Decolonizing Scaffolding: Learning from First Nations’ Resurgence to Recalibrate Entrepreneurship

Maggie M. Cascadden, François Bastien, Emily Block and P. Devereaux Jennings

Journal of Management Studies, 2026, vol. 63, issue 1, 22-58

Abstract: Indigenous communities are resurging and harnessing this momentum to reshape their social world. As they reclaim their cultural resources, rights, and identities, they gain control over how and whether to engage with Western social structures. Using the metaphor of metal frame and grass basket materials, we conceptualize how First Nations communities mobilize scaffolding materials from different social realities and innovatively combine them to shape and reshape their social world. We theorize that the degree to which a community integrates different scaffolding materials is consequential for whether and how the community will engage with outsiders. We learn from First Nations communities across northern Turtle Island (Canada) by running a cluster analysis and identifying three different ways communities construct scaffolding using Indigenous and Western materials. Then, using a unique dataset of 240 Canadian First Nations communities, we use those clusters to predict the likelihood a given community will engage in a partnership agreement with an outsider, in this case a non‐Indigenous mining company, and when they might do so. This analysis highlights a kind of entrepreneurial activity, the construction and use of scaffolding, and a context that is overlooked by mainstream entrepreneurship scholars and management scholars in general. We aim to contribute to the recalibration of entrepreneurship literature through a decolonial lens.

Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.13255

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jomstd:v:63:y:2026:i:1:p:22-58

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... s.asp?ref=00022-2380

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Management Studies is currently edited by Timothy Clark, Steven W. Floyd and Mike Wright

More articles in Journal of Management Studies from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().