A Realist Perspective of Entrepreneurship: Opportunities As Propensities

Ramoglou, Stratos; Tsang, Eric W. K.

doi:10.5465/amr.2014.0281

Cited by 327 publications

(315 citation statements)

References 130 publications

(139 reference statements)

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“…As such, entrepreneurial opportunities are seen as potentials, or propensities for turning market demand into profits, through the presence of appropriate structural conditions and considerable agential effort (Ramoglou & Tsang 2016).…”

Section: Ontologising Digital Entrepreneurshipmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emancipation through digital entrepreneurship? A critical realist analysis

2018

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Digital entrepreneurship is presented in popular discourse as a means to empowerment and greater economic participation for under-resourced and socially marginalised people. However, this emancipatory rhetoric relies on a flat ontology that does not sufficiently consider the enabling conditions needed for successful digital enterprise activity. To empirically illustrate this argument, we examine three paired cases of UK women digital entrepreneurs, operating in similar sectors but occupying contrasting social positionalities. The cases are comparatively analysed through an intersectional feminist lens using a critical realist methodological framework. By examining the relationships between digital entrepreneurship, social positionality, and structural and agential enabling conditions, we interrogate the notion of digital entrepreneurship as an emancipatory phenomenon producing liberated workers.

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Section: Ontologising Digital Entrepreneurshipmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emancipation through digital entrepreneurship? A critical realist analysis

2018

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“…Entrepreneurship research prioritizes its agenda on the positive form of uncertainty, that is, the business opportunity (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000;McMullen & Shepherd, 2006;Ramoglou & Tsang, 2016). We discuss next the Entrepreneurship Theory in the context of IIoT which focuses on the positive form of uncertainty, followed by the Transaction Cost Theory which focuses on the negative form of uncertainty.…”

Section: Implications Of Key Economic Theories For Iiotmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An important implication of Entrepreneurship Theory for business model design is the synchronization of ownership titles with business opportunities (Alvarez & Barney, 2004;Audretschm, Lehmann, & Plummer;Foss, Foss, & Klein, 2007;Mises, 2007;Santos & Eisenhardt, 2005 The IIoT opens-up a new systematic paths to the exploration and exploitation of business opportunities (Amit & Zott, 2001;Geyskens, Gielens & Dekimpe, 2003;Reuber & Fischer, 2011;Schmidt, Rosenberg & Eagle, 2014;Wirtz, 2016) that are based largely on information technology (Hayek, 1945(Hayek, , 1973Kirzner, 1997;Casson, 1982;Ramoglou &Tsang, 2016). These new IIoT-enabled business opportunities include (1) asset-driven opportunities, (2) service innovations that aid manufacturing, and (3) service-driven opportunities targeted at end-users.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Unlocking value from machines: business models and the industrial internet of things

Ehret

Wirtz

2016

Journal of Marketing Management

215

120

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In this article we argue that the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) offers new opportunities and harbors threats that companies are not able to address with existing business models. Entrepreneurship and Transaction Cost Theories are used to explore the conditions for designing nonownership business models for the emerging IIoT with its implications for sharing uncertain opportunities and downsides, and for transforming these uncertainties into business opportunities. Nonownership contracts are introduced as the basis for business model design and are proposed as an architecture for the productive sharing of uncertainties in IIoT manufacturing networks. The following three main types of IIoT-enabled business models were identified: (1) Provision of manufacturing assets, maintenance and repair, and their operation, (2) innovative information and analytical services that help manufacturing (e.g., based on artificial intelligence, big data, and analytics), and (3) new services targeted at end-users (e.g., offering efficient customization by integrating end-users into the manufacturing and supply chain ecosystem).

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“…Recent attempts to revitalise the concept of opportunity, drawing on similar critical realist ideas to those elaborated here (Martin and Wilson 2014;Ramoglou and Tsang 2015;Wilson and Martin 2015), generate genuine insights -but by adding another layer of meaning to the term, paradoxically, threaten to amplify the confusion we seek to combat. No argument can conclusively settle the debate about the value of the opportunity concept but it is legitimate to ask whether the entrepreneurship field is progressing or degenerating with contradictory conceptions of opportunity in play.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Opportunity or dead end? Rethinking the study of entrepreneurial action without a concept of opportunity

Kitching

Rouse

2016

International Small Business Journal: Researching Entrepreneurs

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Abstract:This paper has two objectives: to critique the dominant opportunity discovery and creation literatures, and; to propose a new, critical realist-inspired analytical framework to theorise the causes, processes and consequences of entrepreneurial action -one that needs no concept of opportunity. We offer three reasons to support our critique of opportunity studies. First, there are important absences, contradictions and inconsistencies in definitions of opportunity in theoretical and empirical work that mean the term cannot signal a clear direction for theorising or empirical research. Our central criticism is that the concept of opportunity cannot refer simultaneously, without contradiction, to a social context offering profit-making prospects, to particular practices, and to agents' subjective beliefs or imagined futures. Second, a new definition of opportunity would perpetuate the conceptual chaos. Third, useful concepts to capture important entrepreneurial processes are readily available, for instance, combining resources, creating new ventures and achieving product sales, which render a concept of opportunity superfluous. Instead, we conceptualise entrepreneurial action as investments in resources intended to create new goods and services for market exchange emergent from the interaction between agential, socialstructural and cultural causal powers.

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A Realist Perspective of Entrepreneurship: Opportunities As Propensities

Cited by 327 publications

References 130 publications

Emancipation through digital entrepreneurship? A critical realist analysis

Emancipation through digital entrepreneurship? A critical realist analysis

Unlocking value from machines: business models and the industrial internet of things

Opportunity or dead end? Rethinking the study of entrepreneurial action without a concept of opportunity

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