Entrepreneurs need to access knowledge to grow, but weak entrepreneurial ecosystems tend to lack the types of knowledge that foster venture growth. To explore how entrepreneurs can act resourcefully as they overcome local ecosystem deficiencies in efforts to grow, we conducted 78 interviews with growth-oriented entrepreneurs in Central America. These entrepreneurs, perceiving that their ecosystem was subordinate to stronger ecosystems, challenged local knowledge, prompting them to engage in knowledge-related resourcefulness, which involves reorienting network targets (resourceful cognition) and assembling network tie proxies (resourceful behavior), to leverage benefits from both local and distant entrepreneurial ecosystems in pursuit of steady organic growth.

This paper explores collaborative societal governance by developing a theoretical framework for resource governance in partnerships between social enterprises and beneficiary communities. While the social benefits of such partnerships are well documented and include critical social value outcomes, such as leveraging community knowledge, promoting community empowerment and increasing the capacity of the social enterprise to scale, much less is known about the collaborative governance arrangements that might best promote creation of social value. We argue that social value creation will be greatest when the ownership and control of key resources take into consideration the communities' perceptions of social value and consensus concerning the use of these resources. Using these characteristics, we develop a framework and propose optimal resource governance structure between the social enterprise and beneficiary communities to enhance social value creation in developing countries. We explore the implications of this theoretical framework for value creation within cross-sector social partnerships.

Calls to understand effects of institutions and institutional logics on entrepreneurial behaviors have become stronger as it is critical in today's world to understand influences on entrepreneurial activities and self-employment globally. This research explores how institutional logic of family influences entrepreneurial opportunity evaluations when compared to evaluations done under the institutional logic of markets through experiments. We find empirical support for significant effect of institutional logic of family on opportunity evaluations. Furthermore, in contrast from the settings of developed economies, we find that institutional logic of family has a stronger effect on entrepreneurial evaluations in the settings of emerging economies. We also identify and empirically test key decision context factors that moderate the effect of institutional logic on opportunity evaluation. This research contributes to entrepreneurship research by unraveling the processes through which institutional logics impact entrepreneurial opportunity evaluation decisions in emerging markets.

Entrepreneurs need to access knowledge to grow, but weak entrepreneurial ecosystems tend to lack the types of knowledge that foster venture growth. To explore how entrepreneurs can act resourcefully as they overcome local ecosystem deficiencies in efforts to grow, we conducted 78 interviews with growth-oriented entrepreneurs in Central America. These entrepreneurs, perceiving that their ecosystem was subordinate to stronger ecosystems, challenged local knowledge, prompting them to engage in knowledge-related resourcefulness, which involves reorienting network targets (resourceful cognition) and assembling network tie proxies (resourceful behavior), to leverage benefits from both local and distant entrepreneurial ecosystems in pursuit of steady organic growth.

Recent calls to explore effects of institutions and institutional logics on entrepreneurial behaviors have become stronger. As the recent global events continue to disrupt the economic and labor markets across the world, understanding how institutional logics influence entrepreneurial opportunity evaluations has become urgent in today’s world as it influences entrepreneurial activities and self-employment globally. In this study, we explore how institutional logic of family influence entrepreneurial opportunity evaluations when compared to evaluations done under the institutional logic of markets, using multiple experiments. We find empirical support for prior research in this field as we find significant effect of institutional logic of family on opportunity evaluations. Furthermore, in contrast to the settings of developed economies, we find that institutional logic of family has a stronger effect on entrepreneurial evaluations in the settings of emerging economies. We also identify and empirically test key decision context factors that moderate the effect of institutional logic on opportunity evaluation. This research contributes to the literature in the areas of institutional logics and entrepreneurship by unraveling how processes through which institutional logics impact entrepreneurial opportunity evaluation decisions in emerging markets.

As social enterprises seek to share knowledge, they must navigate social hierarchy. In this study, we examine social enterprises' efforts to share knowledge in rural areas and how they seek to mitigate some of the consequences of women's marginalization during this process. We use a two-step, multi-method approach. We begin with a quantitative study that explores outcomes for women, and how caste and patriarchy influence their ability to adopt new practices introduced by social enterprises. We then draw on data from a seven-year qualitative case study to unpack our quantitative findings and explore the actual mechanisms through which intersectionality shapes the social enterprises' efforts. Our qualitative efforts also uncover how social enterprises' practices, as well as women's activities, can mitigate some of the negative consequences of marginalization, even while the social setting is largely unchanged. We seek to contribute to theory by exploring how social enterprises can potentially mitigate some of the negative consequences of exclusion due to intersectionality.

