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1. Direct and moderation effects on U.S. apparel manufacturers’ engagement in network ties

   https://doi.org/10.7341/20211733  

   J. Miller, Nancy ; Engel-Enright, Carol ; A. Brown, David ( January 2021 , Journal of Entrepreneurship, Management and Innovation)

   PURPOSE: Firms do not continue and prosper purely on their own individual endeavors, as each firm is influenced by the activities of others, and thus direct and indirect relationships shape the firm’s strategic management. These relationships form the tactics by which knowledge and other strategically important resources are accessed and created. Forming and maintaining ties among members of a network have been the subject of numerous research studies in the social, economic, and business literature. Our work is framed by the resource-based view of the firm perspective along with social capital theory and its shared constructs in network theory. Prior findings suggest that networking ties are strategic actions generated for firm growth and continuance. The ties may be short-term or develop into long-term relationships. The intent of this research is to fill some of the gaps in interorganizational networking strategy by analyzing five antecedents that have been suggested in the literature as individually associated with entrepreneurs’ engagement in network ties. In this way, our work provides another research avenue for examining networking’s contribution to strategic management. We hypothesized positive connections to entrepreneurs’ engagement in network ties from antecedents involving the firm’s knowledge absorptive capacity, business goals, entrepreneurial orientation, social interactions,more »and support from their environment. METHODOLOGY: In our quantitative approach, we tested our proposed macrolevel direct and moderating connections through an online survey of 125 U.S. apparel manufacturing firms. The apparel manufacturing sector in the U.S., as in many countries, has struggled with multiple disrupting factors contributing to the sector’s decline in firm continuance. FINDINGS: The results from OLS regression analyses support our hypothesized connections in that each of the five antecedents significantly contributed to entrepreneurs’ engagement in network ties; however, when all five were collectively examined only absorptive capacity, social interaction, and business goals were significant (R2 = 0.58). Further examination of moderation effects found the entrepreneurs’ perceptions of a supportive environment to modify both entrepreneurial orientation and business goals. RESEARCH AND PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: The effects of a supportive environment on business goals’ relationship with network ties were greater when perceptions of a supportive environment decreased, while the effects of a supportive environment on entrepreneurship orientation’s relationship with network ties were greater when perceptions of a supportive environment increased suggesting further study of U.S. entrepreneurs’ perceptions of their environments. Entrepreneurs’ interested in building domestic and international supply chain ties may find network ties provide one solution for adapting the firm’s resources for global competitiveness. Future studies may direct attention to other industry sectors or countries for replication with larger sample sizes as we recognize the limitations to generalizability and scale refinement due to our limited sample size. ORIGINALITY AND VALUE: The examination of five constructs to shed light on how an organization’s decisions may relate to engaging in networks and provides theoretical as well as practical implications that contribute to the larger organizational system framework.« less
2. Dataset associated with U.S. Apparel Manufacturers Survey

   https://doi.org/10.25675/10217/234595  

   Miller, Nancy J. ; Engel-Enright, Carol ( January 2022 )

   Abstract

   Firms do not continue and prosper purely on their own individual endeavors, as each firm is influenced by the activities of others, and thus direct and indirect relationships shape the firm’s strategic management. These relationships form the tactics by which knowledge and other strategically important resources are accessed and created. Forming and maintaining ties among members of a network have been the subject for numerous research studies in the social, economic, and business literature. Our work is framed by the resource-based view of the firm perspective along with social capital theory and its shared constructs in network theory. Prior findings suggest that networking ties are strategic actions generated for firm growth and continuance. The ties may be short-term or develop into long-term relationships. The purpose of this research is to fill some of the gaps in interorganizational networking strategy by analyzing five antecedents that have been suggested in the literature as individually associated with entrepreneurs’ engagement in network ties. In this way, our work provides another research avenue for examining networking’s contribution to strategic management. We hypothesized positive connections to entrepreneurs’ engagement in network ties from antecedents involving the firm’s knowledge absorptive capacity, business goals, entrepreneurial orientation, social interactions, and support from their environment. We tested our proposed macrolevel direct and moderating connections through an online survey of 125 U.S. apparel manufacturing firms. The apparel manufacturing sector in the U.S., as in many countries, has struggled with multiple disrupting factors contributing to the sector’s decline in firm continuance. Networks, serving to build domestic and international supply chain ties, may provide one solution for adapting the firm’s resources enhancing global competitiveness. Findings from OLS regression analyses support our hypothesized connections in that each of the five antecedents significantly contributed to entrepreneurs’ engagement in network ties; however, when all five were collectively examined only absorptive capacity, social interaction, and business goals were significant (R2 = 0.58). Further examination of moderation effects found the entrepreneurs’ perceptions of a supportive environment to modify both entrepreneurial orientation and business goals. The effects of a supportive environment on business goals’ relationship with network ties were greater when perceptions of a supportive environment decreased, while the effects of a supportive environment on entrepreneurship orientation’s relationship with network ties were greater when perceptions of a supportive environment increased. Future studies may direct attention to other industry sectors or countries for replication with larger sample sizes as we recognize the limitations to generalizability and scale refinement due to our limited sample size. Examining the five constructs sheds light on how an organization’s decisions may relate to engaging in networking and provides theoretical as well as practical implications that contributes to the larger organizational system framework.
   

