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

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.