To be or not to be: Latent entrepreneurship, the networked agent, and the fear factor

Abstract

• Latent entrepreneurship is underpinned by micro and macro level factors. • A would-be entrepreneur is connected to a heterogeneous network of relations. • Contextual risks and uncertainties impact the would-be entrepreneur's appraisals of fear. • Fear can be negative or positive in the shift from latent to emergent entrepreneurship. • There is a dynamic interplay between the would-be entrepreneur and their context. This conceptual paper explores a potential entrepreneur's journey of possessing the intention to start a new venture, but not necessarily realising it. We use the perspectives of actor-network theory and affective events theory to argue that latent entrepreneurship is underpinned by micro- and macro-level factors. First, the would-be entrepreneur is inescapably connected to a heterogeneous entrepreneurial network of relations that may enable or constrain entrepreneurship. Second, contextual risks and uncertainties impact the would-be entrepreneur's cognitive appraisals of and behavioural responses to fear, either leading to latent entrepreneurship or emergent entrepreneurship. We propose a framework to depict the interplay between the individual and the context within the dynamics of latent and emergent entrepreneurship. Our contribution is twofold: First, we contribute to the actor-network theory by suggesting that fear is one of the tokens in a would-be entrepreneur's heterogeneous network of relations, and that it must be negotiated either for latent or emergent entrepreneurship. Second, we advance the understanding of the role of fear in the entrepreneurial process by conceptualising it as a context-specific phenomenon and highlighting its dualistic nature, showing how it could play both negative and positive roles in the shift from latent to emergent entrepreneurship.