Dear Colleagues
The next Entrepreneurship and Innovation Policy Research virtual seminar is Thursday, March 7, from 11:00-12:00 ET. Seungah Sarah Lee (New York University - Abu Dhabi) - will present "Between Global Ambitions and Local Challenges: How Entrepreneurship Supporting Organizations Navigate Institutional Complexity as Ecosystem Builders in the Arab Gulf". Ryan Coles (University of Connecticut) will discuss.
Click HERE to register for the 3/7 seminar (abstract is below). We hope you join us.
Please visit this LINK to view and register for other Spring 2024 seminars.
- Tim Folta (UCONN), Maryann Feldman (ASU), and Supradeep Dutta (Rutgers U)
Abstract: In the face of top-down promotion of entrepreneurship, how do organizations make sense of theirenvironment as enactors and facilitators of an emerging entrepreneurship ecosystem? This paper explores how entrepreneurship-supporting organizations (ESOs) in the Arab Gulf navigate, enact, and manage institutional complexities of top-down entrepreneurship ecosystem development. Drawing on 58 semi-structured interviews across four small Arab Gulf states, the paper provides a dynamic perspective on how ESOs navigate and respond to the complexities of emerging, top-down entrepreneurship development policies and initiatives as ecosystem shapers. In doing so, the paper elucidates how ESOs strategically appropriate national development narratives to legitimate strategic segmentation of organizational activities and reframe their organizational purposes for not only organizational survival but also to give themselves a sense of meaning and achievement amidst resource scarcities, structural gaps, and institutional voids. In doing so, the ESOs engage in hybrid leadership, seamlessly "code-switching" in communicating who they are, why they exist, and what their impact is.