The Double-Edged Effects of Embeddedness on Social Entrepreneurship (2026)

Giang Nguyen

This dissertation investigates the double-edged effects of embeddedness on social entrepreneurship and how organizations respond to them. Drawing on three manuscripts, the study demonstrates that social ventures are deeply embedded in their environment as they seek to solve societal problems, but this very embeddedness also imposes constraints in the long run. In response to these dual effects, social enterprises develop various coping strategies. The first manuscript illustrates the changing effect of embeddedness on a Global North-South social enterprise that leads to organizational reconfiguration. While at the beginning embeddedness enables resource mobilization and acquisition from both locations, over time it constrains organizational growth due to geographical and cultural differences, which requires the organization to fundamentally restructure its intraorganizational relations through the separation of structural resources and social-emotional detachment. The second manuscript explores social franchising to highlight the impact-scaling paradox between embeddedness and replicability, arguing that embeddedness enables effectual practices at the local level, while effective scaling necessitates causal governance. Therefore, the manuscript proposes bounded effectuation as a trichotomous interrelationship among the franchisor, franchisee, and community, in which interorganizational settings can leverage the combined logic of effectuation and causation. As the second manuscript extends research on effectuation in the context of social entrepreneurship, the third manuscript strengthens the dissertation’s methodological contribution by examining how the concept is measured. Capturing a construct in a new context underscores the need for revisiting the current measurement landscape of effectuation. This methodological review raises major concerns and suggests that researchers pay attention to the conceptual fidelity, methodological transparency, and ontological clarity of the construct. In sum, the dissertation shows that embeddedness exerts a dual influence on social entrepreneurship that shifts over time. These tensions promptsocial enterprises to adapt through intraorganizational evolution or by combining interorganizational logics of effectuation and causation. The dissertation also addresses methodological disciplines for effectuation, thereby advancing the theory through transferable and cumulative knowledge.

Enabling Organizational Transformation: A Multi-Level Perspective on Competencies, Roles, and Organizational Capabilities (2026)

Luca Laule

Organizational transformation has become a persistent challenge for organizations facing digital disruption, sustainability demands, and increasing environmental uncertainty. While prior research has examined transformation from either an individual or an organizational perspective, existing knowledge remains fragmented and lacks an integrated understanding across levels of analysis. This dissertation addresses this gap by developing a multi-level perspective that links individual competencies, role-specific requirements, and organizational capabilities as complementary components of organizational transformation. Drawing on a cumulative research design, the study combines a systematic literature review, an empirical analysis of job advertisements using qualitative content analysis and Latent Dirichlet Allocation, and a qualitative meta-synthesis of 102 case studies. The findings show that a stable core set of transformation competencies exists across literature and practice, while differences in emphasis reflect distinct theoretical and practical perspectives. Building on these insights, the study demonstrates that competencies are enacted through multiple and context-dependent transformation roles, which translate abstract capabilities into concrete patterns of action. At the organizational level, eight recurring capabilities are identified that structure transformation processes across contexts, with organizational reconfiguration emerging as a cross-contextual backbone capability. By integrating these findings, the dissertation shows that organizational transformation emerges from the alignment of competencies, roles, and organizational capabilities. It further specifies how roles act as linking mechanisms that connect individual-level behavior with organizational-level transformation processes and how this relationship varies across transformation contexts. Thereby, the dissertation contributes to research on organizational transformation, competencies, and dynamic capabilities by providing an empirically grounded and integrative framework that advances the understanding of transformation as a multi-level phenomenon.

Regenerating the Commons: Integrating Descriptive and Prescriptive Theorizing for Desirable and Sustainable Futures in Management and Entrepreneurship Research (2026)

