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Reality breakdowns generate reflexivity and awareness of the constructed nature of social reality. These pivotal moments can motivate institutional inhabitants to either modify their social worlds or reaffirm the status quo. Thus, reality breakdowns are the initial points at which actors can conceive of new possibilities for institutional arrangements and initiate change processes to realize them. Studying reality breakdowns enables scholars to understand not just how institutional change occurs, but also why it does or does not do so. In this paper, we investigate how institutional inhabitants responded to a reality breakdown that occurred during our ethnography of collegial governance in a large North American university that was undergoing a strategic change initiative. Our findings suggest that there is a consequential process following reality breakdowns whereby institutional inhabitants construct the severity of these events. In our context, institutional inhabitants first attempted to restore order to their social world by reaffirming the status quo; when their efforts failed, they began to formulate alternative possibilities. Simultaneously, they engaged in a distributed sensemaking process whereby they diminished and reoriented necessary changes, ultimately inhibiting the formulation of these new possibilities. Our findings confirm reality breakdowns and institutional awareness as potential drivers of institutional change and complicate our understanding of antecedent microprocesses that may forestall the initiation of change efforts.

Entrepreneurship and the development of new business continue to be the forefront of socioeconomic development in virtually all economies today. Despite evidence of increasing research into entrepreneurial growth, the existing research is limited by the fact that most studies define entrepreneurial growth as a unidimensional construct and operationalize it as “realized” growth relying on financially based measures. Consequently, this article has two objectives: (1) to develop a set of accurate and comprehensive entrepreneurial growth measures; and (2) to test a series of hypotheses regarding precursors of growth intentions‐more specifically, to what extent, infrastructure factors affect entrepreneurial growth intentions. These two questions were examined using Entrepreneurial Profile Questionnaire (EPQ) in the context of Romania.

Results from factor analysis revealed refined patterns of entrepreneurial growth, including resource aggregation, market expansion, and technological improvement. The relationships between infrastructure and entrepreneurial growth were tested using a multiple regression model. Overall, it was posited that infrastructure is positively related to entrepreneurial growth. However, in most of the cases, the opposite proved to be true. These findings suggest that the Romanian entrepreneurs would pursue expansion plans in spite of the obstacles thrown into their path. Perhaps they have already developed strategies about overcoming those obstacles and in that process have developed the strength, ingenuity, and confidence to grow their new business ventures. Perhaps the many years that Romanians were confronted with numerous political and economical obstacles have prepared them to be much more flexible and adaptive.These counter-intuitive findings reflect on the hardiness and perseverance of the Romanian entrepreneurs.