Building entrepreneurial e-commerce competitive advantage: a blending of theory and practice.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

A problem for small businesses acting entrepreneurially through extending their business onto the web is that they often lose their primary value-added proposition: the personal focus on the customer. As a result, the entrepreneur is left searching for ways to differentiate him/herself. Unfortunately, entrepreneurship literature, based on sound theoretical principles, has not been forthcoming with solutions to this problem. This paper addresses both of these issues by providing to entrepreneurs a guide with which they may gain a competitive advantage while engaging in e-commerce. We blend theoretical perspectives from the resource-based view of the firm with elements of transaction cost economics to better understand entrepreneurial e-commerce initiatives. Furthermore, we discuss and develop theory suggesting that trust is central to entrepreneurial survival and competitive success when engaging in e-commerce.

INTRODUCTION

According to a report published by the US Small Business Administration, 35 percent of small businesses are selling online and are developing "imaginative ways to conduct e-business" (Pratt, 2002, p. ii). Pratt's research suggests that e-commerce may be an effective way for small businesses and entrepreneurs to reach new customers, increase sales, and be more competitive in the marketplace. With the great changes for business that the Internet has created, it is not surprising that some entrepreneurial firms have not found the Internet to be a friendly operating environment. In fact, it has been estimated that over 95 percent of all dot.coms are doomed to fail (Useem, 2000). The demise of such firms as Boo.com, HealthShop.com, or ToyTime.com offer direct evidence that entrepreneurial e-commerce projects face certain and tremendous obstacles. During times of change, it would be comforting if academics or practitioners could turn to theory for guidance, as theory can help make our world more predictable and help us determine why failures occur (Christensen & Raynor, 2003). Unfortunately, concerns about the lack of theory-based research have plagued entrepreneurial research (Zahra & Dess, 2001) and much of the work on entrepreneurial e-commerce has been anecdotal in nature. As a result, scholars and practitioners have few theoretical mechanisms with which to understand or predict entrepreneurial e-commerce outcomes. This is particularly troubling given the large failure rate of entrepreneurial e-commerce launches.

In response to the scant theory on entrepreneurial e-commerce coupled with the tremendous failure rate associated with these initiatives, we develop and advance theory built on the resource-based view of the firm and transaction cost economics to better understand and predict the entrepreneurial e-commerce phenomenon. This theory-driven approach provides a foundation that affords us the opportunity to make prescriptive recommendations to entrepreneurs that would allow them to more fully exploit their e-commerce potential with consumers and, as a result, make e-commerce strategy a critical component to achieve competitive advantage in the market. This work adds value to the entrepreneur as these firms often lose one of the major value-added tenets of their business- personal focus on the customer- as they venture onto the web. The strategies and tactics suggested can help them regain these advantages.

THE RESOURCE-BASED VIEW OF THE FIRM

The resource-based view (RBV) of the firm holds that it is a firm's resources, obtained by the acquisition or building of unique capabilities, that creates inter-firm heterogeneity and thus is responsible for performance differences (Barney, 1991; Rumelt, 1984; Wernerfelt, 1984). According to this perspective, resources must be valuable, rare, costly to imitate, and non-substitutable to contribute to competitive advantage (Barney, 2001). Resources can be classified as financial, physical, human, and/or organizational. A chief concern for today's firm is the ability "to innovate by searching out new resources, or new ways of using existing resources" (Galunic and Rodan, 1998, p. 1193).

In a hyper-competitive environment, such as the entrepreneurial e-commerce arena, the exploitation of resources is critical. Unique resources possessed by the firm lead to the creation of Ricardian rents for the firm, which are those rents achieved through the owning of scarce resources that others do not possess (Ricardo, 1817). Ricardian rents create firm heterogeneity and, are one of the cornerstones of competitive advantage (Peteraf, 1993). For e-commerce initiatives to be successful and serve as a point of differentiation, a firm must possess or create internal e-commerce resources, which management must then integrate to complement its traditional business model (Porter, 2001).

