Nascent strategic entrepreneuring as a complex responsive process

Abstract

Following the call of recent authors for an improved process-oriented model of entrepreneurship, this exploratory research study sets out to understand the process of entrepreneurship, or “entrepreneuring”. It uses perspectives from the process-oriented view of reality, social constructionism and the complexity sciences. The aim of this study was to construct new questions, using the theoretical lens afforded by these perspectives, which would fuel further research toward developing a process-oriented model of entrepreneurship ‒ or point out the intractability of such a problem. Eleven individuals, who were considered to be early-stage entrepreneurs, were selected for qualitative interviews. A narrative analysis of these interviews was performed which showed, within the context of the process of entrepreneuring, that the emergent themes could be understood from the alternative theoretical paradigms covered in the literature. Several important questions for future research emerged, alongside the understanding that an alternative to the mechanistic/systemic perspective is to be sought, and that the process of entrepreneuring might be better understood within the broader context of power and social influence dynamics.