Enrolling Human Capital in Uncertain Entrepreneurial Settings: A Network Approach

There is scholarly interest in how entrepreneurs enroll human capital to form and exploit opportunities. Work has begun to shift away from the stage of an entrepreneurial endeavor to focus on the informational context within which the entrepreneur is operating, that being risk and uncertainty. To address the informational context of enrolling human capital the paper develops a model that simulates the role of strong and weak ties under conditions of risk and uncertainty. Results suggest that strong ties are more effective than weak ties in recruiting human capital under conditions of uncertainty, while weak ties are more effective under conditions of risk.