ESSAYS ON ENTREPRENEURIAL THEORIES OF VALUE UNDER UNCERTAINTY: ADVICE, LEARNING, AND STAKEHOLDER EVALUATION

Abstract

This dissertation views entrepreneurship as a socially embedded process in which interactions with diverse stakeholders shape how entrepreneurial theories of value (ToV) are developed, revised, and understood. Accordingly, this dissertation investigates how social exchanges influence both the development of theories of value from the perspective of entrepreneurs and the evaluation of those theories from the perspective of stakeholders. The first essay develops a theoretical model of advice utilization under uncertainty. Extending absorptive capacity to the individual level, I conceptualize advice utilization as a three-stage cognitive process of comprehension, evaluation, and action. The model specifies the interpretive mechanisms through which entrepreneurs integrate external input (advice) with prior beliefs and knowledge and introduces evaluation as a distinct cognitive bridge between understanding and behavior. By developing the cognitive dimension of advice utilization and clarifying how action may involve implementation, testing, seeking clarification, or deliberate rejection, the essay explains why identical advice can produce divergent yet rational entrepreneurial responses. The second essay examines how mentorship acts as a form of social testing shaping entrepreneurial learning. Drawing on an inductive analysis of 190 mentoring sessions across two entrepreneurial support organizations, I develop a taxonomy of advice practices that reveals two types of mentoring support: theory refinement and theory execution. I then map these advice types to three types of learning: single-loop, double-loop, and anticipatory learning; showing that different advice practices activate distinct learning mechanisms. By conceptualizing mentoring (and advice-giving) as a socially embedded testing methodology complementing scientific experimentation, this essay clarifies how advice shapes entrepreneurial learning. The third essay examines how stakeholders evaluate entrepreneurial ToV under uncertainty. Building on the Theory-Based View and philosophy of science, I introduce the lovely–likely matrix, which conceptualizes ToV evaluation along two epistemic dimensions: loveliness, capturing a theory’s economic potential and disruptiveness, and likeliness, reflecting its empirical plausibility and feasibility. I theorize evaluation as a socially mediated process shaped by entrepreneurial narratives and stakeholder heterogeneity, and I identify the structural sources of evaluation errors that produce both overinvestment and missed opportunities.