   Other

   This dataset contains responses from 97 U.S. apparel manufacturers collected via an online survey during the fall of 2019. The apparel manufacturing sector in the U.S., as in many countries, has struggled with multiple disrupting factors contributing to the sector’s decline in firm continuance. Networks, serving to build domestic and international supply chain ties, may provide one solution for adapting the firm’s resources enhancing global competitiveness. The purpose of the study was to examine connections to entrepreneurs’ engagement in network ties from antecedents involving the firm’s knowledge absorptive capacity, business goals, entrepreneurial orientation, social interactions, and support from their environment.
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3. Skewed Opportunities: How the Distribution of Entrepreneurial Inputs and Outcomes Reconceptualizes a Research Domain

   Crawford, GC ( January 2018 , Proceedings - Academy of Management)

   Over the last four decades, Academy of Management Review has devoted a great deal of attention to the scholarly debate about the theoretical nature of entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial opportunities. Most recently, an entire Dialogue section of the journal was devoted to four articles that provided alternative ontological, epistemological, and philosophical views of “opportunity.” Inasmuch as the domain appreciates the effort to advance entrepreneurship theory, these arguments appear to constitute what past AMR editor-in-chief, Roy Suddaby, termed “fetishism,” where “theory becomes an exercise in writing and interpretation but is detached from the empirical world” (2014: 408). That reality was demonstrated in the Crawford, Aguinis, Lichtenstein, Davidsson, & McKelvey (2015) study, which discovered highly skewed power law distributions in all of the domain’s theoretically relevant input variables and all generalizable outcome measures. The significant number of outliers in these distributions provide necessary and sufficient cause for a paradigm shift in the domain. In response, this paper uses the empirical reality of power law distributed phenomena for 1) developing historical and empirical justification for the difficulties in building theory about opportunities and entrepreneurship, 2) identifying how the seemingly antithetical perspectives of discovery and creation theories can be synthesized, and 3) proposing amore »generalizable framework—of Endowments, Expectations, Engagement, and Environments—around which new entrepreneurship theory can be developed.« less
4. To entrepreneur or not to entrepreneur? How identity discrepancies influence enthusiasm for academic entrepreneurship

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-023-09994-w  

   Pattnaik, Shashwatashish ; Mmbaga, Nick ; White, T. Daniel ; Reger, Rhonda K. ( February 2023 , The Journal of Technology Transfer)

   Recognizing the commercial potential of university-based inventions and discoveries, legislators and administrators have called upon academic scientists to become academic entrepreneurs. Yet, few academic scientists appear enthusiastic about taking on entrepreneurial activities. The intrinsic reasons underlying the lack of enthusiasm are poorly understood. We extend the research by applying self-discrepancy theory to explore the role of future-oriented self and other guides on enthusiasm for academic entrepreneurship. Integrating self-discrepancy theory with social identity theory, we also examine the moderating effects of scientist identification and academic entrepreneur social identification. We test our model on a sample of National Science Foundation (NSF) funded academic scientists who participated in the Innovation Corps (I-Corps) entrepreneurship training program. We find academic scientists’ self-guides influence their enthusiasm for academic entrepreneurship, while interestingly, their other-guides do not. Additionally, we find that higher identification with a scientist identity enhances the positive effect of the self-guide on entrepreneurial enthusiasm while higher identification with an academic entrepreneur identity attenuates the positive effect. Our paper contributes to the academic entrepreneurship literature by developing and testing a framework that integrates self-discrepancy theory with social identity theory for a nuanced understanding of academic scientists’ thought processes regarding engagement in entrepreneurial activities. Our studymore »has implications for research policy by suggesting a way that universities can identify candidates for academic entrepreneurship activities.

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5. An Entrepreneurship Education Co-Curricular Program to Stimulate Entrepreneurial Mindset in Engineering Students

   https://doi.org/10.1557/adv.2017.109  

   De Hoyos-Ruperto, Moraima ; Pomales-García, Cristina ; Padovani, Agnes ; Suárez, O. Marcelo ( January 2017 , MRS Advances)

   ABSTRACT There is a need to expand the fundamental skills in science and engineering to include innovation & entrepreneurship (I&E) skills as core competencies. To better prepare the future Nanotechnology workforce, the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez Nanotechnology Center, broadened the educational content beyond traditional skills in science and engineering. The Center, offers a rich educational program for materials and nano scientists that aims to create the next generation of knowledgeable, experienced professionals, and successful entrepreneurs, who can develop value-added innovations that can spur economic growth and continue to impact the quality of life for society. Within the educational program an Entrepreneurship Education Co-Curricular Program (EEP) incorporates I&E training into the Materials Science, Nanotechnology, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) faculty and student experiences. The EEP consists of a two-year series of workshops that seek to develop an entrepreneurial mindset, including five key topics: 1) Generation of Ideas, 2) Entrepreneurial Vision, 3) Early Assessment of Ideas, 4) Identification of Opportunities, and 5) Strategic Thinking. The EEP goals, target audience, and implementation strategy, is described with an evaluation tool to assess the program’s success in developing an entrepreneurial mindset.