Abstract
This study investigates resource acquisition behavior in the context of growth strategies for entrepreneurial ventures. We focus on the influence of entrepreneurs’ business and personal networks and their role enactment to realize resources from their networks through social network analysis. We conducted a qualitative analysis to examine the network structure of our participants, focusing on key network characteristics of size, tie strength, density, and brokerage opportunities to identify their influence on participants’ role enactment to access resources. We identified three core (ambassador, co-creator, and mediator) and five specialist roles (expert, orchestrator, trader, negotiator, and gatekeeper). Our results indicate that network structure is extraneous when performing core roles but affects the enactment of specialist roles as these roles are deliberately enacted to achieve desired outcomes.