Shawna Chen

Brock University, OBHREE, Faculty Member

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Supervisors: Ronald K. Mitchell
Phone: 905.688.5550
Address: 500 Glenridge Ave., St. Catharines, ON L2S 3Z8

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Idrac Lyon

University of Jordan

University of Trento

The University of Sydney

Erik Dane

Bradley Brummel

Elia Romera Figueroa

Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

Lisbeth Swain

DePaul University

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Papers by Shawna Chen

Organizational Image, Identity, and International Divestment: A Theoretical Examination

by Daphne W. Yiu and Shawna Chen

Global Strategy Journal, 2015

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Institutional Judo: How Entrepreneurs Use Institutional Forces to Create Change

by Shawna Chen, Alejandra Marin, Hans Hansen, and Robert Robinson

Journal of Organizational Change Management, Aug 2015

The purpose of this paper is to examine an entrepreneur's attempt to gain legitimacy and change i... more The purpose of this paper is to examine an entrepreneur's attempt to gain legitimacy and change institutions in a multiple institutions setting. The authors conducted a qualitative case study to track an entrepreneur's efforts to create a new financial instrument and get it accepted and traded on the New York Stock Exchange. The authors introduced the concept of institutional judo, analogous to the martial art where a fighter uses his opponent's forces against him. While institutional theory has focussed on how institutional pressures force actors to conform, the term judo refers to an actor using institutional pressures to his advantage in changing those very institutions.

Organizational Image, Identity, and International Divestment: A Theoretical Examination

by Shawna Chen and Daphne W. Yiu

Global Strategy Journal, Aug 2015

International divestment is a prevalent phenomenon and should be viewed as an integral part of th... more International divestment is a prevalent phenomenon and should be viewed as an integral part of the internationalization process. Nevertheless, the field of international business and strategy has paid scant attention to this topic. We develop a conceptual framework to examine a firm's propensity to divest internationally and the type of foreign operations it will divest. We posit that a firm's international divestment decisions are influenced by its organizational image and identity. Premised on this behavioral perspective, this article develops a theoretical model and generates a set of propositions to shed light on the topic of international divestment.

Scaling entrepreneurial action

Scholars suggest that entrepreneurship research may be better adapted to reality and able to real... more Scholars suggest that entrepreneurship research may be better adapted to reality and able to realize higher marginal returns by focusing on entrepreneurial action. There has been increasing empirical work in recent years on the relationships between affective, cognitive, and environmental antecedents and action as well as the organizational, societal, and institutional impacts of action. However, extant research operationalizes action mostly using single-item measures and summed binary (yes-no) indicators, although action has been conceptualized as multiphase process that includes abstract cogitations and observable behaviors. We thus conducted this study to develop and validate a measurement for entrepreneurial action to capture the process that includes both behavioral and cognitive activities.

Entrepreneurial action: The balance of three nexuses

Since the introduction of the individual-opportunity (IO) nexus, research has made substantial pr... more Since the introduction of the individual-opportunity (IO) nexus, research has made substantial progress in entrepreneurial opportunities. Similar progress can be made in entrepreneurial action by introducing two additional nexuses: the individual-stakeholders (IS) and stakeholders-opportunity (SO) nexus. We propose that: an opportunity will be more feasible if individuals perceive the possession of necessary knowledge; access to important stakeholders will help individuals to advance through the start-up process; individuals will be more likely to act if they understand how much action at present matters to stakeholders including their future selves; and a feedback loop exists to balance all three nexuses over time.

It’s time for time in entrepreneurial opportunity

There has been a growing interest in the role opportunity plays in the entrepreneurial process. C... more There has been a growing interest in the role opportunity plays in the entrepreneurial process. Considerable progress has been made towards a better understanding of the process; however, little consensus has developed on how to study the opportunity process. At least two perspectives emerged and stirred a vigorous debate among scholars: (1) opportunities are formed exogenously, independent from the entrepreneur who discovered them, and (2) opportunities are formed endogenously by entrepreneur who created them. Since the opportunity process unfolds over time, we suggest a temporal lens to reconcile the two processes. Using construal-level theory as an underlying mechanism, we propose that opportunity discovery and creation differentiate also at their levels of abstraction (concrete vs. abstract) and individuals use different identification processes due to what perceived in the environment has different psychological distance (i.e., temporal, spatial, social, and hypothetical). However, the process may consolidate over time as psychological distances change over time. We suggest that entrepreneurs may (1) engage in both processes simultaneously, (2) view opportunity discovery as more attractive than opportunity creation over time, and (3) practice self-regulation to change their approaches in response to temporal distance of an opportunity.

Institutional Judo: Institutional creation and effectuation

We complement an institutional work perspective with effectuation to describe institutional creat... more We complement an institutional work perspective with effectuation to describe institutional creation efforts. We conducted a qualitative casestudy where an institutional entrepreneur engaged in various efforts to introduce a new financial instrument (an innovative form) and gain legitimacy in the capital markets. Our empirical analysis is informed by institutional theory concepts such as institutional work,
embeddedness, and isomorphic change. Our study of institutional creation extends institutional theory by introducing the concept of institutional judo, where an agent embedded in one institution intentional relies on isomorphic change to gain legitimacy and effectuate change in another institution.

Entrepreneurs’ tie formation: A multiple-case inductive analysis.

To be updated upon presentation

Organizational image, identity, and international divestment: A theoretical examination.

We develop a conceptual framework to examine a firm's propensity to divest internationally and th... more We develop a conceptual framework to examine a firm's propensity to divest internationally and the type of foreign subsidiaries it will divest. We posit that a firm's international divestment decisions are influenced by its organizational image and identity. Premised on this new theoretical perspective, this paper generates a set of propositions to shed light on the topic of international divestment.

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How do opportunity identification cognitions differ by task? An experimental exploration

This exploratory study investigated the veracity of several assertions/ likely premises concernin... more This exploratory study investigated the veracity of several assertions/ likely premises concerning expert/novice entrepreneurs’ opportunity identification cognitive processes, and examined how differential uncertainty influences entrepreneurs using different modes of decision-making. Using the correspondence-accuracy principle from cognitive continuum theory plus opportunity identification theory, we experimentally examined 11 key premises, using responses from 55 expert/novice entrepreneurs. The results: that experts can recognize tasks required based on the opportunity and level of uncertainty, and that experts are able to retrieve the appropriate expert script and utilize the decision cognition matching the tasks required, provide a foundation for large-sample cross-sectional examination in further testing.

Keywords: Entrepreneurial cognition, entrepreneurial expertise, expert-novice differences, entrepreneurial tasks, entrepreneurial thinking