David S. Lucas

This chapter presents a case study of the United States’ federally led mission to eradicate homelessness, focusing on the early twenty-first century. We document the emergence of a federal strategic plan to prevent and end homelessness in the wake of the Great Recession, paying special attention to the role of “evidence-based” solutions and state leadership in this effort. We then review the disparities between the stated goals and realized results. Despite a doubling of federal funding, broad cross-sector collaboration, and a successful imposition of government-preferred practices in the homeless services industry, none of the four goals defined in 2010 were completed over the next decade. We assess these lackluster results and elicit new insights for other “moonshot” missions aimed at grand societal challenges.

Austrian economics and “mainstream” entrepreneurship research have evolved along largely parallel paths. Yet, beyond their common origins, there is little systematic evidence of the continued influence of the former on the trajectory of the latter. In this chapter, I draw on historical data and bibliometric analysis to address this gap. I document the common heritage of Austrian economics and mainstream entrepreneurship as well as their intellectual divergence throughout the late 20th century. I discuss the extent of Austrian influence, identifying relevant papers and revealing a positive trend in the cross-citation to Austrian field journals by papers in leading management and entrepreneurship journals. Finally, I offer my subjective assessment regarding future opportunities for Austrian contributions in mainstream entrepreneurship.

Research summary: We synthesize the external enablement (EE) framework with insights from labor economics and strategic human capital to theorize how restrictive policy interventions shape technology ventures' employee recruitment, attending to both sides of the hiring dyad. We engage in a quantitative study of over 220,000 recruiting interactions between technology ventures and candidates on a prominent digital networking platform surrounding the early COVID‐19 pandemic policy responses. We find that firms' recruitment declined significantly while candidates' responsiveness increased during the early COVID‐19 policy interventions. In turn, young technology ventures were enabled to hire more during the interventions, whereas maturing ventures were enabled to hire differently—acquiring candidates with greater entrepreneurial orientation. Our work extends the EE framework to human resource strategies and to heterogeneous enablement across firm age. Managerial summary: Hiring is a critical task for young and maturing venture firms, and environmental disruptions can impinge heavily on recruiting processes. We study how restrictive policy interventions shape technology ventures' employee recruitment. Examining over 220,000 recruiting interactions on a major digital platform before and during the early COVID‐19 policy responses, we find that restrictive policy interventions alter the technology venture labor market, deterring some firms from recruiting while making others more successful in their continued hiring efforts. Furthermore, we discover that maturing firms are more adaptive than young firms in their selection of candidates during policy interventions—seeking employees with more entrepreneurial characteristics.

Mission is central to social venturing, but little is known about the nature and origins of social venture mission. The field lacks a theoretical framework for understanding the moral content of “p...

Disruptive environmental changes can disrupt every aspect of economic and social life while also enabling entrepreneurial firms in surprising ways. We synthesize the external enabler framework with...