Mechanisms of opportunity and person exploitation: The corporation, capital, and closure

Access to socioeconomic opportunities, in general, and entrepreneurial opportunities, in particular, increasingly has become more difficult for certain natural persons and groups within society—hence, the phenomenon of inequality of opportunity within society. While various factors may contribute to this phenomenon, in this dissertation, I focus on how the modern corporation and the institutions that are supposed to govern the modern corporation enable (actively or passively) the closure of opportunities to natural persons—hence, on the mechanisms of opportunity through person exploitation, in new value creation. That is, I investigate those mechanisms that enable modern corporations to exploit entrepreneurial opportunities by exploiting certain person-stakeholders (often used interchangeably herein with the term “persons” or “person”) with whom these corporations interact. I also investigate the implications of these mechanisms for new value creation by future entrepreneurs. In Study I, I offer a theoretical mechanism explaining how and why the modern corporation usurps and closes opportunities to natural persons and contributes to inequality of entrepreneurial opportunity in society. In Study II, I report an empirical study that helps reveal an institutional mechanism that underlies the ability of a corporation to exploit opportunities and person-stakeholders simultaneously. In Study III, I empirically identify an entrepreneurial mechanism that explains how individuals whose access to opportunities has been more or less blocked, use to (re)gain access to and pursue entrepreneurial opportunities. Overall, this dissertation contributes to the literature by explaining some of the key properties of the mechanisms of opportunity through person exploitation in new value creation and by offering outlines of a research program that may help mitigate or transform the negative effects of these mechanisms on natural persons.