TRANSACTION COST ECONOMICS

Transaction cost economics (TCE) has developed over the years to be an informative theory in management research. TCE is "an effort to identify, explicate, and mitigate contractual hazards" with the main purpose of economizing (Williamson, 1996, p. 12). Major assumptions of the TCE framework are that actors (individuals or firms) engage in opportunistic behaviors, that actors need assets in different frequencies, and that certain unique assets must be acquired to accomplish personal or organizational goals (asset specificity). An appealing aspect of TCE is that the unit of analysis, the transaction, can be studied between individuals, between firms, or a combination of the two. TCE can be informative to the entrepreneurial e-commerce arena in many ways. For example, intermediaries (e.g. PayPal) are sometimes used in e-commerce transactions because of the belief by both buyer and firm that the other party may act opportunistically over an Internet medium as opposed to a traditional brick and mortar workplace. Thus, understanding how consumers interact with an entrepreneurial firm in e-commerce space can be partially understood through TCE.

Many researchers, however, see problems with utilizing TCE on its own. Ghoshal and Moran (1996) state that TCE ignores firm capabilities and their social dimension. Any strategic theory of the firm should address not only "production and exchange, but also take into account how a firm's resources and capabilities can best be developed and deployed in the search for competitive advantage" (Madhok, 2002, p. 541). Based on this reasoning, we integrate both the Resource based view of the firm with Transaction cost economics to arrive at a more holistic and comprehensive theoretical model of entrepreneurial e-commerce initiatives.

TRUST, COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE, AND ENTREPRENEURIAL E-COMMERCE

To date, the centrality of trust within the entrepreneurial literature, in general, and the entrepreneurial e-commerce literature, in particular, has been overlooked or discounted. This is surprising since trust can satisfy two primary conditions required of both the resource-based view and TCE perspectives. Namely, firms can create and use trust as a resource leading to competitive advantage. Also, both internal and external trust can mitigate contractual hazards between parties within a firm and between the firm and an external buyer, which minimizes transaction costs. Because entrepreneurial e-commerce requires both the exploitation of resources along with smooth and efficient transactions internal and external to the firm, trust can play a pivotal role in ensuring entrepreneurial e-commerce survival and help provide the firm with a source of competitive advantage.

Trust is the "reliance by a person, group, or firm upon a voluntary accepted duty on the part of another person, group, or firm to recognize and protect the rights and interests of all others engaged in a joint endeavor or economic exchange" (Hosmer, 1995, p. 393). We discern between internal trust, which is the goodwill between individuals, groups, and human capital within a firm and external trust, which captures the goodwill between the firm and external stakeholders to include buyers or suppliers. Trust is a resource necessary for entrepreneurial e-commerce under the resource-based view because it impacts the quality of the product and service that a firm can provide or offer. From the TCE perspective, trust, or lack thereof, can influence why firms do not offer a particular good or service or why exchange between parties do not occur. Figure 1 depicts this model.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Under the first link, internal firm trust is necessary to produce a superior e-commerce service or experience. Trust is, indeed, a resource that contributes to a competitive advantage because it tends to be rare, valuable, inimitable, and non-substitutable (Barney, 1991). Trust encourages boundaryless behavior among managers and executives, whether entrepreneurial or corporate (Kanter, 1988). Trust between key personnel within an entrepreneurial venture also promotes informational diversity and heterogeneity. Trust becomes a necessary conduit for knowledge flows and knowledge transfer between key personnel within a firm (Yli-Renko, Autio, & Sapiencza, 2001). Not surprisingly, these attributes are necessary and critical to innovate and to respond to dynamic markets (Kanter, 1988; Tushman, 1977). Because e-commerce initiatives require creativity, constant evaluation in response to a dynamic market, and continual modification, internal firm resources, as suggested by the resource-based view of the firm, are necessary to accomplish these sophisticated and complex e-commerce objectives.

The second tie in Figure 1 uses the TCE perspective to explain not the production of an e-commerce good or service, but rather focuses on the trust required for transactions between the firm and its clientele over the Internet medium. We acknowledge that TCE does not discount internal organizational trust. On the contrary, trust can be a product of clan-like cultures within firms (Ouchi, 1980). Clans require less monitoring and reduce the need for high cost bureaucratic systems and controls. Consequently, these firms spend less time and money designing and enforcing internal contracts. This efficiency is particularly important to entrepreneurial firms, which may not have abundant resources to fund e-commerce projects nor possess the expertise to design elaborate bureaucratic controls and systems.

