You are cordially invited to attend the next CEGE4ALL: Markets & Policy Seminar by Helen McGrath (Cork University Business School), on “How Social Media Reshapes Power for Entrepreneurs: New Strategies for the Digital Age”. 

Date: March 24th
Time: 11.30 am and 12.30 pm
Where: Porto - Foz Campus - Room EAA001 (Américo Amorim Building)

Registration is mandatory. Please register here by March 23rd indicating if you will be attending in person or online. 

REGISTER HERE
 

 

 

Helen McGrath is Vice Dean for Learning and Teaching at Cork University Business School. Her research focuses on entrepreneurial ventures, business networks, and business-to-business relationships, with particular interests in network capability development, power dynamics, and digitalisation in entrepreneurial contexts. She has published in leading journals including Industrial Marketing Management, International Small Business Journal, European Journal of Marketing, and the Journal of Business Research.


Abstract: 

"While power asymmetries in business networks are well-documented, the mechanisms through which digitalisation influences power dynamics in entrepreneurial contexts remain underexplored. This presentation examines how entrepreneurial firms strategically employ social media to navigate and respond to power imbalances in their business relationships.

Drawing on an abductive qualitative study of 33 craft food and drink businesses, including in-depth interviews and analysis of 4,000 social media posts, this research reveals that entrepreneurs do not use social media to reconfigure existing asymmetric relationships. Rather, they develop new relationship types that function as strategic counterweights to traditional power structures.

The presentation introduces a novel classification scheme for social media power asymmetries and presents 12 power typologies that characterise entrepreneurial responses to power imbalances. A key contribution is demonstrating how short-term relationships enabled by social media serve as countervailing mechanisms, offering entrepreneurs alternative pathways to value creation that circumvent traditional dependency structures.

This research advances our understanding of power dynamics in the digital age and offers important implications for entrepreneurship, network theory, and digital strategy."
 

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More about the: Research Centre in Management and Economics - CEGE