Implications for various audiences

7.3.1 Implications for research

It is reasonable that development of any new field of research often starts out by studying the phenomena of interest in a quantitative fashion. By doing so, researchers may answer the essential questions of defining the phenomena, placing them in various contexts, and outlining the gray areas in existing knowledge – or research gaps. Over the 30 years of bootstrapping research, empirical studies covered many research gaps.

However, bootstrapping knowledge is dispersed and not yet conceptually developed.

The purpose of this study was to take a step in the direction of consolidation and theoretical development of bootstrapping knowledge, and, by doing so, contribute to academic research and teaching practice. My study’s implications for research are as follows:

1. My empirical findings and the developed conceptual framework can serve as a starting point for both qualitative and quantitative studies to come.

2. My study promotes interest in theoretical cross-fertilization of bootstrapping with other fields of knowledge. I find that studying the intersection of bootstrapping literature and relational contracting theory benefits both fields, and encourage upcoming research to seek inspiration in fields beyond economics and management.

3. I conduct literature reviews comprising systematic review and bibliometric analysis for both bootstrapping and relational contracting theory. The review conclusions provide both the overview of knowledge landscapes in the respective fields as well as an example of a methodological approach to studying the literature.

4. Finally, my study develops analytically transferable findings and the conceptual framework by using a case-within-a-case design, thus demonstrating a possibility for studying complex phenomena in-depth without relying on particularly large empirical samples.

Through the teaching practices, I see one additional implication of my study in providing the up-and-coming entrepreneurs with practical tools for reflecting on the relationship between resource needs, behaviors to address such needs, and a wider spectrum of nuanced outcomes of bootstrapping unveiling over time.

7.3.2 Implications for practice and policy actors

The firm’s milestones and projects developed from the empirical materials are rich with bootstrapping behaviors that extend beyond the typologies of tools and techniques described in earlier bootstrapping studies. My study’s findings bring new perspectives on how the various bootstrapping behaviors can be applied, considering norms and conditions at different stages of cooperation with resource-providing stakeholders. I found some of the outcomes that are likely to arise at different stages of cooperation with stakeholders, and, hence, entrepreneurs may benefit from applying the contractual norms and bootstrapping behaviors that could be an aid in managing the outcomes in

an optimal way. The contributions that I offer to policy actors and entrepreneurial practices are thus the following:

1. In practice, the optimal way to finance the firm for as long as possible through bootstrapping while minimizing the negative outcomes is to see to it that the behaviors and contractual norms relied on fit the current stage of cooperation with stakeholders, and the firm’s development overall.

2. Relying on the study’s findings, policy actors may be able to provide more nuanced, tailored support to entrepreneurs at different stages of bootstrapping relationships, and with different stakeholders involved.

3. Practice-oriented audiences may be able to better plan, forecast, and answer questions such as – how may the use of a network in a prolonged, consistently bootstrapping fashion be organized in an optimal way, and whether or not it is reasonable at one or another stage of a firm’s development to refrain from bootstrapping exchanges.

4. For policy actors and public organizations working at the periphery of entrepreneurial networks, my study offers the possibility of reflecting on the support offered to other stakeholders in bootstrapping exchanges – the bootstrap resource providers. While entrepreneurs are already offered grants, subsidies and business development services, the bootstrap resource providers could benefit from corresponding coaching programs as well.

7.3.3 Concluding thoughts

This study offers to multiple audiences a nuanced perspective on how bootstrapping behaviors become enabled by conditions and norms of relational contracting, and how these behaviors may lead to various outcomes at different stages of contracting for bootstrap resources, and a firm’s development overall. I find that such nuanced outcomes, in turn, may result in larger implications found in previous studies – such as the firms’ growth, survival, profitability, investment attractiveness, and so on. Based on multiple sources of evidence gathered from the bootstrapper and bootstrap resource providers, I also illustrate how an entrepreneur interacts with a network of bootstrap financiers at different stages of the firm’s development. As the bootstrapping exchanges in their nature are informal and not explicitly regulated, they require other mechanisms of successful short-term and long-term management, compared to discrete business contracts. In my findings, I illustrate such mechanisms. Based on these insights, upcoming research may build novel and interesting research questions (Davis, 1971), while policy actors and practicing entrepreneurs might gain novel perspectives on

usefulness and implications of reliance on bootstrap financing at different stages of the entrepreneur-stakeholder cooperation.

References

List of Figures

Figure 1. Summary of the systematic review process (Chapter 2) Figure 2. Bibliometric map of bootstrapping literature (Chapter 2) Figure 3. The study’s empirical phases (Chapter 3)

Figure 4. The firm’s milestones and projects over development timeline (Chapter 4) Figure 5. Phase 1 data structure (Chapter 4)

Figure 6. Relational contracting literature search results (Chapter 5) Figure 7. Bibliometric map of relational contracting literature (Chapter 5) Figure 8. Case I data structure (Chapter 6)

Figure 9. Case I analysis results (Chapter 6) Figure 10. Case II data structure (Chapter 6) Figure 11. Case II analysis results (Chapter 6) Figure 12. Cross-case findings (Chapter 7)

Figure 13. Study’s conceptual framework (Chapter 7)