The entrepreneurial journey as an emergent hierarchical system of artifact-creating processes

Paul D. Selden and Denise Fletcher

Journal of Business Venturing, 2015, vol. 30, issue 4, 603-615

Abstract: Entrepreneurial ‘process’ perspectives explain the events of an entrepreneurial journey in terms of mechanisms, such as ‘effectual logic’, ‘bricolage’, ‘dynamic creation’, ‘opportunity tension’ and ‘enactment’. Process theorists, however, have not as yet developed an analytical framework that explains an entrepreneurial event in relation to the entrepreneurial journey as the unit of analysis. Building on Sarasvathy's (2003, 2008) and Venkataraman et al.'s (2012) conception of entrepreneurship inquiry as a ‘science of the artificial’ (Simon, 1996), we explain how this research gap can be addressed by conceptualizing the entrepreneurial journey as an ‘emergent hierarchical system of entrepreneurial artifact-creating processes’. From this perspective, entrepreneurial events can be explained in relation to the endogenous dynamics of prior patterns of artifact emergence. We discuss some research implications of focusing on artifact emergence as a key unit of analysis in process theory development.

Keywords: Entrepreneurial journey; Artifacts; Hierarchy; Complexity; Emergence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbvent:v:30:y:2015:i:4:p:603-615

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.09.002

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