Sharon A. Alvarez

The entrepreneurship of resource-based theory

This paper examines the relationship between resource-based theory and entrepreneurship and develops insights that advance the boundaries of resource-based theory and begin to address important questions in entrepreneurship. We extend the boundaries of resource-based theory to include the cognitive ability of individual entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs have individual-specific resources that facilitate the recognition of new opportunities and the assembling of resources for the venture. By focusing on resources, from opportunity recognition to the ability to organize these resources into a firm and then to the creation of heterogeneous outputs through the firm that are superior to the market, we help identify issues that begin to address the distinctive domain of entrepreneurship.

How Do Entrepreneurs Organize Firms Under Conditions of Uncertainty

Entrepreneurs looking to exploit market opportunities and create economic value must concern themselves with both value creation and value appropriation. In this context, entrepreneurs face an unusual challenge; they must accomplish these two tasks before the economic value of the market opportunity is known, even probabilistically. The purpose of this article is to describe how entrepreneurs in these settings organize a firm to solve their resource coordination and profit appropriation problems. Three different ways of organizing firms in these settings are examined, and their implications for research in entrepreneurship and other fields are discussed.

Forming and Exploiting Opportunities: The Implications of Discovery and Creation Processes for Entrepreneurial and Organizational Research

Research on opportunities has received significant attention in entrepreneurship in the last decade. However, recently the focus has shifted from opportunities themselves to the processes that form and exploit them. This paper traces the history of opportunity origins and draws upon the implications of opportunity types to suggest associated entrepreneurial processes. This paper then suggests future research and applications based on processes used to form and exploit opportunities.

Entrepreneurship and Epistemology: The Philosophical Underpinnings of the Study of Entrepreneurial Opportunities

Abstract Two approaches to studying opportunities have emerged in the entrepreneurship literature. This paper shows that the first of these approaches—which focuses on how alert entrepreneurs discover objective opportunities formed by exogenous shocks in an existing market—adopts a critical realist perspective. The second approach—which focuses on opportunities that are endogenously enacted by the actions of entrepreneurs themselves and do not have an existence independent of those human actions—adopts an evolutionary realist perspective. Differences between these epistemological assumptions have an important impact on opportunity research in the field of entrepreneurship, and thus are likely to have an important impact on the evolution of research, practice, and teaching in the field of entrepreneurship as a whole.

Doctoral Education in the Field of Entrepreneurship

Current perceptions and practices in doctoral education in the field of entrepreneurship are explored. The paper developed from efforts of a Task Force formed by the Entrepreneurship Division of the Academy of Management in response to several important observations: growing demand for faculty in entrepreneurship, growing membership in the division, more participants in doctoral and junior faculty consortia, increasing attention to entrepreneurship education at all academic levels, and the implementation of more doctoral seminars and programs in the field. Using a process outlined in Summer et al. [J. Manage. 16 (1990) 361], the Task Force addressed the following questions: (1) What is the current state of doctoral education in entrepreneurship? (2) How should doctoral education in Entrepreneurship be designed? Recommendations are presented.

Entrepreneurial Opportunities and Poverty Alleviation

Entrepreneurial activity does not always lead to economic growth. While improvements have been made to human capital, property rights protection, and access to financial capital in abject poverty contexts with the assumption that they will increase entrepreneurial activity, the results have been mixed. More recently, many entrepreneurs interested in poverty alleviation are crossing borders to engage in initiatives aimed at reducing poverty internationally. These efforts have also had mixed results. This paper posits that one reason is that entrepreneurial opportunities and their wealth creation potential vary, and the impact of exploiting these opportunities on economic growth in poverty contexts can also vary. This paper identifies self–employment opportunities, often exploited in abject poverty, that do not lead to sustainable growth solutions. Alternatively, discovery and creation opportunities while difficult to exploit in poverty contexts hold the greatest potential for significant economic impact.

The Entrepreneurial Theory of the Firm

There is often great power in an interesting question. Some 70 years ago, Ronald Coase (Coase, 1937) posed just such a question: Why do firms exist? And here we are, 70 years later, struggling to understand the answer to this question for one particularly important class of firms, entrepreneurial firms. This special issue brings together some leading scholars – scholars who study entrepreneurship and scholars who study the theory of the firm – to begin a conversation about why entrepreneurial firms exist. This represents a theoretical challenge for both these group.

Emerging Firms And The Allocation Of Control Rights: A Bayesian Approach

This paper suggests that founders often use firm formation to exploit opportunities and must sometimes make organizing decisions about the allocation of control before the economic value of the opportunity can reliably be known even probabilistically. Motivated by questions surroundings such settings, we use incomplete contract theory and apply a Bayesian learning model to the allocation process of ownership control rights of founders in emerging firms. This model examines how founders learn and build on their prior beliefs, enabling them to allocate and change ownership control rights under differing conditions of risk and uncertainty.

Theories of Entrepreneurship: Alternative Assumptions and the Study of Entrepreneurial Action

The field of entrepreneurship continues to struggle with the development of a modern theory of entrepreneurship. In the past 20 years development of the current theories of entrepreneurship have centered on either opportunity recognition or the individual entrepreneur. At the same time many theoretical insights have come from economics including a rediscovery of the work of Schumpeter. However, because there is a lack of clarity about the theoretical assumptions that entrepreneurship scholars use in their work, assumptions from both individual opportunity recognition and economics have been used as if they are interchangeable. This lack of theoretical distinction has hampered theory development in the field of entrepreneurship. While explanations of entrepreneurship have adopted different theoretical assumptions, most of these concern three central features of entrepreneurial phenomena: the nature of entrepreneurial opportunities, the nature of entrepreneurs as individuals, and the nature of the decision making context within which entrepreneurs operate. Nonetheless, various theoretical traditions in the field have adopted radically different interpretations with respect to these assumptions of entrepreneurial phenomena, therefore arriving at different explanations of these phenomena. This article investigates two sets of assumption about the nature of opportunities, the nature of entrepreneurs, and the nature of the decision making context within which entrepreneurs operate. It is suggested that these two sets of assumptions constitute logically consistent theories of entrepreneurship. Moreover, these two theories are complementary and can be applied to widely studied entrepreneurial phenomena – the organization of the entrepreneurial firm. These applications demonstrate both the differences between these two theories and how they can be complementary in nature.

The state of opportunities: clarifying the transitions between opportunity types

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe how discovery and creation opportunities transition from one to the other and thereby clarify the relationship between opportunity types. This theoretical work will offer insight for studying opportunities and clarify the different practical implications of different opportunity types. Design/methodology/approach – To further the understanding of opportunity types, the paper employs Dubin’s (1978) theory building methodology focussing specifically on the concepts of system states. Approaching opportunity types as system states clarifies the relationship between discovery and creation opportunities. Findings – This research argues that opportunities transition from creation opportunities to discovery opportunities. Furthermore, understanding the opportunity state can clarify the practical implications for entrepreneurs. In particular, entrepreneurs in discovery states employ different processes regarding human resources, strategy, financing, planning, lead...