Overcoming home institutional limitations via global platform involvement: A contingency perspective

Do institutional limitations inhibit or encourage entrepreneurship in the digital age? We advance research on this theoretical tension by focusing on global platform involvement, a novel strategic option. Specifically, we analyze how entrepreneurs access globally dispersed resources and escape certain limitations in home institutions. We argue that limitations in enabling institutions induce greater global platform involvement at the national level as a form of institutional escape, whereas limitations in constraining institutions persist as barriers to entrepreneurship and therefore deter such involvement. We further examine how formal and informal institutions interact to form configurations that jointly shape global platform involvement across countries. Based on these theoretical ideas, we propose a contingency-based perspective on the theoretical tension, emphasizing the type of focal institutions and their interactions. We test our hypotheses using data from a prominent global crowdfunding platform, where funding goals capture entrepreneurs’ intended engagement with the platform; our empirical analysis largely supports our arguments. We contribute to the international business literature by integrating contrasting viewpoints in the institution-based view and by extending the concept of institutional escapism to incorporate digital and entrepreneurial perspectives.