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Although it is acknowledged that entrepreneurial networks play a crucial role in fostering business model innovation (BMI) for start-ups, it is unclear how and when these networks affect BMI. This research developed a moderated mediation model to explore the impact of entrepreneurial networks on BMI in start-ups and examined the dual mediating effects of causation and effectuation, as well as the moderation of environmental dynamism.

The proposed framework was tested by hierarchical regression analyses and bootstrapping using samples of 248 start-ups in China.

The results showed that entrepreneurial networks significantly positively impacted start-up BMI. Causation and effectuation played dual mediating roles between entrepreneurial networks and BMI. Furthermore, the entrepreneurial networks-effectuation-BMI association was more substantial in highly dynamic environments, whereas the entrepreneurial networks-causation-BMI relationship was unaffected.

There are several theoretical contributions resulting from this research. The findings offer new insights for understanding the antecedents of start-up BMI from the network perspective. This research adds to the growing literature on resource orchestration (RO) by exploring the dual mediating influences of causation and effectuation in resource management. This investigation revealed the boundary condition between entrepreneurial networks and BMI by testing the moderating influence of environmental dynamism.

Start-ups must effectively use external resources embedded within networks to advance BMI. Start-up entrepreneurs should apply causation and effectuation to transform entrepreneurial network resources into BMI. Start-up entrepreneurs must dynamically manage resources in response to ever-changing environmental conditions. Resource acquisition and management of entrepreneurial networks can vary significantly in their influence on start-up BMI under different environmental contexts.

Unlike previous BMI research focused on internal organizational factors, this study highlighted the critical importance of entrepreneurial networks as a prerequisite for achieving start-up BMI, contributing to the literature on open innovation and resource-based view. Examining the dual mediating roles of causation and effectuation illustrated the bridging role of strategic decision-making logic in connecting resources to value creation, contributing to the developing RO literature. The moderating influence of environmental dynamism was explored, clarifying how start-up BMI benefits from entrepreneurial networks in differing situations. A framework for reconciling contradictory findings concerning the association between entrepreneurial networks and innovation is provided.

This study enriches the theory of effectuation by discussing the four independent dimensions of effectuation and their relationships with causation. Additionally, we fill the gap in prior literature by showing how entrepreneurial experience moderates the relationship between effectuation and innovativeness of the venture. Our study of 171 practising entrepreneurs regarding their entrepreneurial decision-making logic yielded multiple findings. The authors find that entrepreneurs rely on causation as well as effectuation in their decision-making; the more experienced entrepreneurs are, the more they actually use causation; and entrepreneurial experience moderates the relationship between effectuation and innovativeness of the venture firm.

This paper aims to explore the mediating role of organizational entrepreneurial capability in the link between entrepreneurs’ effectuation and new venture performance, and whether entrepreneurs’ passion positively moderates this relationship in the Chinese emerging economy.

This study collected survey data from 140 Chinese new ventures. Following an empirical design, hierarchical regression analysis and bootstrapping analysis were applied to examine six hypotheses.

Results reveal that organizational entrepreneurial capability plays a positively mediating role in the association between entrepreneurs’ effectuation and new venture performance. Moreover, the whole mediation model is positively moderated by entrepreneurs’ passion, not only the association but also between entrepreneurs’ effectuation and organizational entrepreneurial capability.

The study is limited to the static relationships between key variables using the data obtained at one point in an emerging economy, which cannot investigate the dynamic evolution between variables. More longitudinal designs or cases to track the dynamic association should be considered.

The findings provide useful suggestions for entrepreneurs to enhance their effectual logic and entrepreneurs’ passion to better perceive and exploit opportunities and further improve new venture performance. The results also provide guidance for other groups, such as angel investors and policymakers, regarding how to use effectuation logic as an evaluation criterion to judge whether a new venture or program has investment potential.

These findings enrich the effectuation theory by providing the empirical evidence of the effect of entrepreneurs’ effectuation on new venture performance in an emerging economy. They also provide deeper insights into opportunity research by uncovering the mediating role of organizational entrepreneurial capability in the relationship between entrepreneurs’ effectuation and new venture performance.

Entrepreneurial passion lies at the foundation of the business development process, yet the available evidence is ambiguous regarding its effects on firm performance. In this study, we examine the entrepreneurial passion puzzle by looking into decision-making mechanisms underlying its potential to increase business performance outcomes. Based on the literature on passion and effectuation theory, we link harmonious passion to firm performance through effectual behavioral logic.

To empirically test the theoretical model, we performed bootstrapping-based mediation, ordinary least squares moderated regression and moderated mediation analysis based on survey data collected from 105 executives of US firms.

