Masoud Karami, Yanto Chandra, Ben Wooliscroft and Lisa McNeill
Extant research has studied how entrepreneurial cognition influences firm international performance but what mechanisms translates entrepreneurial cognition into international…
Abstract
Purpose
Extant research has studied how entrepreneurial cognition influences firm international performance but what mechanisms translates entrepreneurial cognition into international performance remains a puzzle in the field. In this paper, the authors utilize effectuation theory to theorize this association.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a survey of 164 internationalizing small firms from New Zealand, the authors examined a model of entrepreneurial cognition, action and gaining new knowledge as a framework to explain how effectual control, partnership for new opportunity creation and gaining new knowledge influence small firms' performance.
Findings
The authors found that partnership for new opportunity creation, and gaining new knowledge are two important mediation mechanisms in the focal association between effectual control and international performance.
Research limitations/implications
This study is a cross-sectional design. Considering the importance of time in cognition and action, future research should utilize longitudinal research design.
Practical implications
The authors’ findings provide implications for both small firms' managers and policymakers. These findings identify the critical importance of continuous knowledge development in internationalization process. Policymakers can help small firms gain more relevant and timely information about international markets and incorporate them in their decision-making to further develop international opportunities.
Originality/value
The authors contribute to international entrepreneurship research by delineating and verifying the important associations between entrepreneurial cognition, action and gaining new knowledge and their outcomes for firm's international performance. The authors also contribute to effectuation theory by elaborating on effectual control and how this logic leads to the development of new knowledge.
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This paper argues that we need a more disciplined understanding of social enterprise (SE) that is able to incorporate its diversity across different contexts, yet remains…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper argues that we need a more disciplined understanding of social enterprise (SE) that is able to incorporate its diversity across different contexts, yet remains sympathetic to its core ideal of value creation. This paper aims to revisit the meaning of value creation to reflect critically upon the diverse forms of SE.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses the Aristotelian causes, namely, the formal, efficient and final causes, to problematize the meaning of value creation.
Findings
This paper shows that SEs can create or destroy value depending on who evaluates the value. It also raises the issue that how value is created – the motives, means and action – is affected by the ethical orientation of the actors. Lastly, it encourages researchers to pay attention to how stakeholders are defined in SE, in light of the diverse nature of organizations that are labelled as SEs.
Research limitations/implications
This paper demonstrates that the current definition of SE is inadequate, and to-some extent, problematic. It then proposes some future research agendas, to unpack the issue of value creation, through social cost, politics, transparency and legal perspectives.
Originality/value
This research makes new contribution to the SE literature by injecting an Aristotelian perspective to problematize and reframe the meaning of value creation. It asks scholars to answer these questions: from whose perspective is value created or destroyed (formal cause), how is value created (efficient cause) and for whom is the value created (final cause)?
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Qualitative research suffers from “contestation” and a lack of “boilerplate” problems to assessing and presenting qualitative data, which have hampered its development and the…
Abstract
Purpose
Qualitative research suffers from “contestation” and a lack of “boilerplate” problems to assessing and presenting qualitative data, which have hampered its development and the broader acceptance of qualitative research. This paper aims to address this gap by marrying the constructivist methodology and RQDA, a relatively new open-source computer-assisted qualitative data analysis (CAQDAS)-based R extension and demonstrate how the software can increase the rigor, transparency and validity of qualitative research.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper highlights the constructivist approach as an important paradigm in qualitative research and demonstrates how it can be operationalized and enhanced using RQDA. It provides a technical and methodological review of RQDA, along with its main strengths and weaknesses, in relation with two popular CAQDAS tools, ATLAS.ti and NVivo. Using samples of customer-generated e-complaints and e-praises in the electronics/computer sector, this paper demonstrates the development of a process model of customer e-complaint rhetoric.
Findings
This study offers step-by-step instructions for installing and using RQDA for data coding, aggregation, plotting and theory building. It emphasizes the importance of techniques for sharing coding outputs among researchers and journal gatekeepers to better disseminate and share research findings. It also describes the authors’ use of RQDA in classrooms of undergraduates and graduate students.
Research limitations/implications
This paper addresses the “contestation” and “boilerplate” gaps, offering practical, step-by-step instructions to operationalize and enhance the constructivist approach using the RQDA-based approach. This opens new opportunities for existing R users to “cross over” to analyzing textual data as well as for computer-savvy scholars, analysts and research students in academia and industry who wish to transition to CAQDAS-based qualitative research because RQDA is free and can leverage the strengths of the R computing platform.
Originality/value
This study offers the first published review and demonstration of the RQDA-based constructivist methodology that provide the processes needed to enhance the rigor, transparency and validity of qualitative research. It demonstrates the systematic development of a data structure and a process model of customer e-complaint rhetoric using RQDA.
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Kim Man Erica Lee, Yanto Chandra and Ho Lee
The social venture (SV) is an increasingly popular form of organization to pursue social goals using a commercial approach. Although marketing plays an important role in SV…
Abstract
Purpose
The social venture (SV) is an increasingly popular form of organization to pursue social goals using a commercial approach. Although marketing plays an important role in SV research and a key driver of the performance of SVs, how and the extent to which market conditions play a role remains understudied. This study examines if market turbulence can moderate marketing capabilities and performance relationships.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors developed several hypotheses rooted in the marketing literature and tested them using data collected from a sample of 109 SVs from East Asia (i.e. Hong Kong and Taiwan). Using multiple regression analysis and structural equation modeling, the authors analyzed the marketing capabilities and financial and social performance relationships and the positive moderating role of market turbulence.
