College of Business PhD Student Wins Outstanding Paper Award

A second-year PhD student in entrepreneurship and management, Lorrien Lecka, in Florida Atlantic University's College of Business recently won the Markets and Management Outstanding Paper Award from the Markets and Management Network.

The Markets and Management Outstanding Paper Award recognizes an outstanding recently completed paper that demonstrates an understanding of, and appreciation for, market principles, unencumbered markets, and/or the benefits of voluntary exchange.

The award is open to papers authored or co-authored by a current PhD student, and the winner receives a $2,000 prize.

The paper, “Opportunity Prevention: An Elaboration of the External Enablers Framework,” examined how entrepreneurial opportunities can fail to emerge, not because entrepreneurs misjudge them, but because environmental, institutional, or relational conditions prevent opportunities from forming in the first place.

The paper introduces the concept of opportunity non-emergence and outlines three mechanisms through which opportunities may be blocked prior to emergence: preemptive intervention, dependency exploitation, and interpretive interference.

Since its inception in 2017, the Markets and Management Network has convened management scholars to discuss issues of freedom at the intersection of markets and management, including how individuals organize and trade under different politico-economic systems.