'Lee takes the oft cited belief that entrepreneurial endeavour lives and
dies by the quality of the networks set in play, and subjects it to a
rigorous and sustained analysis. In this he not only provides the reader
with an authoritative theoretical and empirical foray into how
entrepreneurs can create and sustain different forms of social capital,
he does so with a strong sense of how power frames and taints its
acquisition and use. Lee¹s book is a valuable contribution to our
understanding of how in entrepreneurial activity, as in many walks of
life, it is those with already established status who set the agenda by
which opportunity and its pursuit is constituted'.
Robin Holt, Professor of Entrepreneurship, Politics and Society,
Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
Robert Lee drives forward the agenda of socially-situated cognition
research, moving beyond a static model of entrepreneurial cognition and
offering instead a dynamic, socially embedded, communication-based
perspective. He breaks from the traditional focus on either the
individual entrepreneurial agent or the social and institutional
context of entrepreneurship and makes a serious and skilful effort to
provide an integrative understanding of the entrepreneur as placed in a
complex, relational and ambiguous context. Recognising that
entrepreneurship is both cognitive and relational, he plays with the
idea of power within legitimacy creation and through this illustrates
the ultimately distributed nature of entrepreneurial processes. This
book adds to the growing domain of socially-situated entrepreneurial
cognition research and will appeal to those interested in understanding
the connection between cognition, communication and legitimacy in the
context of entrepreneurship.
Jean Clarke, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Organization, Leeds
University Business School, University of Leeds, UK
'In a very welcome contribution to the literature, Robert Lee explores
the social capital mobilised by entrepreneurs and develops a
communicative action approach that yields important insights into how
would-be entrepreneurs achieve legitimacy through navigating the complex
web of power and status relations in which they are enmeshed. This book
will appeal not only to those interested in entrepreneurship, but also
be a valuable reference source for those interested in the workings of
social capital'.
Michael Bresnen, Professor of Organisation Studies, Alliance Manchester
Business School, University of Manchester, UK
This book presents a novel and intellectually stimulating account of the
understudied links between entrepreneurial newcomers' bridging ties and
their networked cognition. With a paucity of research addressing
cognitively specific features of networked language and conduct, The
Social Capital of Entrepreneurial Newcomers explores how
entrepreneurial newcomers attune their cognition when interacting with
high status and powerful vertical bridges. Largely reflecting
communication accommodation perspectives, the author theoretically and
empirically examines entrepreneurial newcomers' cognitive 'convergence'
and 'divergence' when bridging.
