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Muddling through Akerlofian and Knightian uncertainty: The role of sociobehavioral integration, positive affective tone, and polychronicity

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Abstract

To address recent calls for a more nuanced understanding of the role of uncertainty in entrepreneurial processes, we distinguish between cross-sectional uncertainty, which arises from the uneven dispersion of knowledge across people and places, and longitudinal uncertainty, which arises from the dispersion of knowledge across time. We argue that new venture team (NVT) sociobehavioral integration (the extent to which NVT members function as a team), NVT polychronicity (the extent to which NVT members prefer to be engaged in multiple tasks simultaneously), and NVT positive affective tone (the extent to which NVT members consistently experience positive emotions) help NVTs cope with challenges arising from the dispersed nature of knowledge in different ways. Evidence from a sample of Scandinavian science-based new ventures supports this view.

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Notes

  1. In their original paper and in contrast, Dew et al. (2004) used the concepts of cross-sectional and longitudinal uncertainty to propose a new theory of the entrepreneurial firm. According to Dew et al. (2004), it is the dispersed nature of knowledge (across people, places, and time) and the resulting difficulty of achieving intersubjective agreement on the value of an entrepreneurial opportunity among market participants, that explains the “need for the institutional modality of the firm” (p. 659).

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  1. Section for Digitalisation and Entrepreneurship, University of Oslo, Gaustadalléen 21, N-0318, Oslo, Norway

    Daniel Leunbach & Truls Erikson

  2. University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Truls Erikson

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Gothenburg, Haraldsgatan 1, 41314, Göteborg, Sweden

    Max Rapp-Ricciardi

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  1. Daniel Leunbach
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Leunbach, D., Erikson, T. & Rapp-Ricciardi, M. Muddling through Akerlofian and Knightian uncertainty: The role of sociobehavioral integration, positive affective tone, and polychronicity. J Int Entrep 18, 145–164 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10843-019-00255-2

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