“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.
- How does the cultural and societal context influence the willingness of individuals and organizations to acknowledge uncertainty in their decision-making processes?
- Is it necessary for individuals and organizations to acknowledge uncertainty if they aspire to new knowledge?
- Is there a preferred means of getting individuals and organizations to acknowledge uncertainty?
- Can leaders both admit uncertainty and inspire confidence in their visions?
- When is it adaptive or maladaptive for individuals and organizations to acknowledge uncertainty?
This paper has developed a relational interpretation of uncertainty that challenges the long-standing debate over whether uncertainty is objective or subjective. Unlike the objective view, which treats uncertainty as external and fixed, RVU emphasizes the agent-relative nature of uncertainty.
Accordingly, RVU affords greater agency to entrepreneurs in reducing uncertainty and avoids the common logical inconsistency in the literature where authors define uncertainty as unmitigable only to then propose ways it can be mitigated.
This paper has also demonstrated that, by allowing uncertainty to exist independently of an agent’s awareness, RVU offers a distinct theoretical lens that enables novel questions and insights inaccessible to subjectivist approaches. My hope is that this perspective will open up new avenues for research and encourage a more dynamic understanding of how uncertainty is experienced and navigated in entrepreneurial and strategic contexts.
Surtil : 