Toward a process theory of entrepreneurship: revisiting opportunity identification and entrepreneurial actions

This dissertation studies the early development of new ventures and small business and the entrepreneurship process from initial ideas to viable ventures. I unpack the micro-foundations of entrepreneurial actions and new ventures’ investor communications through quality signals to finance their growth path. This dissertation includes two qualitative papers and one quantitative study. The qualitative papers employ an inductive multiple-case approach and include seven medical equipment manufacturers (new ventures) in a nascent market context (the mobile health industry) across six U.S. states and a secondary data analysis to understand the emergence of opportunities and the early development of new ventures. The quantitative research chapter includes 770 IPOs in the manufacturing industries in the U.S. and investigates the legitimation strategies of young ventures to gain resources from targeted resource-holders.Open Acces

Fundamental Vortices, Wall-Crossing, and Particle-Vortex Duality

We explore 1d vortex dynamics of 3d supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories, as inferred from factorization of exact partition functions. Under Seiberg-like dualities, the 3d partition function must remain invariant, yet it is not a priori clear what should happen to the vortex dynamics. We observe that the 1d quivers for the vortices remain the same, and the net effect of the 3d duality map manifests as 1d Wall-Crossing phenomenon; Although the vortex number can shift along such duality maps, the ranks of the 1d quiver theory are unaffected, leading to a notion of fundamental vortices as basic building blocks for topological sectors. For Aharony-type duality, in particular, where one must supply extra chiral fields to couple with monopole operators on the dual side, 1d wall-crossings of an infinite number of vortex quiver theories are neatly and collectively encoded by 3d determinant of such extra chiral fields. As such, 1d wall-crossing of the vortex theory encodes the particle-vortex duality embedded in the 3d Seiberg-like duality. For $\mathcal N = 4$, the D-brane picture is used to motivate this 3d/1d connection, while, for $\mathcal N = 2$, this 3d/1d connection is used to fine-tune otherwise ambiguous vortex dynamics. We also prove some identities of 3d supersymmetric partition functions for the Aharony duality using this vortex wall-crossing interpretation.Comment: 75 pages, 24 figures; v2: a reference added, published versio

Factor market oligopsony and the location decision of free entry oligopoly

This paper examines the impact of oligopsony power on the location decision of undifferentiated oligopolistic firms with free entry. In the case where the distance of an oligopolistic firm from the output market is held constant, it shows that the optimum location moves away from the oligopsonistic input market if the demand function and the labor supply function are linear. In the case where the distance of an oligopolistic firm from the output market is a decision variable, it shows that the optimum location may not move toward the output market as demand increases if the demand function is convex. These results are significantly different from the conventional results based on the perfectly competitive factor market. It indicates that the presence of oligopsony power has important influence on the location decision of oligopolistic firms.Free entry oligopoly

Feminist Debate in Taiwan\u27s Buddhism: The Issue of the Eight Garudhammas

In 2001, during an academic conference on Humanistic Buddhism in Taipei, Venerable Shi Zhaohui, accompanied by a few Buddhist clergy and laypeople, tore apart a copy of the Eight Garudhammas (Eight Heavy Rules), regulations that govern the behavior of Buddhist nuns. Zhaohui\u27s symbolic act created instant controversy as Taiwan\u27s Buddhist community argued about the rules\u27 authenticity and other issues within Buddhist monastic affairs. This paper examines the debate over the Eight Garudhammas and situates the debate within Taiwan\u27s cultural terrain as well as the worldwide Buddhist feminist movement. I argue that while Zhaohui\u27s call resulted in the abolishment of the rules neither at home nor abroad, it profoundly affected nuns\u27 position in Buddhism and contributed to broader discussions on women and religion. In making this argument, I revisit the impact of Western feminism (and Western Buddhist feminists) on Eastern religions and reconsider the tensions this relationship encompasses

General instanton counting and 5d SCFT

Instanton partition functions of 5d N=1 gauge theories are Witten indices for the ADHM gauged quantum mechanics with (0,4) SUSY. We derive the integral contour prescriptions for these indices using the Jeffrey-Kirwan method, for gauge theories with hypermultiplets in various representations. The results can be used to study various 4d/5d/6d QFTs. In this paper, we study 5d SCFTs which are at the UV fixed points of 5d SYM theories. In particular, we focus on the Sp(N) theories with N_f \leq 7 fundamental and 1 antisymmetric hypermultiplets, living on the D4-D8-O8 systems. Their superconformal indices calculated from instantons all show E_{N_f+1} symmetry enhancements. We also discuss some aspects of the 6d SCFTs living on the M5-M9 system. It is crucial to understand the UV incompleteness of the 5d SYM, coming from small instantons in our problem. We explain in our examples how to fix them. As an aside, we derive the index for general gauged quantum mechanics with (0,2) SUSY.Comment: 67 pages, 9 figures; v3: minor changes, published versio

Rethinking mirror symmetry as a local duality on fields

We introduce an algorithm to piecewise dualise linear quivers into their mirror dual. The algorithm uses two basic duality moves and the properties of the $S$-wall which can all be derived by iterative applications of Seiberg-like dualities.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures; v3: Figure 2 revised, the introduction and comments sections elaborate