A Relational View of Uncertainty

There is significant confusion and debate in entrepreneurship and strategy research about the nature and locus of uncertainty. Does uncertainty reside internally in the agent or externally in the environment? This article introduces a relational view of uncertainty (RVU) to help reframe this issue. In this framework, uncertainty is understood neither as purely subjective nor objective but as a relational phenomenon that depends on the agent's ability to navigate the challenges posed by their context. One advantage of RVU is that it enables scholars to explore new questions about the benefits and drawbacks for agents of acknowledging uncertainty—questions that a subjectivist framework, which treats uncertainty as purely perceptual, cannot address. Unlike the objective view, moreover, which sees uncertainty as an external and untreatable, RVU suggests that agents can sometimes mitigate uncertainty by strengthening their capabilities or drawing on the expertise of others.