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Fool’s Gold or Gold Rush? An Entrepreneurial Dilemma

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Foundational Research in Entrepreneurship Studies

Abstract

One of the critical issues among the myriad facing entrepreneurs is ‘liabilities of newness’. These liabilities can be severe in emerging industries and attenuated by legitimacy acquisition. Aldrich and Fiol (Acad Manag Rev 19(4):645–670, 1994), in their seminal paper, highlighted the legitimacy trade-off by theorizing about strategies at various levels (organizational to institutional) that could collectively help entrepreneurs succeed in new industries. Till about two decades ago, researchers would have termed ‘entrepreneurial activity’ as search for fool’s gold. However, Aldrich and Fiol’s study generated so much interest among researchers that now we know better. In this study, the authors map the entire legitimacy landscape since Aldrich and Fiol’s paper by looking at two dimensions that are at core of this entrepreneurial dilemma—Locus of Control and Degree of Conflict.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. IE Business School, IE University, Madrid, Spain

    Sumeet Malik & Chandrika Rathee

Authors
  1. Sumeet Malik
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  2. Chandrika Rathee
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Morgan State University, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Golshan Javadian

  2. The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA

    Vishal K. Gupta

  3. University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA

    Dev K. Dutta

  4. Sacred Heart University, Hartford, CT, USA

    Grace Chun Guo

  5. Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Newark, NJ, USA

    Arturo E. Osorio

  6. University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA, USA

    Banu Ozkazanc-Pan

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Malik, S., Rathee, C. (2018). Fool’s Gold or Gold Rush? An Entrepreneurial Dilemma. In: Javadian, G., Gupta, V., Dutta, D., Guo, G., Osorio, A., Ozkazanc-Pan, B. (eds) Foundational Research in Entrepreneurship Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73528-3_11

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