Effectuation as Threshold Concept in Entrepreneurship?

Jan-Martin Geiger and Andreas Liening

As Entrepreneurship is a comparatively emerging scientific discipline, there is a growing demand on research to promote the development of disciplinary concepts (Wiklund, Wright, & Zahra, 2019) and to avoid a “hodgepodge” (Thrane, Blenker, Korsgaard, & Neergaard, 2016) of teaching formats and curricula. This applies to both domain-specific and individual knowledge building from a learner’s perspective.

This paper examines the potential of effectuation framework developed by Sarasvathy (2001) as a threshold concept (TC), established by Meyer & Land (2003), in entrepreneurship. While former studies investigated the concepts of entrepreneurial failure or specific entrepreneurial ways of thinking (Bolinger & Brown, 2015; Hatt, 2018) as possible TC in entrepreneurship, effectuation has not been explored yet. The discourse on this matter points out its counterintuitive and unconventional perspective on entrepreneurial decisions and behavior, which contradicts the traditional managerial approaches.

The first step consists of a literature-based analysis of effectuation with a primer focus on its potential to meet TC-characteristics proposed by Meyer & Land (2003). In a second step, effectuation was embedded in an entrepreneurial learning arrangement. For this purpose, students of entrepreneurship (n=102) attended a 6-week entrepreneurship course. In the first three weeks period, only basic concepts (e.g., definitions, historical background) were taught and discussed. In the following three weeks period, learners were primarily confronted with effectual logic. The diagnostic assessment was carried out with pre-post surveys as well as a daily learning questionnaire that depicts entrepreneurial learning in cognitive, motivational and emotional dimensions. The results indicate that compared to the basic concepts, the confrontation with the effectuation concept does evoke the TC-specific characteristics.

Both theoretical work and empirical results contribute to the scientific discourse in terms of providing a systematic framework for the identification of TC in entrepreneurship. Practical implications are provided regarding the design of entrepreneurial courses and curricula.