Swipe, like, connect: A typology for strategic short-term entrepreneurial relationships using social media to countervail power

While studies of power in business networks are well-established, research on how digitalisation influences power asymmetry in entrepreneurial firm contexts remains limited. This study focuses on understanding how social media (SM) can reshape power asymmetries in entrepreneurial relationship and network development. Using the craft food and drink industry as an empirical base, our study employs an abductive qualitative approach with 33 entrepreneurial firms (includes data from personal interviews in each firm, and 4000 SM posts) to develop a classification scheme for SM power asymmetries, and 12 SM power typologies for strategically responding to power imbalances. Our findings suggest entrepreneurial craft firms employ SM to challenge power imbalances. However, rather than altering their position in existing relationships, entrepreneurs develop new relationship types using SM. We contribute a SM power asymmetry classification scheme that demonstrates how short-term relationships function as strategic power countervailing mechanisms and provide a novel typology of relationship types that entrepreneurs use to address power asymmetries through SM.