Calls for scholarship to explore effects of institutional logics on individual behaviors and their micro-processes have gone stronger. It is becoming increasingly crucial to understand how institutional logics influence behaviors and decisions, including business entrepreneurs and their decisions, impacting job creation and startups globally. This research uses an experimental approach to explore how the dominant institutional logics - market logic and family logic - influence entrepreneurial decision-making and actions. Our empirical findings support prior studies and found significant effects of institutional logics on entrepreneurial decisions and actions. In contrast to developed economies, we found that family logic plays a dominant role in influencing entrepreneurial decisions in emerging economies. We also identify various features of the decision context that will make the effect of institutional logic more or less salient. We contribute to the literature of institutional logics and entrepreneurship by exploring micro- processes of institutional logics through socializing and contextualizing entrepreneurial decisions in emerging markets.

Intermediaries - organizations that connect actors who could not otherwise transact - play an important role in building inclusive markets. However, we know little about how the specific characteristics of the social context influence the effectiveness of intermediary activities. The purpose of this study is to unpack how the fit between intermediaries' activities and the social context shapes the success of efforts to build inclusive markets. Using an in-depth qualitative study in India, we examine how intermediaries' activities fit with two central features of the social context - inequality and dependence. Our study contributes to the literature by suggesting a contingent view of the process by which intermediaries build inclusive markets.

Adequately addressing the grand challenge of poverty requires addressing resource scarcity. However, efforts to provide resources as a means of poverty alleviation have met with mixed success. We explore what makes resource provision effective as a means of poverty alleviation. We adopt a resourcing perspective, which focuses on the relationship between potential resources and schemas, or shared understandings, that shape how resources are used. Consistent with prior research, we find that schemas shape how resources are used in practice. However, we also find that who can access the resources is as consequential as how they are used. In exploring this issue, we identify a new category of schemas related not to use but to access, which we refer to as access schemas. We define access schemas as shared understandings regarding who can appropriately access potential resources. We find that different social groups have distinct schemas regarding access, and we identify three mechanisms—precedence, complementarity, and scaffolding—that shape the way that access schemas are enacted in resource-scarce settings. Our study contributes to the literature on grand challenges by clarifying the link between resource provision and resource use. We also contribute to the literature on resourcing by uncovering mechanisms that shape schema enactment in the presence of conflicting access schemas held by different social groups. Funding: This work was supported by the Research Grants Council, University Grants Committee [GRF Grants PolyU 548210 and PolyU 549211], and International Development Research Centre [Doctoral Research Award 107473-99906075-074]. Supplemental Material: The online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2021.1570 .

In this paper we examine whether entrepreneurship is a cause or solution to economic inequality in emerging economies. Using an institutional lens, we review 40 articles and find that entrepreneurship can increase or decrease economic inequality, depending on the sector where it occurs (formal or informal), and its effect on institutions (making them more inclusive or more exclusive). To develop a future research agenda, we build on these insights by examining 68 additional articles on economic inequality in emerging economies from a range of disciplines. The result is a rich research agenda on entrepreneurship and economic inequality in emerging markets.

When do entrepreneurs in emerging markets seek out help from organizational sponsors? Problemistic search theory suggests that entrepreneurs will seek out sponsors in moments of venture distress. However, this theory was developed in the context of large organizations; it is not clear how it might apply to entrepreneurs in resource-constrained contexts. We use three inductive studies conducted in favelas in Brazil to examine when entrepreneurs seek help. Consistent with problemistic search theory, we find evidence that entrepreneurs seek out help from organizational sponsors in moments of venture distress. We also explore what types of entrepreneurs are most likely to seek help in a situation of venture distress and find that entrepreneurs who are more socially embedded and have more social obligations are more likely to take up sponsorship services, leading to important heterogeneity in our results on take-up. We find that women, more mature ventures, and middle-aged entrepreneurs are all more likely to engage in problemistic search. We contribute to a more contextualized theory of problemistic search for small entrepreneurs in emerging markets. We also provide important theoretical and practical insights about the demand-side of organizational sponsorship.

Entrepreneurship can result in many positive economic effects, but is it possible that entrepreneurship can also have positive social spillover effects such as helping to reduce crime and violence? This paper explores the question in the context of the city of Baltimore, Maryland, which has experienced a significant rise in violent crime in recent years, as well as the efforts of Innovation Works, an incubator that is attempting to educate, mentor, and fund entrepreneurs within this challenging context. Based on that incubator's insights as well as perspectives from the fields of sociology, psychology, and entrepreneurship, this paper suggests that entrepreneurship can have positive social spillover effects including reduced crime, recidivism, and economic inequality, as well as increased social capital, community trust, and optimism. We examine how incubators can promote positive spillovers, and also provide recommendations for cities and incubators that are struggling in similar contexts to those of Baltimore.

