Persisting and Reoccurring Liability of Newness: Entrepreneurship and Change in Small Enterprises

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the challenges of entrepreneurship and change facing small enterprises. Developing Stinchcombe’s liability of newness concept to recognise the persisting and reoccurring liability of newness for small enterprises, Wapshott and Mallett develop insights into the challenges of entrepreneurship and change. They argue that, in recognising the challenges facing start-ups, which are new in the sense that they are ‘young,’ analysis should also account for how small enterprises encounter novel challenges, associated with the ways in which external pressures demand new responses from within the organisation. Drawing on Stinchcombe’s liability of newness concept, Wapshott and Mallett outline a sociology of entrepreneurship perspective for analysing how small enterprises cope with challenges of entrepreneurship and change.