Strategies and Tools for Entrepreneurial Resource Access: A Cross‐disciplinary Review and Typology

• Author: Jaume Villanueva,Hans Rawhouser*,Scott L. Newbert
• Date: 01 October 2017
• Published date: 01 October 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12105

International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 19, 473–491 (2017)

DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12105

Strategies and Tools for Entrepreneurial

Resource Access: A Cross-disciplinary

Review and Typology

Hans Rawhouser*, Jaume Villanueva1and Scott L. Newbert2,3

Management, Entrepreneurship & TechnologyDepar tment, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Lee Business School,

4505 Maryland Parkway, Las Vegas, NV 89154-6009, USA, 1Department of Strategy and General Management,

ESADE Business School, Ramon Llull University, Av. Pedralbes, 60–62, 08034, Barcelona, Spain, 2Department of

Management & Operations, Villanova University, Villanova School of Business, 2077 Bartley Hall, 800 Lancaster

Avenue,Villanova, PA 19085, USA, and 3Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, City University of New York

One Bernard Baruch Way, New York, NY 10010, USA

Corresponding author email: hans.rawhouser@unlv.edu

Giventhat gaining access to external resources is a critical component of entrepreneurial

activity,a great deal of research has been done in an attempt to predict and explain this

phenomenon. Unfortunately, thisliterature is largely scattered across a wide variety of

somewhat disconnected research streams, which makes interpreting the insights that

have been hitherto gained challenging. In response, the authors identify a sample of

76 relevant articles from the leading management and entrepreneurship journals that

examine entrepreneurialaccess to resources. Using a narrative synthesis approach, they

then organize these articles based on the strategies (projective and/or interpersonal)

and tools (words, actions, associations and/or intangibles) bywhich entrepreneurs gain

access to resources.Based on this categorization, the authors discuss the major themes in

the extant literature and offer suggestions forhow to move research on entrepreneurial

access forward in the future.

Introduction

Despite the fact that gaining access to external re-

sources is a critical component of entrepreneurial

activity (Schumpeter 1934), most entrepreneurs are

resource-poor (Aldrich 1999) and, thus, must secure

needed resources from external parties in order to

grow and survive. Although this lack of exchange

collateral often makes these acquisitions very difficult

(Stinchcombe 1965), many entrepreneurs ultimately

succeed in attracting the external resources they need

to start their businesses. But how?

While the extant literature provides some answers

to this question, the picture that emerges from it is

somewhat murky. Different research streams, often

[Correction added on 28 August 2017, after first online publi-

cation: the new affiliationof the third author has been added.]

associated with different theoretical traditions, ap-

proach entrepreneurial resource access from different

perspectives and refer to it in different terms, such as

resource acquisition (Lounsbury and Glynn 2001),

resource mobilization (Villanueva et al. 2012) or ob-

taining resources (Baron and Tang 2009). In short,

while a large body of research on the topic of en-

trepreneurial resource access exists, it is relatively

fragmented and scattered across disciplines, so that it

is hard for researchers to draw generalizable conclu-

sions and accumulate knowledge about what resource

access strategies are available for entrepreneurs.

Our goal in this paper is to identify,organize and in-

terpret the insights drawn from the multiple literature

streams dealing with entrepreneurial resource access

in order to provide a more coherent understanding of

the strategies that are available for entrepreneurs as

well as offer avenues for fruitful future research in

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474 H. Rawhouser et al.

this area. To do so, we identify a sample of 76 repre-

sentative articles and organize them according to the

disciplinary perspective that scholars have used to

explore the phenomenon (economics, sociology and

social psychology) as well as the strategies (projec-

tive, interpersonal) and tools (words, actions, associa-

tions and intangibles) that they propose entrepreneurs

can implement to gain access to resources in practice.

Distilling this broad body of research into a coherent,

integrative, parsimonious typology will help scholars

draw insights about what has been learned, what has

not yet been examined, and what should be explored

in the future. This, in turn, allows us to articulate rel-

evant implications not only for theory, but also for

practice, and to propose avenues by which research

can add to future understanding of this phenomenon.

Method

Sample

Followingprecedent in recent reviews of management

research (Baldacchino et al. 2015; Newbert 2007), we

identified articles on how entrepreneurs gain access to

external resources by conducting an electronic search

of articles containing relevant terms and keywords.

Because the terminology used in research on this topic

varies widely, we searched very broadly to identify

potentially relevantarticles for inclusion. Specifically,

we included articles published since 1990 that con-

tained the word ‘entrepreneur’ as well as any of the

following terms anywherewithin the text: ‘acquire re-

sources’, ‘resource acquisition’, ‘mobilize resources’,

‘resource mobilization’, ‘access to resources’ or ‘ac-

cumulate resources’. We performed this search using

Google, as it returned a larger set of articles than

traditional academic databases (i.e. ABI/INFORM,

EBSCO). To focus on the highest quality, most im-

pactful research in the area, we limited our search to

the highest-rated journals publishing research in this

area according to the 2015 Association of Business

Schools (ABS) Academic Journal Guide. This guide

rates four management journals (Academy of Man-

agement Review (AMR), Academy of Management

Journal (AMJ), Administrative Science Quarterly

(ASQ), Journal of Management (JOM)), one organi-

zation studies journal (Organization Science (OS)),

and one strategy journal (Strategic Management

Journal (SMJ)) a ‘4*’, which is the highest rating

given (Wood and Peel 2015). As no entrepreneurship

journals received a ‘4*’ rating, we included each

of the three highest-rated entrepreneurship journals

(Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice (ETP),

Journal of Business Venturing (JBV), Strategic

Entrepreneurship Journal (SEJ)), each of which is

rated a ‘4’.

This process resulted in bias toward management

journals, which was compounded, giventhat SEJ was

not launched until 2007. In response, we included

Journal of Small Business Management (JSBM) and

Small Business Economics (SBE), which, along with

JBV and ETP, were consistently rated among the lead-

ing entrepreneurship journals during the early years

of our sampling frame (Fried 2003; MacMillan 1991,

1993). Although this sampling method included the

leading outlets for entrepreneurship research for the

entire duration of our review window, we note that all

11 sampled journals are housed in the US.

Our initial search of the above journals based on

the keywordsnoted above yielded 1381 articles. From

this population of articles, we excluded those in which

gaining access to resources in a broad sense was not

theorized as a dependent variable,so that the results of

our review might provide prospective insight to firms

seeking resources. Examples of articles that deal with

access to resources, but were excluded with this cri-

terion, included those in which resource access was

an independent variable and when the article men-

tioned resource access only in the framing, limita-

tions or discussion. We also excluded articles that

dealt with mature organizations (i.e. firms past the

IPO stage), because the challenges that these organi-

zations face are distinct from those of new ventures

(i.e. more uncertainty and liabilities of newness). Fi-

nally, we excluded articles that documented purely

structural determinants of access to resources, rather

than determinants that could be considered at least

partially agentic. In other words, we considered arti-

cles that included actual strategies that entrepreneurs

could undertake. For example, articles that predict

resource acquisition based on gender (Alsos et al.

2006), prior industry or entrepreneurial experience

(Fuller and Rothaermel 2012), existing human capi-

tal (Bhagavatula et al. 2010), networkties established

prior to the founding of the organization (Higgins and

Gulati 2003) were excluded. After applying these ex-

clusions, the final sample consisted of 76 articles (see

Table S1 for summary information).

Several characteristics of this sample merit atten-

tion. First, as Table 1 shows, although we sampled

more journals in management, more of the articles in

our sample have been published in entrepreneurship

journals. This is not surprising, given the nature of

our topic and the fact that fewer than 2% of articles

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