Reframing the Ecosystem: Ranking Organizations as Emerging Stakeholders in Entrepreneurial Ecosystems

Abstract

Entrepreneurial ecosystems are increasingly assessed through global ranking systems that claim to measure innovation capacity, competitiveness and startup activity. Yet little is known about how these rankings influence and shape the very environments they evaluate. This study addresses this gap by examining ranking organizations as influential actors within entrepreneurial ecosystems. Drawing on stakeholder theory and based on seventeen semi-structured expert interviews, the study applies the Gioia methodology to explore how rankings affect perceptions, strategies and governance processes. The analysis identifies five mechanisms through which ranking organisations exert influence: structural data constraints, methodological ambiguity, stakeholder-oriented interpretation, interaction with ecosystem actors and legitimacy building effects. Our results show that the influence of rankings derives less from empirical precision than from their interpretive use, perceived legitimacy and public visibility. The findings further indicate that the understanding and use of rankings develops through ongoing dialogue between producers and users, resulting in an emerging interpretive form of co creation. Building on these findings, we introduce the concept of meta-stakeholders, defined as actors that evaluate entrepreneurial ecosystems while simultaneously influencing their development. The study demonstrates the performative power of measurement and its role in shaping entrepreneurial legitimacy and policy agendas. It contributes to research on entrepreneurial ecosystems by advancing a relational and interpretive perspective on evaluation processes and by conceptualising ranking organisations as meta-stakeholders that actively shape ecosystem dynamics.