Events

Ms. Amrita Saha
Ph.D. Candidate
Rotman School of Management
University of Toronto

Market disruptions are often viewed as moments that create new entrepreneurial opportunities; yet they also shake the longstanding social arrangements through which actors coordinate economic activity. We know little about how such changes shape entrepreneurs’ decisions to pursue new activities following disruptions. Drawing on an inductive longitudinal study of 54 incumbent cocoa farmers in Trinidad and Tobago following deregulation of the cocoa industry, I develop a theory of how relational frames shape entrepreneurial responses to market disruption. Relational frames are individual-level interpretive schemas through which actors understand who to interact with in economic activity, and on what terms. Prior to deregulation, farmers operated through a benevolent hierarchy relational frame in which legitimate authorities coordinated knowledge transfer, resource allocation, and pricing. Deregulation introduced new economic alters like buyers and technical experts who operated through a co-creation relational frame emphasizing dialogue and collaboration. Despite broadly comparable material resources and capabilities at baseline, farmers responded heterogeneously to this mismatch. Those who perceived minimal visibility risk—the perceived dangers of becoming visible to potentially exploitative actors—engaged with new economic alters and, through sustained interaction, revised their relational frames and pursued new entrepreneurial activities. Among those who perceived higher visibility risk, most avoided engagement and exited the industry. Some, however, sustained market participation through relational bridging, whereby intermediary agents either facilitated engagement that produced frame revision or absorbed the relational demands of engagement on farmers’ behalf. This study contributes to organizational theories of entrepreneurship in the Global South by highlighting the interpretive work through which entrepreneurs (re)construct relational certainty amid changing markets.