Findings
The results suggested that market turbulence is a positive moderator which influences the effect of the marketing capabilities–financial performance relationship, but not the marketing capabilities and social performance relationship.
Originality/value
This paper attempts to interrogate the SV's marketing capabilities–performance relationship in the East Asian context and how market turbulence may enhance or weaken the relationship. This is one of the earliest papers in this research area. The key findings from this research offer valuable theoretical contribution to the study of SV performance.
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This paper aims to extend the understanding of the ways in which social entrepreneurs give sense to and legitimize their work by introducing a rhetoric-orientation view of social…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to extend the understanding of the ways in which social entrepreneurs give sense to and legitimize their work by introducing a rhetoric-orientation view of social entrepreneurship (SE).
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses computer-aided text analysis and computational linguistics to study 191 interviews of social and business entrepreneurs. It offers validation and exploration of new concepts pertaining to the rhetoric orientations of SE.
Findings
This study confirms prior untested assumptions that the rhetoric of social entrepreneurs is more other, stakeholder engagement and justification-oriented and less self-oriented than the rhetoric of business entrepreneurs. It also confirms that the rhetoric of both types of entrepreneurs is equally economically oriented.
Originality/value
This research makes new contribution to the SE literature by introducing three new orientations, namely, solution, impact and geographical, which reflect distinctive rhetorical themes used by social entrepreneurs, and by revealing that social entrepreneurs use terms associated with other, stakeholder engagement, justification, economic, solution, impact and geographical orientations differently than business entrepreneurs.
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Jeffrey S.S. Cheah, Qinni Yeoh and Yanto Chandra
This study aims to examine the influences of causation strategy, entrepreneurial orientation and social orientation on the social enterprise’s (SE) financial performance and…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine the influences of causation strategy, entrepreneurial orientation and social orientation on the social enterprise’s (SE) financial performance and social achievement.
Design/methodology/approach
The partial least square structural equational modelling technique was used to analyse survey data collected from Malaysian and Singaporean SEs (n = 96).
Findings
The findings have important guidance for policymakers, social entrepreneurs and researchers interested in promoting the growth and impact of SEs in emerging regions.
Practical implications
This study offers several practical implications for social entrepreneurs who want to achieve both financial and social success.
Originality/value
There is no widely accepted performance framework for SE. Most research in SE is descriptive and conceptual in nature. Larger data sets from the nascent ecology of SE are even scarcer. This study developed and examined a performance framework specifically designed to meet the needs of SEs operating in the emerging region.
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Shu‐Jung Sunny Yang and Yanto Chandra
The aim of this paper is to offer agent‐based modelling (ABM) as an alternative approach to advance research in entrepreneurship. It argues that ABM allows entrepreneurship…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this paper is to offer agent‐based modelling (ABM) as an alternative approach to advance research in entrepreneurship. It argues that ABM allows entrepreneurship researchers (i.e. the designers) to find better ways in generating entrepreneurial outcomes by understanding alternative histories and examining a plausible future.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper begins with an overview of ABM, and discusses the shared conceptual foundations of entrepreneurship and ABM as the motives for the adoption of ABM as an appropriate methodology to study entrepreneurship. It offers a roadmap in using ABM approach for entrepreneurship research and illustrates this using a contemporary research question in entrepreneurship: the study of success/failure in business venturing.
Findings
This paper suggests the shared foundations between ABM and entrepreneurship as the basis for bringing the methodology and research domain closer. It offers a roadmap for advancing entrepreneurship research using agent‐based simulation approach and explains the contribution of ABM to further advance entrepreneurship research.
Originality/value
This paper addresses the methodological gap in entrepreneurship research and develops the argument for a wider adoption of ABM simulation approach to study entrepreneurship. It bridges the gap by examining the possibility of formalizing entrepreneurship processes by grounding an agent‐based model on empirical facts and generally‐accepted foundations of entrepreneurship. It offers a contribution to the literature by showing that ABM is a useful and appropriate methodological approach for entrepreneurship research in addition to the conventional variance and process approach.
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Yanto Chandra, Chris Styles and Ian Wilkinson
This paper aims to complement existing theories of internationalization by studying an important aspect which has been neglected in previous studies: the process of international…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to complement existing theories of internationalization by studying an important aspect which has been neglected in previous studies: the process of international entrepreneurial opportunity recognition. International market entry is conceptualized as an entrepreneurial, innovative act; and opportunity recognition consists of both discovery as well as deliberate and systematic search.
Design/methodology/approach
The methodology employed involves eight case studies of small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) operating in knowledge‐based industries in Australia. The unit of analysis is the “opportunity‐firm” nexus.
Findings
The paper finds that firms with little or no prior international knowledge tend to make use of opportunity discovery rather than deliberate/systematic search. In contrast, firms with extensive prior international experience and knowledge were found to deliberately search and discover their first international opportunity. International opportunity discovery did not occur simply through serendipitous encounters with new information from networks or referrals but involved interpreting possible matches between pre‐existing means (resources, skills, new technologies) and new ends (international markets) in a problem solving process. It favours those with the requisite prior knowledge and entrepreneurial orientation.
Practical implications
The paper offers guidelines on what business practitioners and export promotion agencies can and cannot do to influence opportunity recognition process. Particular attention was paid to strategies to avoid costly deliberate search among resource‐stricken SMEs.
Originality/value
This study introduces Knightian uncertainty and Kirznerian discovery as the conceptual cornerstones of internationalization that can help account for the lack of incrementalism and optimizing logic in internationalization among smaller firms.