The circumstances that nascent social entrepreneurs face made them a strategic research context for this project because they can be considered an extreme context in which to study
entrepreneurs’ feedback seeking. Extreme contexts are useful for inductive theory building research because the phenomenon under study and its elements, dynamics, or tensions are more visible compared to ordinary settings (Langley & Abdallah, 2011). Based on my adopted definition of social entrepreneurship (see Chapter Two), social entrepreneurs are individuals engaged in the process of identifying, developing, and exploiting opportunities for new economic activity to pursue a social objective. Nascent social entrepreneurs are individuals who have started this process, but have not established operational ventures yet (Reynolds & Curtin, 2008). This means that they may have started trading and received
financing, but do not have sustainable surpluses yet. Nascent social entrepreneurs can be considered an extreme context in which to study potential feedback-seeking tensions because they arguably place high value on feedback seeking, but also face challenges and strong reasons to refrain from seeking feedback.
On the one hand, nascent social entrepreneurs are in a position to value feedback seeking highly for two reasons. First, considering the challenges introduced by the hybrid nature of social
entrepreneurship, feedback seeking is arguably a valuable activity for nascent social entrepreneurs as it can help them to manage the complexity and uncertainty inherent in social ventures. As discussed in the previous chapter, social entrepreneurship is a hybrid
phenomenon combining elements of the not-for-profit and
commercial sectors. As hybrid organisations, social ventures face tensions and contradictions, difficulties to access resources, and internal conflict among venture members (Battilana & Lee, 2014;
Doherty et al., 2014). These challenges can have significant negative effects on social ventures as they can make it difficult to operate effectively (Battilana & Dorado, 2010) and maintain desirable levels of productivity (Battilana et al., 2013). Additionally, social ventures often address complex societal issues such as poverty,
unemployment, and drug addiction recovery in resource-scarce environments (e.g. Mair & Martí, 2009; Mair, Martí & Ventresca, 2012; Perrini et al., 2010). Taking these challenges together, it is not surprising that social ventures are less likely to become operational compared to commercial ventures (Renko, 2013). Second,
theoretical and empirical research suggests that feedback seeking can be beneficial for social entrepreneurs and their ventures to maintain the venture’s social mission (André & Pache, 2014), understand beneficiaries’ needs, and manage their expectations (Walk et al., 2015).
On the other hand, nascent social entrepreneurs are in a position to value refraining from seeking feedback for two reasons.
First, social entrepreneurs arguably place a high value on their public image, which can be damaged by seeking feedback. How
entrepreneurs are perceived by relevant others, such as employees, investors, and customers, is important because it can influence the public image of their ventures (Chahine et al., 2011; Roberts &
Dowling, 2002), IPO performance (Chahine et al., 2011), and purchasing and employment decisions (Sohn, Lariscy & Tinkham, 2009). Yet feedback seeking may be perceived as a sign of
weakness or insecurity (Ashford & Cummings, 1983, Levy et al., 1995), which violates expectations of entrepreneurs as competent and confident, thus damaging their public image. This public image concern can be particularly salient for social entrepreneurs who aim to construct a positive external image (Pache & Santos, 2013;
Ruebottom, 2013) because their ventures struggle to establish legitimacy due to their hybrid nature (Battilana & Dorado, 2010;
Pache & Santos, 2010). Additionally, social entrepreneurship in the United Kingdom attracts individuals who traditionally have been less involved in commercial entrepreneurship in terms of gender, age, disability, and ethnicity (Social Enterprise UK, 2013, 2015). As these individuals deviate from the mainstream stereotype of who is an entrepreneur, they can potentially be even more careful with the public image they aim to construct. Second, nascent social
entrepreneurs arguably face significant resource constraints to seek feedback. As nascent social entrepreneurs engage diverse
stakeholders from the not-for-profit and commercial fields (Katre &
Salipante, 2012; Shaw & Carter, 2007), they are likely to have more potential sources of feedback on more topics, which requires more time, effort, and energy compared to entrepreneurs who engage with less diverse stakeholder groups. Considering image issues and resource requirements to seek feedback from diverse stakeholders, nascent social entrepreneurs may also be motivated to refrain from seeking feedback.
Taken together, these considerations make nascent social entrepreneurs an excellent theoretical context for developing theory about entrepreneurs’ feedback seeking and the potentially conflicting motivations embedded in the phenomenon. Nascent social
not, and how entrepreneurs seek feedback, yet, as discussed in Chapter Two, social and commercial entrepreneurs also adopt similar approaches, methods, processes, and perceptions. Therefore, for the purposes of this research, I do not investigate social
entrepreneurship as a separate phenomenon, but consider it a unique context that allows me to uncover insights that can have broader implications for entrepreneurs in general (Dacin et al., 2010;
Short, Moss & Lumpkin, 2009). Selecting a theoretically relevant and narrow context, such as social entrepreneurs, is particularly
appropriate for research in entrepreneurship, which is a very heterogeneous phenomenon across a variety of dimensions:
individuals involved and their motivations, size, age, level of
innovation, industry, environment, regulations, etc. (Davidsson, 2003;
Davidsson & Delmar, 2012). Other scholars have made a similar decision to focus on specific theoretically rich or extreme contexts to study phenomena relevant to all entrepreneurs and organisations because the exact context brings to the forefront the underlying concepts, dynamics, and nuances. For example, Reymen et al.
(2015) examined the dynamics of strategic decision making in venture creation with a sample of high technology ventures which operate in contexts of high uncertainty, while Cennamo et al. (2012) used family firms to theorise how principal’s conflicting financial and non-financial goals influence stakeholder management.