Community Embeddedness as the Missing Mechanism of Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Resilience
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.66203/econovia.01211Keywords:
community embeddedness, entrepreneurial ecosystem resilience, entrepreneurial ecosystems, social capital, ecosystem governanceAbstract
Entrepreneurial ecosystems are increasingly expected to withstand recurrent disruptions while sustaining entrepreneurial activity and regional development. Although existing research has identified the structural components, institutional arrangements, and governance mechanisms that shape entrepreneurial ecosystems, it provides limited explanation of how localized social relationships are transformed into ecosystem-level resilience. Addressing this theoretical gap, this conceptual article develops a middle-range theoretical framework that positions community embeddedness as the missing generative mechanism linking ecosystem relationships to resilience outcomes. Drawing on the integration of entrepreneurial ecosystem theory, embeddedness theory, social capital theory, ecosystem governance, and resilience literature, the article proposes that community embeddedness converts locally embedded relationships into four interconnected resilience capacities: resource retention, trusted coordination, distributed sensemaking, and collective reconfiguration. Together, these capacities explain how entrepreneurial ecosystems absorb shocks, adapt to changing conditions, and reorganize while maintaining their core entrepreneurial functions. By advancing a process-oriented explanation of entrepreneurial ecosystem resilience, the proposed framework extends embeddedness theory to the ecosystem level, integrates previously fragmented theoretical perspectives, and establishes a foundation for future empirical research aimed at validating and refining the proposed middle-range theory across diverse entrepreneurial contexts.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Maria Rante Lembang (Author)
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