We found that harmonious passion indirectly increases firm performance through effectuation. The direct link between harmonious passion and firm performance is insignificant. Moreover, the proposed mediation model is strengthened when the executives attain high levels of entrepreneurial experience.

This study is not without limitations. First, a cross-sectional data set was adopted as the empirical setting of our research. Hence, further studies could benefit from applying longitudinal research designs. Second, a self-reported survey was utilized to measure firm performance. Although such operationalization is widely accepted in management and entrepreneurship studies, objective measures can produce additional insights into focal relationships.

This study provides practical implications for educators, consultants and managers. First, educators should encourage harmonious passion and teach effectual decision-making through various educational programs. Consultants and business practitioners should take similar orientations when organizing training for employees and executives. Finally, managers need to comprehend the motivational types of their employees and promote harmonious passion through appraisal systems and organizational culture.

This research uncovers a mechanism and a boundary condition on the relationship between harmonious passion and performance. The results show the critical moderating role of human capital and the mediating role of effectual decision-making on the passion and performance relationship. The current study contributes to the passion literature by providing a more nuanced understanding of the dynamics between entrepreneurial passion and firm performance.

Since Sarasvathy’s (2001) research on decision-making logics of expert entrepreneurs, effectuation has become a cornerstone in entrepreneurship education. Effectuation is not only subjectified in entrepreneurship education, but has also become conceptualized as a method in the learning process. The purpose of this paper is to explore how students, who are novice entrepreneurs, react to working effectually and which barriers they face when applying effectual decision-making logics in a university course.

A student-centered process course in entrepreneurship with 142 students provides a unique opportunity to explore the phenomena. Participant/teacher observations, written and oral work from the students and finally formal and informal written evaluations of the course by the students provide comprehensive data.

The authors find that students experience three barriers to using effectuation. These are: noviceness, regarding the project as a “school project,” perceived lack of legitimacy of both the instructors and the process.

The contribution of this study is threefold: first, to contribute to the understanding of the applicability of effectuation for novice entrepreneurs in the classroom; second, to articulate the factors that hinder entrepreneurial learning when effectuation is used in a process course; and third, to shed light on the importance of contextual factors for individual learning.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of team entrepreneurial competence, a team-level construct representing the level of shared abilities toward entrepreneurial activities within a new venture team. A multilevel model of the influence of team entrepreneurial competence and team entrepreneurial experience on the cognitive strategies of team members is developed and tested.

Using a sample of 47 early stage entrepreneurial teams (144 individuals), a set of hypotheses regarding the effect of team entrepreneurial competence on team member reliance on effectual and causal reasoning, together with the moderating effect of team entrepreneurial experience, are tested.

The results provide support for a positive multilevel association between team entrepreneurial competence and the reliance by team members on both causal and effectual reasoning strategies; members of teams with higher entrepreneurial competence and more entrepreneurial experience are more likely to engage in effectuation.

Understanding how team-level predictors and moderators have a role in determining individual effectuation and causation strategies offers promise in advancing effectuation theory.

Teams develop entrepreneurial competencies that transcend those of individual team members; where teams have more collective entrepreneurial experience, the effect on the tendency of individuals to engage in effectual reasoning is enhanced, which can be beneficial in highly uncertain contexts.

The results of this study are a step forward for effectuation theory, as it demonstrates the role of team-level variables in explaining individual causal and effectual reasoning.

The purpose of this paper is to bridge the obvious gap presented in research on antecedents of effectuation by building a research model from the perspectives of effectuation and entrepreneurial opportunity.

This paper examines the effects of patterns of opportunity discovery and the innovativeness of entrepreneurial opportunity on the decision-making process of effectuation in new venture creation. Eight hypotheses are put forward and examined by hierarchical multiple logistic regression. The data in this paper are based on the first two rounds of survey data from Chinese Panel Study of Entrepreneurial dynamics.

The empirical results show that patterns of opportunity discovery have significant positive effects (at least partially) on effectuation. Namely, entrepreneurs employing fortuitous discovery tend to use available means and leverage contingency. And with lower innovativeness of opportunity, entrepreneurs are more likely to use affordable loss and leverage contingency.

The study is limited to each dimension of effectuation based on the single-item measure, which cannot completely reflect the effectual construct. More research should to be done to improve measures of effectuation.

The findings are useful for entrepreneurs to make effective decisions whether to choose effectuation in the face of different patterns of opportunity discovery. Besides, it provides the advice on how to cope with the innovativeness of opportunity and seize entrepreneurial opportunities to entrepreneurs.

