Research Interests
PAST RESEARCH
Justice Considerations of Entrepreneurship: This paper establishes justice considerations that entrepreneurs make in the formation and development of their business. Using entrepreneurial identity and agency literature, this framework seeks to contribute to current work on institutional entrepreneurship using Kirzner’s equilibrating effect.
Physical Proximity and Environmental Ethics: This paper considers the addition of an ethical metric to common strategic business decisions to assess for damages related to physical distance, including loss of community, impact of outsourcing, and transportation costs of staff and property.
Impression Management: A case study that evaluated Erving Goffman’s sociological theory using the hospitality services industry as the research setting. It proposed service quality has a direct relationship with number of exposures, timing of exposures and quality of exposures. Managing these characteristics in a business will have a direct increase on profitability through customer retention and customer loyalty.
FUTURE RESEARCH
Institutions, Agency and Entrepreneurship
As entrepreneurs engage in the entrepreneurial process, how do they identify the constraints of their institutions and use these boundaries as effective support systems for the launch of their businesses? In the context of the Global South, how do entrepreneurs navigate weak formal systems and leverage their actions to create businesses in an uncertain context? In the context of the Global North, how do businesses identify and leverage cultural values, as they develop in real time, in order to make the most of an opportunity? How do the entrepreneurs separate their concerns as individuals in difficult living circumstances with the possibility of starting a business in a hostile business climate? How do more established companies create a corporate image and product that helps the BOP communities that they are operating in? The answers to these questions would help to inform the institutional entrepreneurship research stream and develop frameworks for practitioners to evaluate their strategic decisions.
Sense-making in the Entrepreneurial Process
The entrepreneurial process is a confusing one that is usually examined in the light of its failures. Examining the successes, entrepreneurs often encounter recall biases for various reasons that may not reveal their true path of discovery. For first-time or serial entrepreneurs, how does their concept of the opportunity and the business change over time? For an entrepreneur who believes a market opportunity exists, how do they go about evaluating the opportunity and making “sense” of the context to communicate it effectively for self-talk, staff, investors and other key stakeholders? How has their language changed over the path of the enterprise, as their conception of being “in business” has changed? This research would seek to contribute to the nexus of entrepreneurship and sense-making literature. Practical application would be focused on quickening the sense-making process of market opportunities and business development so that entrepreneurs are able to come to stronger conclusions about their businesses earlier, thereby saving time, financial and social capital.
Spatial Distribution Analysis
Building on Pablo Jensen’s work in the economic geography of retail businesses, I would like to identify which retail industries specifically act as engines of retail growth. While Huff’s model focuses on which stores will receive patronage based on competing stores, Jensen’s model focuses on understanding the correlation between site location for non-related retail businesses. The logic of focusing on an overall customer profile encourages research that would focus on a holistic picture of economic transition via changes in an area’s retail mix over time. Combining Huff’s model and Jensen’s model, certain retail industries could be identified which act as drivers of economic growth at a local level thereby allowing entrepreneurs to start specific small business to develop their area or target areas that will have an effect on economic growth for the region.