Department of Strategy and Entrepreneurship

Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal Doi: https://sms.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sej.70068

This conceptual study develops a process theory of vulnerability acceptance explaining how trust and behavioral uncertainty coevolve as entrepreneurial actors form, interpret, and realize opportunities. Trust is frequently invoked to explain creativity, exploration, and opportunity formation, yet remains theorized through predictability and evaluability, which entrepreneurial opportunities often lack ex ante. We distinguish three forms of vulnerability acceptance: uncertainty creating, releasing, and decreasing trust. Each transforms the uncertainty it engages, which in turn reinforces or unsettles that form, so no form is terminal. Their salience shifts across opportunity formation, interpretive recombination, and realization, and misalignment between a form and the conditions it confronts impairs entrepreneurial progress. Trust thereby becomes a means through which epistemic conditions are produced, not only a response to them.

Long Range Planning 59(6) Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lrp.2026.102695

Although ‘distant’ partners provide diverse information and resources, firms tend to form ‘local’ ties, favoring partners who are more similar, familiar, or spatially proximate. This underscores the need to investigate how distant ties originate—specifically, identifying the conditions under which firms are more likely to establish distant ties, and when they are not. In this study, we emphasize network status as a key determinant in the formation of interfirm distant ties. Analyzing syndication networks of U.S. venture capital (VC) firms, we establish two sets of key findings. First, we emphasize a balancing imperative in partner selection, whereby firms tend to choose partners that are ‘local’ in one dimension but ‘distant’ in another. Second, and more importantly, our results demonstrate that network status significantly shapes the balancing imperative: high-status firms exhibit a stronger propensity to bridge multiple tie distances simultaneously, unless social distance is involved. These findings extend our knowledge on status and network dynamics.

Cases on Corporate Social Responsibility p. 38-49 Doi: https://doi.org/10.4337/9781035383085.00012

Asia Pacific Journal of Management Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10490-026-10197-8

Socio-Economic Review Doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwag057

Economic sociologists have long emphasized a positive but loose coupling between status and quality, prompting scholars to rule out quality in the status research. However, limited attention is paid to the implications of their loose coupling per se. We underscore that the loose coupling implies a status-quality discrepancy: some actors’ status positions are over-ranked relative to their quality (status inflation), while others are under-ranked (status deflation). The status-quality discrepancy warrants attention because it can place important constraints on actors’ behavior. Specifically, we maintain that status-inflated actors may avoid unconventional, aspirational behavior to shield themselves from potential scrutiny and loss, whereas status-deflated actors embrace it to seek market recognition. Supporting this, our study of fine wineries in Bordeaux shows that wineries with deflated status engage more in aspirational pricing behavior, while those with inflated status tend to shy away from it. Our emphasis on the status-quality discrepancy makes important contributions to the literature on status and aspirational behavior.