Resourcefulness Narratives to Garner Support
Research Paper Title:
“Resourcefulness narratives: Transforming actions into stories to mobilize support”
Authors:
Greg Fisher (Indiana University, Kelley School of Business)
Emily Neubert (Indiana University, Kelley School of Business)
Devin Burnell (Indiana University, Kelley School of Business)
Background:
Entrepreneurs regularly confront resource constraints as they attempt to bring their ideas to fruition. To overcome resource constraints, they often try to mobilize resources from external resource providers and use narratives as a critical tool to do so. The authors theorize that a particular type of narrative – a resourcefulness narrative – will significantly impact an entrepreneur's ability to mobilize support from resource providers.
Highlights
The authors identify different types of entrepreneurial narratives that have been described in the entrepreneurship literature
The authors introduce a resourcefulness narrative as a narrative that can help entrepreneurs to garner support for their ventures
A resourcefulness narrative as an account of actions reflecting the creative use of resources to overcome an impediment
A resourcefulness narrative generates emotional and cognitive responses that prompt others to support a venture
The authors identify contingencies that affect whether a resourcefulness narrative is more or less effective in garnering support
Conclusion:
The authors have proposed that a particular type of narrative, a resourcefulness narrative, will significantly impact an entrepreneur’s ability to garner support for a new venture. Drawing from the literature on resourcefulness and organizational narratives, the researchers defined a resourcefulness narrative as a discursive, temporal account of past or ongoing entrepreneurial actions, whereby an entrepreneur is presented as using, assembling, or deploying resources in creative ways in order to overcome an impediment. They developed a conceptual model and provided theoretical arguments reflecting why, how, and when a resourcefulness narrative will serve as an effective mechanism for garnering resources for a new venture. The authors propose that understanding and using the power of a resourcefulness narrative is a meaningful way that entrepreneurs can “get more for less.”