External trust is particularly crucial to the firm in building customer relationships over the Internet for several reasons. First, e-commerce is still in relative infancy. As a result, there is little governmental regulation to protect either the buyer or the seller (Connellan, 2000). In fact, governmental regulation may never arise because of the global nature of Internet exchange. In times of low regulation, people rely on trust even more, as there is no formal regulator (Dyer & Singh, 1998). Second, there is a lack of physical interaction between buyer and seller. While personal/physical interaction may not always be efficient, it can assuage feelings of distrust before a transaction occurs and can provide some recourse if the service or product is not acceptable. In addition to the personal interaction, the quality of some products is difficult to ascertain on the web. These "look and feel" goods require sellers to promote their reliability and reputation in order to ease buyer concerns (Nataraj & Lee, 2002). Finally, information asymmetry exists between the buyer and seller. This increases the buyer's perception that seller opportunism may exist. Moreover, information flow is generally unidirectional as there is no traditional two-way dialogue between buyer and seller. Unlike traditional brick and mortar buyer and seller relationships, the product or service cannot be physically felt nor observed before the purchase. Thus, entrepreneurial firms need to establish trust with consumers to overcome perceptions of opportunism and contractual hazards.

It is important to note that firms must possess both forms of internal and external trust to capture competitive advantage in e-commerce space. Each form of trust is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for entrepreneurial e-commerce competitive advantage. Take for instance, Wal-Mart's venture into e-commerce initiatives. Clearly, Wal-Mart possessed strong external trust in the marketplace. In fact, the market acceptance of their brick and mortar stores would appear to only galvanize the trust between Wal-Mart and consumers on the Internet. However, Wal-Mart experienced great internal difficulties in launching its web effort. Wal-Mart fell into many of the same traps as other online efforts: following Internet models that would later prove futile (e.g. providing free Internet service, making massive marketing expenditures; Scheraga, 2001). The interesting question then becomes why would the retail giant not follow a consistent strategy with its physical operations and integrate its online business with its brick-and-mortar operations (Porter, 2001). One plausible explanation may be that management did not trust the talent and skills that allowed the firm to achieve success in the past.

In contrast to the Wal-Mart scenario, several entrepreneurial ventures possessed high levels of internal trust and information sharing which resulted in superior web portals and e-commerce sites. However, lack of a trusted name or reputation eventually may have contributed to the demise of these e-commerce ventures (Peeples, 2002). For instance, Furniture.com, Inc. was to be a "complete home solution" for furniture buyers. Unfortunately, consumers were unable to examine the merchandise they wanted to buy over the Internet. Sales did not meet expectations and the website was shut down (Fowler, 2002). Furthermore, loss of trust can be detrimental, as observed when Priceline.com had its membership withdrawn from the Connecticut Better Business Bureau for being unresponsive to customer complaints (Meehan, 2000). When internal and external trust is aligned, entrepreneurs have a better chance at succeeding at e-commerce. Perhaps, the most notable example is Amazon.com. Amazon.com was able to develop a robust and creative website based on entrepreneurial creativity and trust. Their "one-click" check out standard is the benchmark for other e-commerce initiatives. They fused this internal trust with external trust in the market place by guaranteeing transactions and going to great extents to demonstrate security in the exchange process. Thus, Amazon.com is an exemplar of a firm that used internal resources (resource-based view) to produce a superior product and service, while infusing the transaction with trust (transaction cost economics) to reduce or mitigate feelings of opportunism and contractual hazard.

BUILDING TRUST IN WEB DESIGN

Having established that trust is vital to entrepreneurs in achieving competitive advantage in e-commerce settings, we now provide a prescriptive account of what entrepreneurs can do to build trust in their web offerings. We limit the scope of our prescriptions to the second half of our theoretical model--the transaction between the firm and the consumer.

* Earn third party authenticity seals/statements. Several firms offer ways of applying and earning a "seal of approval" for web pages. BBBOnline, sponsored by the Better Business Bureau, offers its seal with the goal of promoting "trust and confidence on the Internet" (BBBOnline.org). These programs can aid in convincing a consumer that the firm has their best interest in mind. In addition, the firm should always provide a privacy statement and respect that privacy.

* Ally with a known entity. If the entrepreneurial venture is relatively unknown, it can partner with a more known firm to gain acceptance. This is what many firms accomplish by locating their web pages on eBay.com. Entrepreneurial firms can thus "ride the coattails" of the bigger firm.

