A research group

STORM - Research

Stories under scrutiny: How entrepreneurs and investors negotiate entrepreneurial narratives in interactional exchanges during investment pitches

By Jean Clarke and Nick Llewellyn in Journal of Business Venturing

Published April 16, 2026

Excerpt of a dialogue transcript with sketches showing a seated person nodding, accompanied by explanatory text.
Entrepreneurial pitching is normally framed as a unidirectional scripted performance, with entrepreneurs presenting pre-crafted narratives for investor evaluation. We reframe pitching as an interactional process in which stories are scrutinised, challenged, and negotiated through investor-entrepreneur exchanges. We apply sequential analysis to video recordings of the question-and-answer sessions of 14 investment pitches in the UK. Our analysis identifies four recurrent interactional patterns: Unencumbered Storytelling, Resisting Presuppositions, Giving Ground, and Pushing Back. We also show how collective investor dynamics can further shape the trajectory of the pitch story. These findings demonstrate that investors are not passive evaluators but active participants whose individual interventions and collective questioning trajectories enable and constrain entrepreneurial storytelling. By foregrounding the interactional dynamics of pitching, we shift understanding of entrepreneurial storytelling, viewing it as a negotiated process rather than a scripted performance, and highlighting how the persuasiveness of entrepreneurial narratives depends on their capacity to accommodate investor challenges while preserving the integrity of the story.
 
 

Reference:
Jean Clarke and Nick Llewellyn, Stories under scrutiny: How entrepreneurs and investors negotiate entrepreneurial narratives in interactional exchanges during investment pitches. Journal of Business Venturing, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2026.106604

Community Socioemotional Wealth as the Glue that Binds Distinct Communities in Enterprising: A Tale of Success From Colombia

New article by Sonia Siraz in Journal of Management Inquiry

Apr 7, 2026

Collage de photos montrant des activités communautaires, des formations, des bâtiments et une carte de la région du Cauca en Colombie.

Recent advances in research have shed light on why and how community-based enterprises (CBEs) emerge. Nevertheless, little is known about the underlying factors that contribute to their success over time. This lack of attention is intriguing, given CBEs’ widespread proliferation as an instrument for socioeconomic development. We contribute to the CBE literature by applying and extending socioemotional wealth (SEW) to the CBE context. Our findings demonstrate how the presence of community socioemotional wealth (CSEW) enables CBEs to achieve enduring success. Beyond the presence of SEW’s five traditional dimensions, we identify two new dimensions (empowerment and holistic mission) unique to CBEs. When jointly present, these seven dimensions explain how CSEW creates a favorable terrain for the CBE to succeed. 
 

Reference:
Sonia Siraz, Björn Claes, Deycy J. Sanchez Preciado, and Nicholas Theodorakopoulos. Community Socioemotional Wealth as the Glue that Binds Distinct Communities in Enterprising: A Tale of Success From Colombia. Journal of Management Inquiry, 2025. 

 

Microlevel Judgments of Organizational Legitimacy: How Validity Cues and Categorical Fit Shape Evaluators’ Propriety Beliefs

Julia Thaler, Martin Sievert, Sonia Siraz, and Alexander Pinz in Journal of Management Studies Published

March 10, 2026

Groupe de personnes réunies dans un bureau autour de postes de travail et d’ordinateurs, lors d’une discussion informelle.

This study advances research on organizational legitimacy by examining the microlevel mechanisms through which evaluators form propriety beliefs. Building on legitimacy-as-perception research, which posits that evaluators rely on validity cues to make judgments, we argue that individual evaluators draw on broader, more nuanced sets of information than previously acknowledged. Specifically, we theorize and show how distinct validity cues (authorization and endorsement) that coexist combine with evaluators’ perceptions of an organization’s categorical fit to shape propriety beliefs. Across two factorial survey experiments (n = 1866), perceived categorical fit emerges as the strongest and most consistent predictor of propriety beliefs. Validity cues shape propriety beliefs, but their effects are far from uniform. The findings also reveal that cue valence matters and that complex interplays of validity cues distinctly influence propriety beliefs. This research contributes to legitimacy literature, and more specifically to microlevel legitimacy by offering a granular perspective on how propriety beliefs get constructed from diverse informational cues. By introducing categorical fit as a novel explanatory mechanism, we extend existing theory and encourage further investigations of how it influences microlevel legitimacy perceptions and how various combinations of validity cues can shape evaluations of organizational legitimacy.
 

Reference:
Julia Thaler, Martin Sievert, Sonia Siraz, and Alexander Pinz. Microlevel Judgments of Organizational Legitimacy: How Validity Cues and Categorical Fit Shape Evaluators’ Propriety Beliefs. Journal of Management Studies, 2026. 

Group Decision Making by Lars Plougmann, CC BY-SA 2.0.