Spontaneous Venturing

Identifying a new approach to disaster response: spontaneous, compassionate, and impromptu actions to alleviate suffering. In Spontaneous Venturing, Dean Shepherd and Trenton Williams identify and describe a new approach for responding to disaster and suffering: the local organizing of spontaneous, compassionate, and impromptu actions—the rapid emergence of a compassionate venture. This approach, termed by the authors “spontaneous venturing,” can be more effective than the traditional “command-and-control” methods of large disaster relief organizations. It can customize and target resources and deliver them quickly, helping victims almost immediately. For example, during the catastrophic 2009 bushfires in Victoria, Australia—the focal disaster for the book—residents organized an impromptu relief center that collected and distributed urgently needed goods without red tape. Special bonds and friendships formed among the volunteers and victims; some were both volunteer and victim. Many victims were able to mobilize resources despite considerable personal losses. Shepherd and Williams describe the lasting impact of disaster and tell the stories of Victoria residents who organized in the aftermath of the bushfires. They consider the limitations of traditional disaster relief efforts and explain that when victims take action to help others, they develop behavioral, emotional, and assumptive resilience; venturing leads to social interaction, community connections, and other positive outcomes. Finally, they explore spontaneous venturing in a less-developed country, investigating the activities of Haitians after the devastating 2010 earthquake. The lesson for communities hit by disaster: find opportunities for compassionate action

We’re all in the same boat : A collective model of preserving and accessing nature-based opportunities

Author's accepted version (postprint).This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Sage in Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice on 15/03/2019.Available online: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1042258719834014acceptedVersio

Entrepreneurial Cognition

This open access book investigates the inter-relationship between the mind and a potential opportunity to explore the psychology of entrepreneurship. Building on recent research, this book offers a broad scope investigation of the different aspects of what goes on in the mind of the (potential) entrepreneur as he or she considers the pursuit of a potential opportunity, the creation of a new organization, and/or the selection of an entrepreneurial career. This book focuses on individuals as the level of analysis and explores the impact of the organization and the environment only inasmuch as they impact the individual’s cognitions. Readers will learn why some individuals and managers are able to able to identify and successfully act upon opportunities in uncertain environments while others are not. This book applies a cognitive lens to understand individuals’ knowledge, motivation, attention, identity, and emotions in the entrepreneurial process.

Entrepreneurial Cognition

entrepreneurial mindset; cognitive processes; cognitive psychology; prior knowledge; exploitation; motivation; financial motivation; non-financial motivation; entrepreneurial opportunities; self-identity; well-being; work identit

Entrepreneurial Theorizing

This open access book investigates an entrepreneurial approach to building new theories. It provides a rich understanding of how specific tools facilitate aspects of the theorizing process and offers a clearer big picture of the process of building important new entrepreneurship theories. The authors show that anthropomorphizing has been a critically important tool for developing influential entrepreneurship theories. They reveal how scholars build on their rich and highly accessible understanding of humans (i.e., the self and others) to make guesses and sense of entrepreneurial anomalies, articulate theoretical mechanisms to build more robust entrepreneurship theories, and create plausible stories that facilitate sensegiving. Further, they offer a framework that guides entrepreneurship scholars in finding a balance to maximize their contributions and guides reviewers and editors in managing the revise-and-resubmit process to advance the entrepreneurship field. Finally, they present lean scholarship as an approach to developing a portfolio of high-quality, high-impact papers. Lean scholarship starts with an entrepreneurial mindset and involves creating a minimum viable paper, exploring its validity, adding a plausible paper to one’s portfolio, and managing the portfolio by periodically deciding whether to persevere, pivot, or terminate each paper. This seminal work will appeal to entrepreneurship researchers, both those new to the field as well as seasoned veterans, who want to learn more about the tools that can be used to generate new knowledge about new ventures and other entrepreneurship topics

Envisioning Entrepreneurship’s Future:Introducing Me-Search and Research Agendas

The future of the field of entrepreneurship is bright primarily because of the many research opportunities to make a difference. However, as scholars how can we find these opportunities and choose the ones most likely to contribute to the literature? This essay introduces me-search and a special issue of research-agenda papers from leading scholars as tools for blazing new trails in entrepreneurship research. Me-search and the agenda papers point to the importance of solving a practical problem; problematizing, contextualizing, and abstracting entrepreneurship research; and using empirical theorizing to explore entrepreneurial phenomena.</p

A qualitative study of mothers’ perceptions of weaning and the use of commercial infant food in the United Kingdom

Background: Commercially produced infant food has a different taste profile and nutritional content to homemade baby food and its consumption is now very widespread. This change in early food experience may lead to a reduced dietary variety and a decreased microbial load exposure.Objective: The purpose of this study was to gain insight into parental perceptions of complementary feeding, specifically opinions of commercially produced baby food, using qualitative research methods. Methods: Four focus group discussions took place (n = 24), with mothers of infants aged 4-7 months. Half of participants were first time mothers and a third had experience weaning infants with symptoms of cows' milk allergy. Participants were prompted with questions about complementary feeding and shown several different products to stimulate discussion. Results: Thematic analysis of focus groups indicated that three distinctive groups of mothers exis

Theory Building: A Review and Integration

Building theories is important for advancing knowledge of management. But it is also a highly challenging task. Although there is a burgeoning literature that offers many theorizing tools, we lack a coherent understanding of how these tools fit together—when to use a particular tool and which combination of tools can be used in the theorizing process. In this article, we organize a systematic review of the literature on theory building in management around the five key elements of a good story: conflict, character, setting, sequence, and plot and arc. In doing so, we hope to provide a richer understanding of how specific theorizing tools facilitate aspects of the theorizing process and offer a clearer big picture of the process of building important theories. We also offer pragmatic empirical theorizing as an approach that uses quantitative empirical findings to stimulate theorizing