* Communicate with customers. Firms should, as much as possible, create two-way communication with customers. Make the customer feel like they are "entering your business." Pictures of people and locations of the business can reassure the customer that they are dealing with a real person and a real company. Provide customers with the ability to communicate with the firm on each page of the web page. The customer should be able to do this electronically (email) or via more traditional methods (telephone or mail). Give people the option of human contact. In addition, constantly communicate to them the status of their order, informing them when the order is placed, shipped, and when and where it will be delivered. After the transition is completed, send to the customer a thank-you note and ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of the transaction (Peeples, 2002). Constant communication can be a source of valuable feedback.

* Provide prompt responses to customer emails. Customers may already feel uneasy about the exchange process. Any delay in responding to communications sends a signal that the completion of the transaction may be in danger. If an answer will take time acknowledge receipt of the communication from the customer and let the customer know when they can expect to have a solution to their problem (Turban, King, Lee, & Viehland, 2004).

* Empower customers in the process. The more a customer is in control of their actions (e.g. when and where to venture into the web page) the more power they will feel that they retain. Avoid excessive cookies, and let the customer volunteer information about themselves.

While the business notion of trust is based on risk and is concentrated on the development of contracts and systems to ensure trust, the personal level of trust is based on interpersonal interactions and social psychological bonds developed over time (Ring & Van de Ven, 1992, 1994). Just as a long journey begins with one small step, a long-term relationship between a buyer and a seller must also begin with a first step. To provide an account of the process utilized to build this relationship, we employ Siyal and Barkat's (2002) three-stage process for Internet commerce.

In the first stage, the 'negotiation phase,' the customer first searches out the company, or the company searches out the customer. In most cases, a fledgling entrepreneur is not capable of deploying the resources necessary to gain large-scale awareness, as this may require expending large sums of money on creating promotional efforts or purchasing customer databases. In addition, consumers often do not have the time, patience, or possibly the interest in perusing search engines for a supplier of the good they need. As a result, both consumers and firms often rely on a market maker to match buyers and sellers. In Figure 2, we identify the market boundaries for both the entrepreneur and the market maker (in this example eBay.com). A mediator, such as eBay, adds cost to the firm, but fulfills a needed role between the parties involved when it settles non-performing transactions (Klein & Leffler, 1981). Once this relationship is established, the parties negotiate the purchase of the product, determine the price and method of delivery, and any guarantees that accompany the exchange.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

After the negotiations phase, Siyal and Barkat (2002) propose that there is a second stage in which a 'trusted path' between the consumer and the company is developed. This path includes, among other things, assurances that consumers' credit card numbers and other personal information will be safe. It is this second stage that many e-commerce vendors may be struggling to fulfill, as consumers continue to be wary of completing transactions over the Internet due to security and privacy fears (Light, 2001). With stories such as Victoria Secret's disclosure of customer orders to website visitors, firms will have to work even more diligently to win the confidence of on-line purchasers (CBSNews.com, 2003). As recommended, the creation of a webpage that empowers customers can ease consumers' fears. In addition, prompt responses to customer emails send a message to the consumer that they are dealing with a firm in which they can trust. From the seller's point of view, there are concerns regarding the re-distribution of the transaction material to a third party by the customer (especially in instances where digital transfers are involved, e.g. a song, software, or other digitally rendered offerings), and that payment will be received. To alleviate the concerns of both customer and vendor in this stage, some transactions are aided by a value-chain service provider. In our example in Figure 2, PayPal.com represents this service provider.

The final step of the process is the execution of the transaction and the monitoring of the sale. Fulfilling the policies agreed upon in the negotiation and 'trusted path' stages are key in the final stage. For the customer, already concerned about the electronic transaction they have made, any deviation in what the entrepreneurial vendor indicated that he/she would do and what actually occurs can lead to the creation of cognitive dissonance regarding the transaction. As suggested in the trust building steps, communication from the firm to the customer at this point is crucial. Providing the customer with information regarding the completion of their order, it shipping, and when they can expect delivery can go far to allay fears. It is important for the firm to remember that relationship building does not stop when the product is shipped or delivered to the customer. Firms must stand behind the products they sell by honoring the guarantees and warranties they provided during the negotiation stage. In addition, a thank you note can go far in providing a personal touch.

As demonstrated, both the firm and the customer must take steps to forge a relationship in the electronic age (see Figure 3). Much of the burden is on the firm to build and maintain a system that creates a pleasant and rewarding experience for the consumer. Through integrating the trust steps we provide into the three stages of Internet commerce relationship building, a trusting relationship between entrepreneur and customer can be formed.

