To date, the phenomenon of entrepreneurship has lacked a conceptual framework. In this note we draw upon previous research conducted in the different social science disciplines and applied fields of business to create a conceptual framework for the field. With this framework we explain a set of empirical phenomena and predict a set of outcomes not explained or predicted by conceptual frameworks already in existence in other fields.

The Promise of Entrepreneurship as a Field of Research

Before technological change leads to new processes, products, markets, or ways of organizing, entrepreneurs must discover opportunities in which to exploit the new technology. To date, research has not explained adequately why entrepreneurs discover these opportunities, which creates several conceptual problems in the entrepreneurship literature. Drawing on Austrian economics, I argue that opportunity discovery is a function of the distribution of information in society (Hayek 1945). Through in-depth case studies of eight sets of entrepreneurs who exploit a single MIT invention, I show that entrepreneurs discover opportunities related to the information that they already possess. I use these findings to draw several implications that differ from those prevailing in the entrepreneurship literature, including: (1) entrepreneurs do not always select between alternative market opportunities for new technologies; (2) the source of entrepreneurship lies in differences in information about opportunities; (3) the results of prior studies of entrepreneurial exploitation may suffer from bias; and (4) individual differences influence the opportunities that people discover, how their entrepreneurial efforts are organized, and how the government can influence this process.

Prior Knowledge and the Discovery of Entrepreneurial Opportunities

The author systematically examines one of the important issues of information — establishing the market price. He introduces the concept of «search» — where a buyer wanting to get a better price, is forced to question sellers. The article deals with various aspects of finding the necessary information.

Economics of Information

As a potential theory, the elemental resource-based view (RBV) is not currently a theoretical structure. Moreover, RBV proponents have assumed stability in product markets and eschewed determining resources' values. As a perspective for strategic management, imprecise definitions hinder prescription and static approaches relegate causality to a “black box.” We outline conceptual challenges for improving this situation, including rigorously formalizing the RBV, answering the causal “how” questions, incorporating the temporal component, and integrating the RBV with demand heterogeneity models.

http://lib.cufe.edu.cn/upload_files/other/4_20140522031922_Is_the_Resource-based_%E2%80%9CView%E2%80%9D_a_Useful_Perspective_for_Strategic_Management_Research%20(1).pdf

Is the Resource-Based “View” a Useful Perspective for Strategic Management Research?

We examine organizational legitimacy in the context of the multinational enterprise (MNE). After discussing three types of complexity (of the legitimating environment, the organization, and the process of legitimation) that MNEs typically face, we explore their effects on MNE legitimacy. In particular, we distinguish between the legitimacy of the MNE as a whole and that of its parts, and we develop propositions that include issues of internal versus external legitimacy and positive and negative legitimacy spillovers.

Organizational Legitimacy Under Conditions of Complexity: The Case of the Multinational Enterprise

Focusing on hybrid team culture within transnational teams as a facilitator of group interaction, we hypothesized a curvilinear relationship between team heterogeneity on nationality and effective performance. Through a qualitative field study, we developed a mediation model of the effects of transnational team dynamics. Two confirmatory laboratory studies followed. The hypothesized curvilinear relationship was confirmed, with homogeneous and highly heterogeneous teams outperforming moderately heterogeneous ones in the long run. Drawing from conceptual work on status hierarchies, group “faultlines,” and group membership, we discuss implications for team structures in transnational settings.

Creating hybrid team cultures: An empirical test of transnational team functioning.

We study the impact of ‘foreignness’ on survival in interbank currency trading worldwide over the period 1974–93. In particular, we develop hypotheses on the behavior of the liability of foreignness over time, and on the consequences of evolving sources of firm-level competitive advantage on this liability. We test these hypotheses on the population of 2667 market-making trading rooms located in 47 countries worldwide that either existed in 1974 or entered the industry between 1974 and 1993. The results show that there is a liability of foreignness, and that it changes over time. Further, strategic and organizational factors such as the adoption of technology by these firms and their mode of internal control significantly influenced survival, as did location-related factors such as the intensity of local and foreign competition. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The dynamics of the liability of foreignness: a global study of survival in financial services

A situated metacognitive model of the entrepreneurial mindset

Using retrospective career life-history data from West Germany, the process by which individuals move into and out of self-employment is studied by separately examining the rates of movement into self-employment and family employment. A general framework of how the self-employment process operates is established -- first, by recognizing that self-employment is episodic and second, by identifying the various ways by which one can become formally self-employed. This general framework is used to study the effects of three types of substantive variables thought to be important for understanding self-employment and entrepreneurship: religion, parental self-employment, and individual experience in self-employment. The rates of movement into self-employment-related first jobs, the rates of movement into self-employment at later stages in the career, and how self-employment affects later labor-market experiences are analyzed. For entry into self-employment as a first-job, only occupational education shows a statistically significant effect and this effect is negative -- those with higher levels of occupational education are less likely to become self-employed at labor-force entry. By contrast, initial movement into family employment is shown to be positively statistically significant and it improves considerably over a constant-rate model. It is also demonstrated that experience in self- and family-employment is one of the most stable positions in the labor force, despite high rates of business failure, because the self- and family employed have significantly lower rates of job change than the conventionally employed. (SFL)

The Career Dynamics of Self-Employment

Author(s): Carroll, Glenn R.; Mosakowski, Elaine M. | Abstract: Although it might be considered the domain of many research areas, self-employment has not been studied vigorously. We draw upon the ideas of related areas to develop a sound design for the study of self-employment. Using retrospective career life-history data from West Germany, we model the process by which individuals move into and out of episodes of self-employment. Specifically, we examine: (1) the process of entry into self-employment at various stages of the career; and (2) the career differences between the self-employed and the conventionally employed. In general terms, the findings show that those factors which account for one stage of the self-employment experience do not necessarily account for others. More substantively, our findings point to the strong effects of social structural variables, especially those related to the family, as well as to the effects of previous self-employment experience.

/pdf/the-career-dynamics-of-self-employment-4m3x9iabp0.pdf

Elaine Mosakowski

Papers

Creating hybrid team cultures: An empirical test of transnational team functioning.

The dynamics of the liability of foreignness: a global study of survival in financial services

A situated metacognitive model of the entrepreneurial mindset

The Career Dynamics of Self-Employment

The career dynamics of self-employment.