preview

Sarasvathy, Causation and Effectuation-Toward a Theoretical Shift from Economic Inevitability to

Better Essays
Open Document
Academy of Management http://www.jstor.org/stable/259121 . Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . Academy of Management is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Academy of Management Review. http://www.jstor.org t Academy of…show more content…
In other words, none of these decisions involves the creation of artifacts such as firms, markets, and economies. For example, the following are rarely, if at all, addressed in our curricula: 243 I thank the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation for funding the empirical work that led to the development of the ideas in this article. I also thank Herb Simon, Anil Menon, and Lester Lave for their invaluable conversation, and the anonymous AMR reviewers, Edward Conlon, Marilyn Gist, Tom Jones, Tom Lee, Benyamin Lichtenstein, Scott Shane, S. Venkataraman, and Andy Wicks for commenting on earlier versions of this paper and for helping me improve it. 244 Academy of Management Review April * How do we make the pricing decision when the firm does not yet exist (i.e., no revenue functions or cost functions are given) or, even more interesting, when the market for the product/service does not yet exist (i.e., there is no demand function)? * How do we hire someone for an organization that does not yet exist? How do we even get able people to apply to a contingent organization-an organization whose existence is contingent upon acquiring employees (e.g., a knowledge-intensive firm, such as a software company)?! * How do we value firms in an industry that did not exist five years ago and is barely forming in the present (e.g., internet companies)? More interesting, how would we have valued them five
Get Access
Related
Get Access