This paper examines how founders' work experiences and beliefs about an industry's prevailing practices influence the degree of novelty exhibited by their firms. Our results indicate that extensive experience in the core of an organizational field constrains individuals into acting as "imitative...

How do new professional service firms strategically position themselves in fields where developing a favourable external reputation is critical to performance? Are certain positioning strategies more effective than others? This study reveals that most professional service firm start-ups attempt...

This Special Issue's aim is to demonstrate that drawing on sociological research can further enrich entrepreneurship studies of institutions, entrepreneurs, and communities. We develop an organizing framework for our ten Special Issue papers that categorizes the pieces by community level and...