Jan-Friedrich Kulp

Scholarship increasingly calls for prescriptive theorizing to address today’s grand challenges. At the heart of these grand challenges is the degradation of shared resource systems, referred to as the commons. The commons are shared resource systems that are collectively owned or managed and therefore vulnerable to overuse and depletion. As grand challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and social inequality intensify, commons are increasingly strained, exposing structural issues in the institutional and organizational architectures that govern them. While management and entrepreneurship research has generated extensive descriptive insight into how commons erode, it offers limited prescriptive theorizing about how this decline can be reversed to enable desirable and sustainable futures. Responding to recent calls for “that’s hopeful” scholarship, this dissertation develops a multilevel framework that integrates descriptive and prescriptive theorizing to guide the regeneration of the commons. Throughout this dissertation and its three manuscripts, the developed framework links macrolevel institutional conditions, meso-level organizational design, and cross-level meaning-making governance to explain how collective action can be organized to regenerate shared resource systems. By theorizing both the normative ends of desirable and sustainable futures and the institutional, organizational, and cross-domain means through which they can be achieved, this dissertation advances prescriptive theorizing in management and entrepreneurship. This dissertation advances a multilevel framework that enables scholarly theorizing to actively contribute to the regeneration of the commons in the pursuit of desirable and sustainable futures and, positions scholarship as an active contributor to this process.

How to become the Antifragile Entrepreneur (2026)

Marc Emmanuel Kratz

Entrepreneurs increasingly operate in persistent, compounding uncertainty. This dissertation asks how entrepreneurial action can be enabled and advantaged under such conditions. Across five manuscripts, it integrates three layers. (1) a process reframing of uncertainty informing judgment; (2) a structured creativity capability via design-science principles and a strategy typology; and (3) behavioral evidence on threat-conditioned opportunity evaluation. Methodologically, the portfolio combines conceptual synthesis, typology-building, design-science artifacts, qualitative analysis, and an experiment on perceived competition that tests shifts in judging innovative vs. imitative opportunities, moderated by creativity style. Theoretically, it clarifies core constructs, advances antifragility as an integrative lens distinct from resilience and robustness and outlines micro-to-macro linkages via portfolios of staged probes with bounded downside. Practically, it distils routines, such as option creation, staged experimentation, explicit kill-criteria, and redundancy, which help founders, educators, and policymakers channel uncertainty into asymmetric upside. The dissertation closes with testable propositions and a research agenda to stress-test antifragile mechanisms across contexts and time.

Horizontal supplier-supplier coopetition in supply networks (2026)

Vijai Mani

Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the Social Market Economy (2025)

David Michael Lehmann

This dissertation examines how contemporary entrepreneurship and innovation research can inform and renew the normative framework of the Social Market Economy. Drawing on neoliberal, and particularly ordoliberal ideas, the Social Market Economy has rarely been linked to systematic insights from entrepreneurship and innovation research, reflecting their early stage of development at the Social Market Economy’s inception. Three manuscripts address this gap at different levels of analysis. At the micro level, a quantitative study explores how socioemotional wealth in family firms moderates the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and innovation performance. At the meso level, a design science project develops principles for national innovation agencies that are compatible with Social Market Economy ideals such as privilege-free competition and technological neutrality. At the macro level, a literature review revisits Walter Eucken’s Principles of Economic Policy to clarify the meaning of neoliberalism and its implications for innovation policy. Combining empirical, conceptual, and design science research, the dissertation advances a more nuanced understanding of innovation in the Social Market Economy, not solely as the outcome of competition, but as a system-level outcome shaped at the interface between state and market. It argues for a Social Market Economy capable of supporting productive entrepreneurship and innovation while upholding its commitment to privilege-free competition and human flourishing.

Capital Structure Decisions of Firms and Banks (2025)

Mateusz Blazej Tokarski

Dr. Wolff: Ein deutscher Mittelständler in China (2025)

Stefan Schmid Zhengtian Xia

Im Jahr 2014 hat ein über hundert Jahre altes Familienunternehmen aus Bielefeld den Schritt nach Asien gewagt: Dr. Wolff. Unter der Führung der vierten Familiengeneration wurde eine Wachstumsstrategie entwickelt, die den asiatischen Markt – allen voran China – in den Mittelpunkt stellt. Die Fallstudie zeigt, wie Dr. Wolff durch ein differenzierendes Kernprodukt, gezielte Anpassungen im Marketing-Mix und die Unterstützung des deutschen Stammhauses erfolgreich in den chinesischen Markt eingetreten ist und dort Fuß fassen konnte. Darüber hinaus wird beleuchtet, wie die in China erworbenen Erfahrungen im Bereich des digitalen Marketings und Vertriebs in das deutsche Stammhaus zurückflossen. Abschließend diskutiert die Fallstudie die Herausforderungen, denen sich Dr. Wolff bei der weiteren Expansion im chinesischen Markt stellen muss.

