Balancing Comprehensiveness and Parsimony: Towards a Context-specific Barrier Identification Across Multiple Levels Combined with Complexity Reduction Through Barrier Groups

We address the criticism of barrier groups as incomplete and overlapping using a mixed-method barrier analysis. Striving for comprehensiveness, a set of forty-five context-specific barrier manifestations is identified through qualitative expert interviews guided by the multilevel theory-driven EOI (External environment Organization Individual) barrier model. The perceived relevance of the barrier manifestations is assessed based on survey data. Striving for parsimony and reduced complexity, eleven barrier categories across three levels of analysis are derived through an exploratory factor analysis (suppliers, investors, business-to-business customers, potential employees, competitors, legislator, attitudes towards technology, tangible resources, strategy and structure, human resources, and employees).