Confronting the Limits of Symbolic Actions: How Entrepreneurs Narrow the Presentation-Performance Gap

Entrepreneurs often skillfully leverage symbolic actions to manage impressions and gain acceptance for their innovations. Impression management can generate interest but also heighten expectations beyond an innovation’s capabilities, creating a gap between entrepreneurs’ symbolic presentations and an innovation’s performance. To convince critical audiences, entrepreneurs need to not just manage impressions but also show how their innovations will integrate and work in situ. Yet, little research explains what happens when symbolic actions meet their limits. How do entrepreneurs respond when critical audiences challenge their symbolic actions? We examine how 28 digital health start-ups were challenged by a critical audience (buyers), revealing a gap between entrepreneurs’ symbolic presentations and the performance of their innovations. We examine how entrepreneurs managed this gap with buyers at 13 organizations and identify three pathways. Continuing to manage impressions obfuscated the discovery of integration work, widening the gap. Iterating with substantive adaptations did not sufficiently narrow the gap. Only entrepreneurs who recalibrated expectations were able to enlist buyers in the mutual discovery of integration work. These entrepreneurs shared the costs of narrowing the gap with buyers, despite earlier symbolic promises. We contribute to an emerging appreciation of the duality of symbolic actions by explaining what happens when entrepreneurs’ symbolic actions are challenged and how their responses can exacerbate or eradicate that challenge. Funding: The authors acknowledge the financial support of the Harvard Business School and the Questrom School of Business, Boston University.