Entrepreneurship can be a pathway to emancipation from social constraints and economic oppression. However, the stories of emancipatory entrepreneurship reveal that these pathways are as diverse and unique as entrepreneurs themselves. Inspired by Hermann Hesse, we explore this variation by conceptualizing emancipatory entrepreneurship as the lifelong pursuit of Eigensinn, a self-creating process of development that involves: i) discovering one's inner voice, ii) recognizing a growing dissonance between Eigensinn and the outer world, and iii) accepting the consequences of following one's inner voice. Eigensinn contributes a unifying lens to explore what inspires entrepreneurs in pursuing emancipation while adding a biographical dimension that frames emancipatory entrepreneurship as a profoundly subjective and open-ended journey. It emphasizes how the meanings of emancipation can evolve or rupture throughout different phases of life, urging entrepreneurs to remain attuned to their inner voice and confront the fear of radical uncertainty in answering its call.

Entrepreneurs can benefit from the communities they build. Therefore, many entrepreneurs create online communities that allow self-selected stakeholders, such as customers, crowd investors, or enthusiasts, to interact with the venture and other like-minded individuals. However, research on how entrepreneurs can successfully engage community members and grow such online communities is only slowly emerging. In particular, it is unclear if, how much, and which content entrepreneurs should contribute to foster engagement in different types of communities and which role these community types play in the community's overall growth. Based on a longitudinal case study in the video game industry, we first theorize and show that-depending on the community type-both too much and too little entrepreneur-provided content fails to leverage community engagement potential and that different communities require more or less diverging content. We then theorize and show that community growth is largely driven by engagement in open communities, such as those hosted on social media. We outline the implications this has for entrepreneurs, our understanding of online communities, and entrepreneurial communities more generally. How can entrepreneurs engage and grow different types of online communities?Managing online communities is crucial for many entrepreneurs. However, different community types, open and core, play different roles and require different content and growth strategies. Core communities, such as those hosted on online forums, respond well to less but more diverse content, whereas open communities on social media drive overall community growth with more but less diverse content. Entrepreneurs need to find the right balance and pay attention to the tipping point of content provision, as too much content might endanger community member engagement. By understanding the dynamics of online communities, entrepreneurs can effectively nurture engagement and optimize their efforts for long-term success. Investing resources wisely in content production, considering the costs involved, can be beneficial for new ventures seeking sustainable community growth.

Researchers often employ signaling theory to explain the effect of entrepreneurial communication on fundraising success. This focus on signaling can lead researchers to overlook alternative explanations for why communication affects fundraising, resulting in incorrect conclusions. An empirical test of whether a signaling mechanism is a good explanation for an observed relationship would help remedy such problems. We illustrate this idea by reexamining a relationship that has frequently been attributed to signaling, namely, the positive effect that updates in crowdfunding have on fundraising success. We find no support for a signaling mechanism based on a dataset of 5,908 campaign-day observations nested in 175 Kickstarter campaigns. Instead, an alternative explanation, indicating that updates provide affective stimuli, fits the data better. We provide guidance for empirical substantiations of signaling mechanisms in entrepreneurial fundraising with implications for the discussion on the boundaries of signaling theory.

Purpose Governments regularly release emergency preparedness information and communication to households because household preparedness can mitigate global supply chain management disruptions due to crises. Such information can only help if households interpret it as intended and act as suggested. The purpose is to explore the Swedish households’ sensemaking of emergency information and the impact on supply chain preparedness.

Design/methodology/approach The research adopts an inductive approach to qualitative data. We collect and analyze 75 interviews from 51 Swedish households in three waves (2019, 2021, 2022) corresponding to recent supply chain disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops. This allows us to explore the households’ understanding of emergency preparedness information and how it affects their actions.

Findings The findings indicate that not all crises trigger equal sensemaking of emergency preparedness information. We find several distinct groups of households and label these early adopters and laggards respectively and discuss how this affects global supply chains. Good crisis communication can reduce real demand when a crisis happens by reducing peaks in demand. However, some false demand is still created, and some people are entirely unaffected by the crisis communication.

Research limitations/implications The research is based on a focused sample of interviewees. Future research can broaden the sample to different groups of respondents.