This paper first systematically studies the effects of entrepreneurial opportunity on effectuation, making up for the obvious gap of research on antecedents of effectuation.

This study aims to investigate the antecedents of the internationalisation strategy i.e., effectuation, causation and bricolage on the international performance of the firm.

In total, the study uses 138 peer-reviewed articles on effectuation, causation, effectual/causal decision-making logics and related issues such as the impact of antecedent factors of international strategy (i.e. effectuation, causation and bricolage) on the international performance of the firm.

Even though the theory of effectuation was formulated in 2001, to a large extent it has still not moved away from the realm of small entrepreneurial firms. The development of effectuation logic has accelerated in recent years, but the bulk of the research still focusses on small entrepreneurial firms rather than on the application of the theory in larger, non-entrepreneurial firms. Furthermore, effectuation theory would benefit from being developed into the realm of psychology and sociology.

This study offers a conceptual model on how effectuation, causation and bricolage influence internationalisation strategy, which, in turn, impacts the international performance of the firm. Furthermore, the study discusses the effectual logic for larger firms. The exponential growth of studies on effectuation during recent years, i.e. 2017 to the first quarter of 2020, shows that researchers have responded to calls by leading authors stating that effectuation theory is a field with great potential for further theoretical developments. This study presents a literature review of the critical issue of the engagement of internationalisation strategies with effectuation, causation, bricolage and the international performance of the firm compared to the earlier literature review for the period 2001–2016 by Matalamäki (2017) and Karami et al. (2019) on effectuation and internationalisation.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a model to analyse what personality traits impact entrepreneurial cognitive and social strategic decision-making skills, originating from the effectuation framework.

A total of 128 participants from an entrepreneurial pre-launch programme were assessed by experienced incubator and business coaches. Personality was measured by a Big Five test. Based on a confirmatory factor analysis, the relationships were analysed between personality and three core dimensions of the effectuation framework: the bird-in-hand principle, the crazy quilt principle and the pilot in the plane principle.

Specific patterns (moderation effects) as opposed to levels of personality traits proved to be relevant. The bird-in-hand and the crazy quilt principles are related to the moderating effect between sensitivity to feedback, sociability and ambition. The pilot in the plane principle was related to the whole pattern of entrepreneurial key qualities embedded in the extraversion domain. Furthermore, relationships of personality with key issues in the effectuation framework were found, examples being reflecting on a high diversity of means or on own talents, conducting a thorough risk analysis and engaging in inspirational networking. The final model revealed a direct positive influence of the capacity to conduct a thorough risk analysis on the overall capacity to apply the effectuation principles.

A limitation of this study is the exclusion of the lemonade principle from the final model. This being based on unsatisfying model fit indices. Another limitation is the cross-sectional design, as well as the chosen research context: the pre-launch entrepreneurial programme.

The research results shed a light on the impact that personality plays in adoption of effectual decision making.

The effectuation framework is widely used by individual entrepreneurs, SMEs and start-ups, to design innovative business models or implement an up-scaling strategy.

Little is known about the underlying mechanisms of the effectuation framework. Moreover, evidence-based insights are offered to entrepreneurs that intent to mobilise effectual behaviours.

Drawing from resource orchestration theory, this research proposed an integrative model that leverages insights into counter resource constraints and uncertainty in start-up business model innovation (BMI). It investigated the influences of entrepreneurial networks and effectuation on BMI through bricolage in uncertain environments.

The research surveyed 481 start-ups in China. LISREL 8.80 and SPSS 22.0 were employed to test the validity and reliability of key variables, respectively. Additionally, hypotheses were examined through multiple linear regression.

First, entrepreneurial networks and effectuation were positively related to BMI, and combining these two factors improved BMI for start-ups. Second, bricolage contributed to BMI and played mediating roles in translating entrepreneurial networks and effectuation into BMI. Third, environmental uncertainty weakened the linkage between bricolage and BMI.

Future research should replicate the results in other countries because only start-ups in China were investigated in the study, and it is necessary to extend this research by gathering longitudinal data. This research emphasized the mediating effects of bricolage and the moderating influence of environmental uncertainty, and new potential mediating and moderating factors should be explored between resources and BMI.

There are three significant theoretical contributions. First, the findings enrich the literature on the complex antecedents of BMI by combining the impacts of entrepreneurial networks and effectuation. Second, an overarching framework is proposed explaining how bricolage (resource management) links entrepreneurial networks and effectuation and BMI. Third, it demonstrates the significance of environmental uncertainty in the bricolage–BMI linkage, deepening the understanding of the bricolage boundary condition.