Digital affordances: how entrepreneurs access support in online communities during the COVID-19 pandemicShow others and affiliations
2022 (English)In: Small Business Economics, ISSN 0921-898X, E-ISSN 1573-0913, Vol. 58, no 2, p. 637-663Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
COVID-19 has caused significant and unforeseen problems for entrepreneurs. While entrepreneurs would normally seek social support to help deal with these issues, due to social distancing, physical networks are often not available. Consequently, entrepreneurs must turn to alternative support sources, such as online communities, raising the question of how support is created in such spaces. Drawing on an affordance perspective, we investigate how entrepreneurs interact with online communities and base our qualitative analysis on conversation data (76,365 posts) from an online community of entrepreneurs on Reddit during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings draw out four affordances that online communities offer to entrepreneurs (resolving problems, reframing problems, reflecting on situations, refocusing thinking and efforts), resulting in a framework of entrepreneurial support creation in online communities. Thus, our study contributes to debates around (1) entrepreneurs’ support during COVID-19 and (2) digital affordances in the entrepreneurship context.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Springer, 2022. Vol. 58, no 2, p. 637-663
Keywords [en]
Affordances, Big data, COVID-19, Entrepreneurial support, Online communities
National Category
Business Administration
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:hj:diva-58109DOI: 10.1007/s11187-021-00540-2ISI: 000706024200001Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85116891365OAI: oai:DiVA.org:hj-58109DiVA, id: diva2:1684967
2022-07-292022-07-292022-07-29Bibliographically approved