Endure, escape or engage: how and when misaligned institutional logics and entrepreneurial agency contribute to the maturing of entrepreneurial ecosystems

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study explores how entrepreneurs respond when their expectations misalign with the capabilities, behaviours and priorities of angel and venture capital investors in a maturing entrepreneurial ecosystem. Based on 38 interviews with New Zealand founders, we theorize three qualitatively different behavioural strategies – endure, escape or engage – that entrepreneurs enact in the face of such misalignment. We also consider the ramifications of these strategies for the broader context in which entrepreneurial activity occurs. Some strategies reproduce the suboptimal ecosystem conditions that entrepreneurs encounter, whereas others contribute to the sustainable growth and maturity of the ecosystem. Grounded in an institutional logics perspective, our findings offer a nuanced view of entrepreneurial agency in the face of an entrepreneurial ecosystem’s institutional constraints. We challenge the deterministic notion of contextual forces that prevails in the literature and reveal how and when resource-sourcing decisions and actions stimulate endogenous change in entrepreneurial ecosystems.