Entrepreneurship and Digital Communities: Harnessing Legitimacy and Resources

Abstract

Since new ventures typically lack histories of performance and behavior, entrepreneurs often use communications, including sensegiving communications and those that incorporate signals, to reduce uncertainty and information asymmetry about their ventures. Broadly, this dissertation examines two aspects of such communications. First, it examines how new ventures can use these communications to influence their legitimacy. Second, it examines the effect of these communications on resource acquisition. More specifically, the first essay of this dissertation draws from sensegiving and symbolic management literature to theorize about, and empirically examine, the effect of the content of such communications on growth in broad public attention, which is the first step in the legitimation process. The second essay theorizes about, and empirically examines, when communications that incorporate signals are likely to work in concert with each other to effect decisions made by resource providers.