SUSTAINABILITY OF TRUST

We predict that trust can be the basis for a sustainable competitive advantage for entrepreneurs. The source of our position comes from the research into first mover advantages. According to Lieberman and Montgomery (1988), first-mover advantages stem from three sources: technological leadership, preemption of assets, or buyer switching costs. Asset preemption can be either physical or process based. In the authors' terminology, trust would be a "space" asset, in that it occupies a position in the characteristics of the product. Over time, the customer of an entrepreneur will build trust towards that vendor if that vendor utilizes the tools we identify. Once again referencing Figure 2, if the initial transaction takes place at the intersection of all three providers ("A" in our diagram), once trust is established, the entrepreneur may be able to bypass the use of a third party and move the transaction to "B" in our diagram.

[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]

This creates a more economical exchange for both entrepreneur and customer. In this scenario, the entrepreneur will be able to retain the fee previously paid to the service provider. Furthermore, while following up with the customer after the sale, the entrepreneur can suggest to the customer to visit his/her store directly, thus bypassing the market maker. Future transactions would then occur solely between the entrepreneur and the consumer. The elimination of this intermediary would further reduce the transaction costs for the entrepreneur. In addition, once the entrepreneur establishes a relationship with the consumer, buyer-switching costs (the time it would take the buyer to find a new supplier of the good/service our entrepreneur is supplying) would be incurred by the buyer if they were to try and find another seller. Indeed, consumer-switching costs over the Internet may be even more pronounced due to the idiosyncratic web portals of various firms, which require consumers to both learn the new system and input new information into the portal. The result is asset preemption. Therefore, trust can be a preemptive asset capable of yielding sustainable first-mover advantages. There are also advantages to be had by the rationally bounded customer (Simon, 1997) as they will be able to deal directly with the early-moving entrepreneur, eliminating at least one actor that may engage in opportunistic behavior. Even for the most skeptical of entrepreneurs who believe that trust cannot yield a competitive advantage, we suggest an apropos corollary--that not having consumer trust will surly lead to failure. Whether one believes that having trust leads to competitive advantage or whether one believes that not having trust leads to demise, the centrality of trust to the exchange process between the entrepreneur and consumer over the Internet cannot be discounted.

CONCLUSION

In this paper we build upon existing mainstream organizational theory to produce a theoretical model of the entrepreneurial e-commerce phenomenon. As a result, we blended and integrated two complimentary theories, the resource-based view of the firm along with transaction cost economics, to account for both the creation and exchange embedded within all e-commerce initiatives. We also provided a blueprint to entrepreneurs which details how the building of trust can aid them in developing relationships with consumers over time: a relationship through which they can reduce the cost of future transactions. Our theoretical model should resonate with scholarly audiences who yearn for a more theory rich approach to entrepreneurship. Importantly, our theoretical model should also inform entrepreneurs, who need and require theory to better understand how to succeed and remain competitive in e-commerce space.

REFERENCES

BBBOnline, Inc. Homepage. Retrieved June 8, 2004 from http://www.bbbonline.org/.

Barney, J.B. (1991). Firm resource and sustained competitive advantage. Journal of Management, 17, 99-120.

Barney J.B. (2001). Is the resource-based "view" a useful perspective for strategic management research? Yes. Academy of Management Review, 26 (1), 41-56.

CBSNews.com. (2003, October). Victoria's Secret reveals too much. Retrieved October 20, 2004 from: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/22/tech/main579547.shtml.

Christensen,C.M. & Raynor, M.E. (2003, September). Why hard-nosed executives should care about management theory. Harvard Business Review.

Connellan, J. (2000). Regulators face up to ecommerce uncertainty. Telecommunications International, 34(1), 35-37.

Dyer, J.H., & Singh, H. (1998). The relational view: Cooperative strategy and sources of interorganizational competitive advantage. Academy of Management Review, 23(4), 660-679.

Fowler, G.A. (2002, Jun 10). E-Commerce (A special report): End note--Where are the now? A look at what happened to yesterday's IPO darlings: What they said, what they warned--and what happened to them. Wall Street Journal, R13.

Galunic D.C., & Rodan S. (1998). Resource recombinations in the firm: Knowledge structures and the potential for Schumpeterian innovation. Strategic Management Journal, 19, 1193-1201.

Ghoshal, S., & Moran, P. (1996). Bad for practice: A critique of the transaction cost theory. Academy of Management Review, 21(1), 13-47.

