Digital Entrepreneurship of Born Digital and Grown Digital Firms: Comparing the Effectuation Process of Yihaodian and Suning

This paper examines digital entrepreneurship in born digital and grown digital firms. Of late, digital entrepreneurship has garnered renewed attention from national leaders, practitioners, and academics due to the phenomenal success of a number of digital startups and the radical disruptions brought by the innovative use of technologies. Despite the significance and the promises of digital technology, especially amid the gloomy economy, digital entrepreneurship has remained inadequately analyzed for its predominant focus on entrepreneurs (human agency) and newly founded firms (context). This study offers an in-depth analysis of two entrepreneurial firms, Yihaodian and Suning, which are among the largest e-commerce players in China. By adopting effectuation as our theoretical lens, this study aims to generate an understanding of the digital entrepreneurial process in both born digital and grown digital firms.

[1]  Line Dubé,et al.  Rigor in Information Systems Positivist Case Research: Current Practices , 2003, MIS Q..

[2]  Feng Zhu,et al.  Products to Platforms: Making the Leap , 2016 .

[3]  KA Thleen,et al.  Building Theories from Case Study , 2007 .

[4]  David E. Gumpert,et al.  The heart of entrepreneurship , 1985 .

[5]  Raghu Garud,et al.  Theory Evaluation, Entrepreneurial Processes, and Performativity , 2016 .

[6]  B. Galliers,et al.  The Journal of Strategic Information Systems , 1996 .

[7]  R. Gephart.  Qualitative Research and the Academy of Management Journal , 2004 .

[8]  Ola Henfridsson,et al.  Everyday Digital Entrepreneurship: The Inception, Shifts, and Scaling of Future Shaping Practices , 2014, ICIS.

[9]  Shan Ling Pan,et al.  Business Models and Tactics in New Product Creation: The Interplay of Effectuation and Causation Processes , 2014, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management.

[10]  S. Shane,et al.  Opportunities and Entrepreneurship , 2003 .

[11]  Ning Su,et al.  Internationalization Strategies of Chinese IT Service Suppliers , 2013, MIS Q..

[12]  Saras D. Sarasvathy,et al.  Effectuation , 2008 .

[13]  Geoff Walsham,et al.  Interpretive case studies in IS research: nature and method , 1995 .

[14]  T. Baker,et al.  Creating Something from Nothing: Resource Construction through Entrepreneurial Bricolage , 2005 .

[15]  S. Sarasvathy.  Causation and Effectuation: Toward a Theoretical Shift from Economic Inevitability to Entrepreneurial Contingency , 2001 .

[16]  J. Pennings,et al.  Internal capabilities, external networks, and performance: a study on technology‐based ventures , 2001 .

[17]  Nicholas Dew,et al.  Designing Organizations that Design Environments: Lessons from Entrepreneurial Expertise , 2008 .

[18]  John T. Perry,et al.  Entrepreneurial Effectuation: A Review and Suggestions for Future Research , 2012 .

[19]  Elizabeth Daniel,et al.  ‘Mental Mobility’ in the Digital Age: Entrepreneurs and the Online Home‐Based Business , 2014 .

[20]  S. Kraus,et al.  The shareconomy as a precursor for digital entrepreneurship business models , 2015 .

[21]  Troy V. Mumford,et al.  Causation and effectuation processes: A validation study , 2011 .

[22]  Richard J. Arend,et al.  Effectuation As Ineffectual? Applying the 3E Theory-Assessment Framework to a Proposed New Theory of Entrepreneurship , 2015 .

[23]  Satish Nambisan,et al.  Information Technology and Product/Service Innovation: A Brief Assessment and Some Suggestions for Future Research , 2013, J. Assoc. Inf. Syst..

[24]  Stuart A Read,et al.  Effectual versus predictive logics in entrepreneurial decision-making: Differences between experts and novices , 2009 .

[25]  A. Rebecca Reuber,et al.  Deepening the Dialogue: New Directions for the Evolution of Effectuation Theory , 2016 .

[26]  Varun Grover,et al.  Shaping Agility through Digital Options: Reconceptualizing the Role of Information Technology in Contemporary Firms , 2003, MIS Q..

[27]  Hope Koch,et al.  Stuck in the Conflicted Middle: A Role-Theoretic Perspective on B2B E-Marketplaces , 2011, MIS Q..

[28]  Nicholas Berente,et al.  The 'Digital Façade' of Rapidly Growing Entrepreneurial Organizations , 2015, ICIS.

[29]  Michael R. Wade,et al.  The Resource-Based View and Information Systems Research: Review, Extension, and Suggestions for Future Research , 2004, MIS Q..

[30]  G. Fisher.  Effectuation, Causation, and Bricolage: A Behavioral Comparison of Emerging Theories in Entrepreneurship Research , 2012 .

[31]  Elizabeth J. Davidson,et al.  Digital Entrepreneurship and Its Sociomaterial Enactment , 2010, 2010 43rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[32]  William B. Gartner,et al.  Innovation and Entrepreneurship , 1985 .

[33]  S. Sarasvathy,et al.  Entrepreneurial logics for a technology of foolishness , 2005 .

[34]  K. Eisenhardt.  Building theories from case study research , 1989, STUDI ORGANIZZATIVI.

[35]  S. Shane.  Reflections on the 2010 AMR Decade Award: Delivering on the Promise of Entrepreneurship As a Field of Research , 2012 .

[36]  Todd H. Chiles,et al.  A Process Perspective on Evaluating and Conducting Effectual Entrepreneurship Research , 2016 .

[37]  Eileen Fischer,et al.  Online entrepreneurial communication: Mitigating uncertainty and increasing differentiation via Twitter , 2014 .

[38]  S. Levin,et al.  The biology of corporate survival , 2016 .

[39]  S. Shane,et al.  The Promise of Entrepreneurship as a Field of Research , 2000 .

[40]  Barney Tan,et al.  Demystifying case research: A structured-pragmatic-situational (SPS) approach to conducting case studies , 2011, Inf. Organ..

[41]  Michael D. Myers,et al.  A Set of Principles for Conducting and Evaluating Interpretive Field Studies in Information Systems , 1999, MIS Q..

[42]  Haibo Hu,et al.  The role of institutional entrepreneurship in building digital ecosystem: A case study of Red Collar Group (RCG) , 2016, Int. J. Inf. Manag..

[43]  Zhen Zhu,et al.  Entrepreneurial Perceptions and E-business Opportunity Discovery: Evidence from China , 2015, ICIS.

[44]  Misita Anwar,et al.  Mobile Phones and the Livelihoods of Indonesian Micro-Entrepreneurs: Evidence of Capability Expansion , 2015, PACIS.

[45]  Sue Newell,et al.  The Emergence of Self-Organizing E-Commerce Ecosystems in Remote Villages of China: A Tale of Digital Empowerment for Rural Development , 2016, MIS Q..