Original/value The paper contributes to the literature about emergency preparedness and global supply chains by suggesting that household sensemaking and perceptions of emergency preparedness communication have real effects by reducing demand peaks. We then connect this to global supply chains and how are affected by the crises

Emotion in strategic management has attracted increasing scholarly interest during the past twenty-five years. Researchers have demonstrated the nature and significance of emotion in strategic management from a broad range of perspectives across different levels of analysis. Given the expanding research on the topic, the time is ripe to synthesize this diverse and multifaceted body of knowledge. In a thematic synthesis of the literature, we address the following questions: how does emotion influence strategic management, and how can the field be further developed? We review emotion constructs used in the extant literature and identify three themes related to how emotions influence strategic management: the nonconscious influence of emotions, emotion regulation, and collective emotions. Based on these themes and our analysis, we propose three areas of future research to inspire the field to develop further: (1) scope conditions of emotion research in strategic management; (2) capturing emotion in strategic management; and (3) the ethics, power and politics of emotions in strategic management.

Organizations are increasingly opening up to external voices that might carry new insights and help organizations to find their place in society. But the context through which organizations communicate with their stakeholders shapes how communication unfolds. Traditionally, organizations communicated with their stakeholders through shareholder letters, town hall meetings, or printed advertisements. Nowadays, cyberspace has opened up communication in multiple ways. It affords fast and boundless two-way communication between organizations and stakeholders and among stakeholders, that can be both a blessing and a curse. In any case, changes in the communication landscape have affected all types of organizations—large corporations, small and medium-sized enterprises, and newly started ventures.

My research connects to ongoing discussions on how new media have shaped the landscape of organizations. Specifically, I explore how organizations incorporate insights from stakeholder communication from a practice-based view. This view allows me to magnify and understand better how the communication context shapes the interaction. My empirical research focuses on stakeholder communication in a single-case study of the world’s largest miniature model railway exhibition and three new venture ideation cases. I employ a mix of qualitative research methods, including digital data collection techniques.

A bricolage of the four papers included in this dissertation frames the insights under the assumption that communication constitutes organization. It allows me to conceptualize the incorporation of new insights from stakeholder communication as a co-authoring process. Specifically, I show that modes provide the meaning-making resources through which humans communicate organizations into being. Media act as vessels of modes and shape how stakeholders can interact with—and co-author—the modes.

My future research agenda focuses on two aspects. First, I suggest following more closely how new narratives that stakeholders offer during the co-authoring process subsequently travel through an organization. This question is particularly relevant in larger corporations where the newly proposed narratives have to travel more considerable distances between stakeholder communication practices and decision-making practices. Second, I suggest investigating stakeholder communication from a design perspective, that is, a study of the heuristics that managers and entrepreneurs employ before engaging in stakeholder communication.

Öppenhet blir mer och mer karaktäriserande för detta århundrades stereotypa organisation eftersom lednings- och entreprenörskapstrender antyder att beslutsfattare bör engagera sig med sina intressenter. Nya medier driver på sådana tendenser genom att öppna snabba och gränslösa kanaler för tvåvägskommunikation genom vilka intressenter lätt kan uttrycka sina åsikter. Trots ämnets betydelse har vi begränsad kunskap om hur organisationer använder sådana insikter från kommunikation med intressenter. Denna doktorsavhandling belyser relaterade teoretiska blinda fläckar genom att presentera kvalitativ forskning från två kontexter. Den första kontexten är ett online-community för Miniatur Wunderland – världens största modelljärnvägsutställning och en av Tysklands mest populära turistattraktioner. Den andra kontexten redogör för svårigheterna med att anpassa nya företagsidéer för satsningar efter återkoppling från externa intressenter . Reflektioner över de empiriska studierna från båda kontexterna antar att organisationer är sammansättningar av konversationer och texter. Detta antagande gör det möjligt att konceptualisera införlivandet av intressentinsikter som en medförfattarprocess. Den belyser hur media och verktyg kommunikationssätt som organisationer använder för kommunikation möjliggör intressenters deltagande i skapandet av texter som utgör organisationer. Dessa insikter har konsekvenser för teori och praktik.