders bound together by a shared interest in the potential opportunity and who exercise the capacity to validate or refute the entrepreneur’s beliefs (Autio, Dahlander, & Frederiksen 2013; Lyons, Alter, Audretsch, & Augustine, 2012; Pardales & Girod, 2006). Communities of inquiry play an important role in opportunity co- construction (Wood & McKinley, 2010; Jennings, Greenwood, Lounsbury, & Suddaby, 2013) by both enabling entrepreneurial action through access to resources (Einav, Farronato, & Levin, 2016; Johnstone & Lionais, 2006), and constraining entrepreneurial action by shaping the potential opportunity in ways the entrepreneurs may not have foreseen or intended (Alvarez, Young, & Woolley, 2015; Autio et al., 2013; Johnstone & Lionais, 2006). Given the dual roles communities perform in shaping potential opportunities, entrepreneurs must effectively engage communities to fully capture an opportunity’s value (Snihur et al., 2017).

Original Publication Citation

"Seyb, S., Shepherd, D.A., & Williams, T.A. (2019). “When in doubt, act! How entrepreneurs’ perceived uncertainty promotes community engagement.” The Annual Meetings of the Academy of Management, Boston, MA, United States."

Document Type

Conference Paper

Publication Date

2019

Publisher

The Annual Meetings of the Academy of Management

Language

English

College

Marriott School of Business

Department

Marketing

University Standing at Time of Publication

Associate Professor

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