Entrepreneurial resource mobilisation via social media affordances

Entrepreneurship scholars have long sought to comprehend how early-stage entrepreneurs mobilise much needed resources for their ventures when faced with intrinsic uncertainty. The leading debates expound the notions of scarcity and resource-poor nature of early-stage entrepreneurs and centre on the behaviours they use in accessing the required resources. Simply put, entrepreneurs need resources that they do not have, so they need to go ‘outside’ to mobilise those resources. Other questions that arise then include, where do they go to get these resources and how to they get these resources despite the inherent challenges attributed to early-stage entrepreneurs? Different theoretical perspectives have been utilised in considering how entrepreneurs go about mobilising the resources required for venture growth and sustainability. The dominant theoretical perspectives can broadly be grouped into two; the power perspective and the social embeddedness perspective. The power perspective largely looks at the dependence of the resource seeker on the resource provider and how both parties aim to minimise their dependence on the other. Social embeddedness on the hand considers the interactivity between the resource provider and resource seeker. Though the social embeddedness perspective has been useful in delineating the importance of interactivity and interdependence, it has done this based on the notion of exchange and interactions taking place directly between two parties; that is, the resource seeker and resource provider. It has left unanswered the pertinent question on how such interactions can be altered when the medium, through which such interactions take place, changes for instance from offline to online.
Throughout this thesis, I contend that entrepreneurs have evolved with the contemporary times and are mobilising resources through means not investigated in extant research. As such, the existing theoretical insights that tell us the resource mobilisation behaviours that entrepreneurs use and how they use such behaviours are incomplete in elucidating understanding of current entrepreneurial resource mobilisation behaviours online. I maintain that an additional theoretical insight that reflects how entrepreneurs mobilise resources in current times is needed for a fuller and adequate insight into entrepreneurship and resource mobilisation research. Therefore, my thesis employs the notion of social media affordances as a useful concept in understanding entrepreneurial resource mobilisation behaviours where technological embeddedness intercepts such interactions. The notion of affordances originally conceptualised in ecological geography by Gibson in 1979 has to do with the capabilities that constrain or make certain behaviours or actions possible. Inherent in its core values are aspects of interactivity which enables or constraints certain behaviours as a result of specific features. These affordances of social media configure social media platforms in a way that shapes entrepreneurs’ resource mobilisation behaviours. Through these affordances my research surfaces salient opportunities and issues that entrepreneurs must regularly contend with when mobilising resources on social media. I also show how the behaviours of resource providers are altered by these affordances. Understanding the dynamics of social media affordances and how they impact on entrepreneurial resource mobilisation behaviours provide a valuable framework for extending the logic of entrepreneurial social practices. My thesis, therefore, asks the research question: how do social media affordances shape resource mobilisation behaviours of entrepreneurs online?
I answer this broad research question in three papers. These three papers integrate research on affordances of social media with literature on entrepreneurial resource mobilisation to contribute theoretical insights to the complex and contextualised phenomenon of entrepreneurial resource mobilisation. Specifically, paper 1 investigates resource mobilisation online with a specific focus on communication, paper 2 centres around networking as resource mobilisation behaviour, and paper 3 examines mentoring. The three papers are framed by an introduction, methodology and conclusion. These three additional chapters serve as essential links in synthesising the studies presented in this thesis.