Theory Development (jbv-theory-development)

When to trigger

• Your "hypotheses" are descriptive ("A relates to B in startups") with no entrepreneurial mechanism
• You need to choose the disciplinary engine — agency/real-options (economics), cognition/affect (psychology), networks/legitimacy (sociology)
• A handling editor or reviewer says the theory "could be about any organization, not entrepreneurship"
• You are deciding whether to write a deductive model or a narrative/interpretive theory

JBV's theory bar

JBV elevates "theories, narratives, and interpretations" of the antecedents, mechanisms, and consequences of entrepreneurship. Two legitimate paths:

• Hypothetico-deductive: derive testable hypotheses from an explicit mechanism. The mechanism must be about the entrepreneurial phenomenon — opportunity, judgment under Knightian uncertainty, resource assembly under resource constraints, legitimacy of the new and unknown (liability of newness), founder identity, etc. — not a generic organizational process.
• Narrative / interpretive: build an interesting, internally coherent account or process theory of how entrepreneurial action unfolds. JBV's stance is broader than the strict deductive template of many top management journals — a compelling reconceptualization can be the contribution.

Pick the disciplinary engine (and combine deliberately)

JBV is multidisciplinary by design. Make the lens explicit and consider integrating two:

• Economics: uncertainty vs. risk, search and experimentation, real options, information asymmetry and signaling in financing, incentives, selection markets.
• Psychology: entrepreneurial cognition, judgment and heuristics, self-efficacy, passion, affect, regulatory focus, grit, overconfidence.
• Sociology: networks, embeddedness, institutional logics, legitimacy, categories, status, social movements, regional/ecosystem structure.

State a clear mechanism: a causal/process chain with a why, scope conditions, and the entrepreneurial actor or activity at its center.

Build moderation/mediation around the phenomenon

• Moderators should reflect entrepreneurial context — uncertainty, resource scarcity, novelty, ecosystem support, founder/team attributes — not generic firm covariates.
• Mediators should trace the entrepreneurial process (opportunity belief → action → outcome), making the mechanism observable.

Checklist

• Mechanism is specific to the entrepreneurial phenomenon (not any organization)
• Primary disciplinary engine named; integration justified if multidisciplinary
• Mode chosen (deductive hypotheses vs. narrative/interpretive theory) and executed consistently
• Scope/boundary conditions of the theory stated
• Moderators/mediators reflect entrepreneurial context, not generic covariates
• Assumptions surfaced; a tension or orthodoxy is challenged, not just confirmed

Anti-patterns

• Generic-org theory in a startup costume — the mechanism would read identically for an incumbent.
• Hypothesis salad — many predictions, no unifying entrepreneurial mechanism.
• Borrowing a construct without a boundary — importing a psychology/sociology construct with no scope for the entrepreneurial setting.
• Pretend deduction (HARKing) — hypotheses reverse-engineered from results.

Theory pass for Journal of Business Venturing

Treat this skill as an executable review pass, not a prose hint. First lock the entrepreneurial mechanism, level of analysis, evidence design, and boundary conditions for ventures; then judge whether the current manuscript answers the venue's real reader: entrepreneurship reviewers who ask whether the paper advances venture formation, opportunity, founder, or ecosystem theory.

• Do the pass: Name the construct, mechanism, boundary condition, and falsifiable implication separately; do not let a literature summary masquerade as theory.
• Return a ledger: give claim / evidence / risk / manuscript location rows, so the next agent can edit rather than rediscover the issue.
• Sibling guard: compare against Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice for broader entrepreneurship, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal for strategy interface, AMJ for general management; if a sibling owns the contribution, recommend re-routing before polishing format.
• Stop condition: do not give submission-ready advice until the pack's resources/official-source-map.md has been checked for volatile rules and the manuscript has one concrete fix for the largest venue-specific risk.

Output format

【Phenomenon mechanism】the entrepreneurial why, in one chain ...
【Engine】economics / psychology / sociology (+ integration) ...
【Mode】deductive hypotheses | narrative-interpretive theory ...
【Hypotheses or propositions】H1..Hk / P1..Pk ...
【Boundary conditions】...
【Tension challenged】...
【Next step】jbv-literature-positioning