INDIRECT TIES IN ENTREPRENEURIAL RELATIONSHIPS: REPUTATION AS A BRIDGE TO STRUCTURAL HOLES

Reputation plays a central role in the practice of entrepreneurship. In the face of the information asymmetry that characterizes entrepreneurial environments, reputation can serve as an information proxy that enables one actor in the entrepreneurial process to anticipate or predict the future behavior of another. Although references to reputation are common in organization research, the antecedents and consequences of reputation in entrepreneurship are less explored. We propose a conceptual, process model of entrepreneurial reputation. We situate our model in the entrepreneurial environment, the entrepreneur ecosystem, and suggest propositions that relate entrepreneurial actions and artifacts with legitimizing outcomes, which we in turn serve to increase the likelihood that one’s entrepreneurial reputation will become salient to others across an increasingly wide variety of entrepreneurial situations. Implication of the model and directions for future research are discussed.