Rimowa’s Acquisition by LVMH: A German Mittelstand Firm Becomes Part of a French Luxury Conglomerate (2025)

Stefan Schmid Isabella N. van Hooren

LVMH is the world’s leading luxury firm, with strategic acquisitions playing a central role in its growth. This case study examines LVMH’s takeover of the German luggage manufacturer Rimowa in 2016 and traces Rimowa’s development following the deal. It explores how LVMH integrated Rimowa into its conglomerate, reshaped its strategy through diverse product extensions, frequent high-profile collaborations, and exclusive distribution channels, and repositioned it to appeal to (younger) luxury consumers. The case further analyzes the cultural and managerial challenges of incorporating a German Mittelstand firm into a French multinational luxury group. It concludes by raising questions about the 2024–2025 slowdown of the luxury industry, the ongoing digitalization of (luxury) firms’ processes, and increasing pressures to address sustainability concerns.

The Circular Leap: AI, Business Model Innovation, and Systems Design for a Sustainable Future (2025)

Konstantin Remke

In response to grand challenges, the linear economic model (make, use, dispose) is increasingly contested by a circular economic model. A circular economy operates on the principles of reduce, reuse, recycle, and recover, enabled by technological innovations, novel business models, and stakeholder collaboration. Positive impact the circular economy promises is often offset when circular products cannot fully replace linear products due to being inferior in quality or price, while often targeting a different market. The simultaneous production of linear and circular products leads to additional production and is widely coined “circular economy rebound”. Systemic innovation in terms of products, services, business models, and ecosystems is understood as a key aspect in circular economy rebound mitigation. However, extant literature mainly describes phenomena related to the circular economy and rebound effects, while largely neglecting descriptive and prescriptive accounts of systemic innovation and external enablement in the context of the circular economy. For instance, businesses lack guidance on how to utilize digital technologies and systems thinking to innovate for and develop a well-functioning circular economy while considering rebound effects. Additionally, current literature to a great extent remains in a descriptive mode largely focusing on circular business models, failing to apply a systemic view, including circular products, services, and ecosystems, or an external enablement view. Current literature rarely makes the leap to bridging the gap between theory and practice through dedicated research approaches such as design science research. In consequence, scholars, new ventures, and established firms lack knowledge and guidance on how to innovate within the circular economy guardrails to deliver on its impact promises. The purpose of this dissertation is to advance knowledge of the theoretical issues linked to a circular economy and its underlying systems as well as external enablers such as artificial intelligence as a digital technology. Based on these theoretical aspects, this dissertation aims to provide prescriptive guidance on how to innovate for and develop a well-functioning circular economy by bridging the gap between theory and practice through applying design science research approaches. This is accomplished by three separate but interrelated manuscripts underlying this dissertation. The first manuscript adopts an inductive and descriptive qualitative research approach, conducting 55 semi-structured interviews with artificial intelligence and circular economy experts, as well as new ventures that utilize AI-enabled circular economy business models. Using the Gioia-method for data analysis, the first manuscript develops a general model of the circular economy enablement through artificial intelligence as a digital technology and external enabler. Additionally, it introduces a typology of circular economy enabling artificial intelligence business models. The second manuscript addresses the intricate but often fragmented design of circular systems, encompassing circular product design, product-service system design, circular business model design, and collaborative ecosystem design, leading to circular economy rebound. This study uses a qualitative, inductive design science research approach, including 31 semi-structured interviews and a workshop with circular design experts and entrepreneurs. Through the Gioia-method of data analysis, the manuscript presents a process blueprint of circular systems design targeted at circular economy rebound mitigation. The third manuscript leverages 37 semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs and experts in the domains of cascading and repurposing. Through a design science approach and structured data analysis using the Gioia-method the manuscript develops five design principles following a context, intervention, mechanism, outcome (CIMO) logic. The design principles inform entrepreneurs operating in the CE on how different key stakeholders can engage in productive partnerships to operationalize cascading and repurposing business models effectively