Intermediaries such as accelerators support entrepreneurial activity in developing countries by connecting entrepreneurs to critical resources and by reshaping the entrepreneurial ventures so they can better participate in larger markets. Existing research has examined the activities intermediaries undertake and how these activities influence intermediary effectiveness. However, we know much less about which entrepreneurial ventures benefit from intermediation. Using 24 months of pre- and post-intervention sales data for 139 ventures working with a business accelerator in Central America, we find that facilitating resource acquisition is less important than the constraints to change within the entrepreneurial ventures themselves. Thus, our study suggests that although facilitating resource acquisition through venture acceleration is important, it may be insufficient for increasing venture growth. Rather, the malleability of the venture may play a more important role in intermediation effectiveness.

Intermediaries connect disparate actors and play a central role in building sustainable markets. Research in the economics tradition has largely focused on how intermediaries should be structured. ...

The paper proposes a theoretical model that helps to determine how entrepreneurs deal with their limited attention in emerging economies. We explore how specific situations and contextual structures shape entrepreneurial attention and ultimately influence the extent to which entrepreneurs engage with organizational sponsors. Based on a large sample of longitudinal data from more than 5.000 microentrepreneurs and qualitative interviews, our results show that situations of business distress shift the focus of attention towards sponsorship take-up, but that the intensity to which this shift of attention occurs depends on motivation, attention capacity and information access - mechanisms that are influenced by the social context in which entrepreneurs are embedded and thus vary between less and more mature ventures, gender and entrepreneurial age. By examining external social structures that shape attention, we follow a nascent stream of literature in emphasizing how factors beyond the firm’s boundaries can influence attention structures with important implications for venture behavior. By exploring the implications of cognitive capacity for attention focus, we extend prior work on attention allocation and introduce the concept of scarcity, and its interaction with attention, to the literature.

Entrepreneurship is widely argued to be critical for alleviating extreme poverty. However, research on this topic is characterized by diverging perspectives regarding poverty alleviation and remains fragmented across various research domains. This review examines 77 leading academic journals over the period 1990 to 2017 and identifies over 200 articles on entrepreneurship and poverty alleviation. The analysis of these articles highlights three different underlying perspectives: poverty alleviation through entrepreneurship as remediation (actions that address immediate resource concerns), reform (actions leading to substantive institutional changes), and revolution (actions that change the underlying capitalist-based assumptions of business). The analysis of these articles leads to the development of extensive new insights and opportunities for future research.

Entrepreneurial action requires judgment and decision-making regarding means and ends, how entrepreneurs might combine different means and ends through action, and the outcomes different means-end combinations might produce. To date, this literature has focused on characteristics of the entrepreneur (i.e. human capital, motivation, emotion, etc.) as well as characteristics of the choice context (i.e. uncertainty competition, dynamism, etc.) to explain entrepreneurial judgment and decision-making. We know much less about the role of agency–how entrepreneurs act according to their own free will–or the factors that influence how agency is exercised. To address this gap, we draw on the concept of embedded agency, defined as the interplay between independent action and social structure, by exploring how socially constructed beliefs and practices known as institutional logics shape decision-making. Using policy capture techniques, we find systematic differences between subjects as they make entrepreneurial judgments drawing on two specific logics–family logics and market logics. Our work seeks to contribute to entrepreneurial judgment and decision-making by exploring the role of institutional logics in shaping how individual agency unfolds.

Organizational sponsors seek to help new ventures survive and thrive, in large part by providing facilitating learning among entrepreneurs. As such, organizational sponsorship has been used as a tool in the alleviation of poverty. The purpose of this study is to better understand why some entrepreneurs in the context of poverty benefit from organizational sponsorship more than others. We explore this question with 24 months of pre- and post-intervention sales data for 151 ventures in an organizational sponsorship program in Central America. We find that greater access to learning opportunities may not be the critical driver of entrepreneurial growth. Rather, we find that the constraints from prior experience and knowledge are more important predictors of learning. Finally, we find that within this context women benefit less from organizational sponsorship than men. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the mechanisms associated with organizational sponsorship in the context of desperate poverty, and have important implications for organizational sponsors seeking to alleviate poverty.

Knowledge sharing is central to reducing inequality and alleviating poverty. However, communities in settings of extreme poverty are often bounded by distinct perspectives and understandings that hinder knowledge sharing. Furthermore, social fault lines may create internal boundaries that impede interaction, further complicating knowledge sharing. Despite these challenges, some knowledge sharing efforts are successful. The purpose of this study is to better understand how knowledge sharing overcomes boundaries in settings of extreme inequality and poverty. Using qualitative data from rural India, we find that boundary work performed by boundary spanners overcomes external and internal boundaries by creating space for action, observation, and reflection in the recipient community. These actions, or syncretizing mechanisms, transform newly introduced knowledge, which then facilitates further boundary work, resulting in community transformation. Under certain circumstances, we see how boundary work and syncretism can lead to significant knowledge and recipient transformation. Thus, we seek to contribute to the literature by more fully exploring the transformative power of knowledge sharing within contexts of extreme poverty, and by explaining the process by which it occurs.