Entrepreneurial Resource Reconfiguration under Economic Disruption: Toward a Theory of Venture Adaptive Capacity
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.66203/econovia.01207Keywords:
entrepreneurial resource reconfiguration, venture adaptive capacity, resource–environment misfit, dynamic capabilities, resource orchestration, economic disruptionAbstract
Economic disruptions can rapidly undermine the suitability of entrepreneurial ventures’ existing resource configurations, yet existing research provides limited explanation of how resource-constrained ventures reconstruct their resource architecture under such conditions. This conceptual article develops a middle-range theory of Entrepreneurial Resource Reconfiguration (ERR) to address the resource-level mechanism linking economic disruption to sustained entrepreneurial adaptation. Integrating insights from environmental jolts, dynamic capabilities, resource orchestration, entrepreneurial learning, and crisis research, the framework conceptualizes Resource–Environment Misfit (REM) as the condition through which disruption activates reconfiguration. ERR operates through four complementary mechanisms—resource release, redeployment, recombination, and selective acquisition—which enable ventures to reconstruct inadequate resource configurations. Repeated and effective reconfiguration subsequently develops Venture Adaptive Capacity (VAC), expressed through configuration responsiveness, resource mobility, and adaptive recombinability, while resource accessibility, learning rigidity, and relational resource access condition this relationship. The framework advances adaptation theory by specifying a bounded causal architecture connecting disruption, misfit, resource-level action, and emergent adaptive capacity, and provides propositions for longitudinal, construct-validation, and cross-context empirical research.
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