SEJ Special Issues

The aim of this Special issue is to encourage scholars to advance new theoretical and empirical insights about entrepreneurial decision-making processes and outcomes in complex environments under conditions of uncertainty and competing goals. Accordingly, a wide repertoire of behavioral theories should be considered to further develop and enrich current understanding of entrepreneurial processes and outcomes. For instance, the mixed gamble concept has recently emerged as a powerful lens to explicate complex decisions in contexts that are hard to make sense of and decide upon (e.g., Bromiley, 2009, 2010; Gómez-Mejía et al., 2014; Hoskisson et al., 2017; Nalick et al., 2020). Also, the concept of Knightian uncertainty has been used to address situations in which neither outcomes nor their probabilities can be estimated ex ante (Arikan et al., 2020; Alvarez and Barney, 2007; Knight, 1921). Real options theory is another theoretical tool for helping managers and entrepreneurs deal with decision-making under uncertainty to enhance strategic flexibility (McGrath, 1997; McGrath & MacMillan, 2000; Bowman & Moskowitz, 2001). There has also been research dealing with how biases might distort the rationality of the real options decision approach (Coff & Laverty, 2001; Miller & Shapira, 2003; Adner & Levanthal, 2004). Additionally, scholars rooted in the tradition of the behavioral theory of the firms have started to examine how interrelated and conflicting goals are prioritized and resolved (Gaba & Greve, 2019). Unfortunately, however, these concepts and related models of uncertainty and competing goals have not received adequate attention in the entrepreneurship literature. Moreover, we encourage scholars to use cognitive mental models, such as the “small world representation” (SWR)’ concept that is gaining traction in the behavioral strategy and entrepreneurship literatures (e.g., Feduzi et al, 2021: Csaszar & Levinthal, 2016; Packard et al., 2017).