Resource-Acquiring as a Process of Actualizing the Potentiality: An Ethnographic Study

Qian Li, Paula Jarzabkowski, Santi Furnari

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

The study explores entrepreneurial firm’s resource-acquiring processes as a continuous, unfolding process of actualizing potentiality, a metaphor proposed by Pragmatists. Based on an ethnographic study of scale up firms in a consultancy-led accelerator program, we investigate how entrepreneurs in these firms experience the process of acquiring resources and, in particular, how they construct the linkage between the envisioned potentiality and the perceived actuality inherent in such a process. We identify three patterns of configuring, reconfiguring, and disorienting in acquiring resources, through practices of envisioning, enacting, and reflecting as the process unfolds. We find that entrepreneurs envision the offered resources differently, which foreshadows their practices of realizing those resources and, if unsuccessful, reconstructing them. We uncover different sets of practice in shaping the resource- acquiring process, which are shaped by reflexive engaging. We also problematize the notion of process and outcome as perceived experience and revisable script rather than undisputable objective and fixed target."

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationAcademy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings
EditorsGuclu Atinc
PublisherAcademy of Management
Volume2020
Edition1
ISBN (Electronic)2151-6561
ISBN (Print)0065-0668
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 29 Jul 2020

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