Hosmer, L.T. (1995). Trust: The connecting link between organizational theory and philosophical ethics. Academy of Management Review, 20(2), 379-403.

Kanter, R.M. (1988). When a thousand flowers bloom: Structural, collective, and social conditions for innovation in organizations. In B.M. Staw & L.L. Cummings (Eds.), Research in organizational behavior, 10, 169-211. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

Klein, B., & Leffler, K. B. (1981). The role of market forces in assuring contractual performance. Journal of Political Economy, 89(4), 615-641.

Lieberman, M.B., & Montgomery, D.B. (1988). First-mover advantages. Strategic Management Journal 9, 41-58.

Light, D.A. (2001). Sure, you can trust us. MIT Sloan Management Review, 43(1), p.17.

Madhok, A. (2002). Reassessing the fundamentals and beyond: Ronald Coase, the transaction cost and resource-based theories of the firm and the institutional structure of production. Strategic Management Journal 23, 535-550.

Meehan, M. (2000, October). Name your problem at Priceline. Computerworld, 34(41), 1101.

Nataraj, S. & Lee, J. (2002). Dot-com companies: Are they all hype? S.A.M. Advanced Management Journal 67(3), 10-14.

Ouchi, W.G. (1980). Markets, bureaucracies, and clans. Administrative Science Quarterly, 25, 129-141.

Peeples, D.K. (2002). Instilling consumer confidence on in e-commerce. S.A.M. Advanced Management Journal, 67(4), 26-31.

Peteraf, M.A. (1993). The cornerstones of competitive advantage: A resource-based view. Strategic Management Journal 14, 179-188.

Porter, M.E. (2001, March). Strategy and the Internet. Harvard Business Review.

Pratt, J.H. (2002, October). E-Biz: Strategies for small business success. Published by the SBA Office of Advocacy. Retrieved July 7, 2003 from the World Wide Web Site: http://www.sba.gov/advo/research/rs220tot.pdf.

Ricardo D. (1817). Principles of political economy and taxation. J. London: Murray

Ring, P.S., & Van de Ven, A.H. (1992). Structuring cooperative relationships between organizations. Strategic Management Journal, 13(7), 482-498.

Ring, P.S., & Van de Ven, A.H. (1994). Developmental processes of cooperative interorganizational relationships. Academy of Management Review, 19(1), 90-118.

Rumelt, R.P. (1984). Towards a strategic theory of the firm. In R.B. Lamb (ed.), Competitive strategic management. New York: Harper & Row, 137-158.

Scheraga, D. (2001). Crash of the titans. Chain Store Age, 77(10), 72-76.

Simon, H.A. (1997). Administrative behavior: A study of the decision-making processes in administrative organizations (4th Ed.). New York: The Free Press.

Siyal, M.Y,. & Barkat, B. (2002). A novel trust service provider for Internet based commerce applications. Internet Research, 12(1), 55-65.

Turban, E., King, D., Lee, J., & Viehland, D. (2004). Electronic commerce 2004: A managerial perspective. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

Tushman, M. (1977). Special boundary roles in the innovation process. Administrative Science Quarterly, 22, 569-586.

Useem, J. (2000). Dot-coms: What have we learned? Fortune, 142(10), 82-104.

Wernerfelt B. (1984). A resource-based view of the firm. Strategic Management Journal 5, 171-180.

Williamson, O.E. (1996). The mechanisms of governance. New York: Oxford University Press.

Yli-Renko, H., Autio, E., & Sapienza, H.J. (2001). Social capital, knowledge creation, and knowledge exploitation. Strategic Management Journal, 22: 587-613.

Zahra, S., & Dess, G. (2001). Entrepreneurship as a field of research: Encouraging dialogue and debate. The Academy of Management Review, 26(1), 8-10.

Evan H. Offstein, A former Military Intelligence Officer, is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point. He earned a Master's degree in administration from Central Michigan University and a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior/Human Resources from Virginia Tech. Currently a member of the Management faculty at Frostburg State University, Offstein has also worked for Coming, Target Corporation, and the Virginia Military Institute.

J. Stephen Childers, Jr. is an assistant professor of management at Radford University. Currently completing his doctoral degree in Strategic Studies from Virginia Tech, his research interests build upon the Schumpeterian view of innovation; where change is recognized, organized, and achieved by entrepreneurial insight within organizations. Mr. Childers' interests in strategy and change can be traced back to his experiences working, managing, and consulting with firms both domestically and internationally.