Distributed Entrepreneurial Agency in Collective Action: The Case of Heritage-Led Urban Regeneration [2025]


#ENTREPRENEURSHIP#INSTITUTIONAL IMMUNIZATION#STRUCTURAL TRANSFORMATION#COLECTIVE ACTION

By:

Mara van Twuijver, Helen Toxopeus, Rita Lopes, Niels Bosma, João Pedro Gouveia


Journal : Academy
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Contemporary societal challenges are increasingly complex and intertwined, necessitating structural transformations that go beyond the capacity of individual entrepreneurial actors. Entrepreneurship has the potential to catalyze such transformations by addressing systemic issues through innovative solutions. However, the complexity of these challenges requires the involvement of diverse stakeholders—public, private, and civic—working collectively. This paper conceptualizes entrepreneurship for structural transformation as a form of collective action, emphasizing the importance of ability, motivation, opportunity, process skills, and institutional immunization as key elements of entrepreneurial agency. Through a cross-case analysis of 18 urban transformation projects across European cities, we investigate how these elements of agency are distributed among actors and how the challenges of distributedness are coordinated. Our findings highlight the critical roles of institutional immunization and process skills in enabling and orchestrating collective entrepreneurial action. Institutional immunization, in particular, emerges as a pivotal element, facilitating transformation by challenging existing institutional norms and enabling new practices. Process skills play a supportive role in coordinating stakeholders and paving the way for institutional immunization. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of distributed entrepreneurial agency and its role in driving structural transformation. It offers theoretical insights into collective entrepreneurial action while providing practical guidance for stakeholders, such as local governments, on navigating the complexities of multi-stakeholder collaboration to achieve transformative outcomes.


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Citation : Mara van Twuijver, Helen Toxopeus, Rita Lopes, Niels Bosma, and João Gouveia, 2025: Distributed Entrepreneurial Agency in Collective Action: The Case of Heritage-Led Urban Regeneration. Academy of Management Proceedings, 2025, https://doi.org/10.5465/AMPROC.2025.24513abstract