Entrepreneurial communication: rhetorical Strategies for an Uncertain World

This proposed symposium aims to facilitate a discussion on emergent research in entrepreneurial communication and generate insights about promising areas of future research. The core motivation is that rather than being peripheral to strategy, communication fundamentally shapes new ventures – as well as their interactions with entrepreneurial ecosystem participants. Communication is the process of creating and changing meanings; it is instrumental in helping entrepreneurs motivate key actions and decisions of not only themselves, but also how entrepreneurs and ecosystem participants such as investors, employees, or customers exert mutual influence through socially situated, dialogic processes. Rather than merely being a device for disseminating information, entrepreneurial communication forms the bedrock of wide-ranging aspects of entrepreneurship, ranging from identity and agency to subjective construction of uncertainty, to norms of interaction, discourse, and language. Through this symposium, we aim to bring together leading scholars in this field to discuss emerging research in this domain, as well have their insights into the most pressing (and promising) avenues for future scholarship. The above conceptualization of communication goes beyond being mere vector of information, opening the possibility of rich exchange of ideas outside traditional domains. Examples of potential topics of interest include, but are not limited to: - Social media as a conduit of mutual influence among entrepreneurs and stakeholders - Communication in social innovation/ social entrepreneurship contexts - Communicating to an ecosystem rather than a single audience - Sensemaking and responding to uncertain or disruptive times - Constructing the meaning of adversity, failures, or low status - and highlighting entrepreneurial agency and resilience in their wake - Use of rhetorical devices such as metaphor and analogies - Research based on non-traditional data sources, methods, or measures