Project Description
This project offers 2–3 students the opportunity to work as junior research collaborators across one or more of my active research programs in entrepreneurship and business ethics. Students will engage directly with a range of research activities, from design and IRB processes to data collection and analysis. I will allocate students across projects based on fit, interest, and where each project stands at the start of the SRS term. Work may involve contribution to one project or across several. The three active research streams are: 1) Entrepreneurial Visionaries, Scientists, and Opportunists. My prior qualitative research has produced a typology of approaches to entrepreneurship. This project extends that work into a quantitative phase. Depending on progress and student aptitude, tasks may include instrument design, participant recruitment and outreach, IRB documentation, survey administration, and statistical analysis. 2) Edgework in the Digital Age. This project applies the sociological concept of edgework—voluntary risk-taking at the boundaries of acceptable behavior—to stand-up comedy in the digital media environment. Tasks may include systematic literature review spanning sociology, entrepreneurship, media studies, and organizational behavior; theory development; and qualitative coding of stand-up comedy sets. 3) Perceived Moral Violation and Mission Drift. Building on my prior experimental work examining audience responses when mission-oriented ventures are perceived to have violated core values, this project develops further experimental work around the conditions under which such perceptions form and spread. Depending on direction, tasks may include experiment design around moral violation and mission drift, exploration of debiasing interventions, or investigation of social contagion dynamics in audience response. Tasks may also include materials development, IRB documentation, participant recruitment, data collection, and analysis. All students will be expected to participate in regular meetings with the team. I expect students to engage seriously with primary literature and to use AI-assisted tools thoughtfully as part of the research workflow.
Prerequisites
None required. Interest in entrepreneurship, business ethics, psychology, and sociology is helpful and welcome. Comfort working independently and with nascent, ambiguous research questions is essential.
Special Comments
The project runs on-campus for six weeks, from June 29 through August 7, 2026. Students should anticipate several remote working days. Students considering graduate study in business, psychology, or related social sciences are particularly encouraged to apply.
Project Information (subject to change)
Estimated Start Date: 6/29/2026
Estimated End Date: 8/7/2026
Estimated Project Duration: 6 weeks
Maximum Number of Students Sought: 3
Research Location: On campus
Travel Required? No (If “yes”: )
Contact Information: Joel Adams (email: jadams2@wlu.edu)