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The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of opportunity relatedness and uncertainty on the decision of a corporate entrepreneur to pursue a venturing opportunity.

The study uses a conjoint experimental design to reveal the structure of respondents' decision policies. Data were gathered from 47 useable replies from corporate entrepreneurs and were analyzed with hierarchical linear modeling (HLM).

Results show that product relatedness, market relatedness, perceived certainty about expected outcomes and slack resources all have a positive effect on the willingness of a corporate entrepreneur to pursue a new venture idea. Moreover, slack was found to diminish the positive effect of product relatedness on the likelihood to pursue a venturing opportunity.

By providing a better understanding of decision-making schemas of corporate entrepreneurs, the findings of this study help improve the practice of entrepreneurship at the organizational level. In order to make more accurate opportunity assessments, corporate entrepreneurs need to be aware of their cognitive strategies and need to factor in the salient criteria affecting such assessments.

This paper adds to the limited understanding of corporate-level decision-making with regard to pursuing venturing opportunities. More specifically, the paper adds new insights regarding how relatedness and uncertainty affect new venture opportunity assessments in the presence (or lack thereof) of slack resources.

This paper aims to offer borrowed legitimacy through coalitions as an explanation for how an organization might successfully deviate from social norms to enact change, yet still gain sufficient cognitive and sociopolitical legitimacy for survival. This paper explains that borrowing legitimacy through a coalition allows an illegitimate organization to impose an alternative future despite institutional pressures for its convergence to social norms, rules and expectations.

To explore the ability of an organization that lacks legitimacy to borrow legitimacy through a coalition, the authors use a case study and content analysis of interviews, news articles and other publicly available secondary data to examine an environmentalist organization, Sea Shepherds, who openly seek legitimacy and resources, and are engaged in enacting change while using a unique or alternative form.

The case study here shows how a coalition with another organization that already has legitimacy can help the reference organization gain legitimacy themselves by borrowing legitimacy initially. Specifically, because more constituents are aware of the organization with existing legitimacy, the coalition allows the reference organization to borrow that cognitive legitimacy and constituents become aware of the reference organization as well.

Although this study provides meaningful insights to the phenomena at hand, it is limited in method and scope. As noted by Zucker, the institutional environment is very important to organization form and likelihood of success (Zucker, 1987); however, this paper does not include a parameter that recognizes the environment specifically. Instead, the model includes a parameter, p, to acknowledge that there are exogenous factors that affect the likelihood of a successful outcome that are not considered individually in the model. Also, this study does not empirically test specific hypotheses using a generalizable sample.

This paper contributes to institutional theory by providing a case study of an organization that is enacting change in lieu of the forces that promote institutionalization. The reference organization in the case study demonstrates one form of entrepreneurial organization that successfully deviates from social norms to enact change, yet still gains cognitive and sociopolitical legitimacy. The case study in this paper contributes by providing an example of an organizational form that allows a seemingly illegitimate organization to envision and impose an alternative future despite institutional pressures by forming a coalition with an actor that already has legitimacy.

Labor process research has documented a shift in the nature of control – from techniques that aim to limit worker discretion to consent-oriented controls that are believed to generate greater effort by increasing intrinsic rewards or bonding employees to managers and/or the firm. Over the past several decades, however, growing pressure to increase profits has prompted firms to adopt cost-cutting strategies that have eroded job security, relationships with management and commitment to organizational goals. This study investigates how a changing labor process and rising job insecurity shape workers’ orientations toward work, managers and the firm, and in turn influence workplace behavior. Analyses of content-coded data on 212 work groups confirms that discretion-limiting controls (supervision, technology and rules) are associated with more negative orientations and/or reductions in effort (with variations across distinct forms of control), while investment in workers’ human capital (but not involvement of workers in decision-making) has the reverse effect – ­generating more positive orientations toward work, managers and the firm, and (in turn) promoting discretionary work effort and limiting covert effort restriction. Implications of insecurity are more complex. Both layoffs and temporary employment reduce commitment to the organization, but layoffs generate conflict with management without reducing effort, whereas temporary employment limits effort without producing conflict. We illuminate underlying processes with evidence from the qualitative case studies.