Challenging Entrepreneurship Research

Citation

Mallett, O. (2017), "Challenging Entrepreneurship Research", International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, Vol. 23 No. 1, pp. 160-162. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJEBR-09-2016-0298

Challenging Entrepreneurship Research seeks to challenge the status quo and underlying assumptions in mainstream entrepreneurship research. In their introduction, the editors argue that this is important not only for developing a “dynamic and viable field of research” (p. 1) but also one that is interesting. Their book is divided into two sections: consensus challenges and dissensus challenges. The first set of chapters are characterised by the editors as seeking to challenge assumptions from within mainstream approaches to entrepreneurship while the second set mount this challenge through different perspectives that seek to disrupt the mainstream approach. This consensus/dissensus distinction is discussed in detail in Chapter 7 (by Fletcher and Seldon) which explains them as being, respectively, critical for or of entrepreneurship. Of course, the chapters cannot always be easily categorised in this way but the book’s structure provides an interesting counterpoint in terms of the perspectives and the sense of a vigorous interrogation of the topic.

This is a valuable exercise in any field and it is particularly interesting that, to achieve it, the editors claim to present the work of an invited set of “young scholars who all show the potential for a brilliant academic career” (p. 8). While problematically framed in terms of age, a focus on early career researchers is very welcome, although this aspect of the book should not be overstated since the co-authors of several chapters include established, influential academics and, for example, an associate editor of this journal. The degree to which the book is authored by those outside of any institutionalisation of the field is therefore limited. Nonetheless, the inclusion of early career researchers amid others asking questions of what entrepreneurship research has done and where it is going is valuable.

The consensus set of chapters begins with a chapter by Fink and colleagues (Chapter 2) that effectively expands on the rationale for the book by seeking to explore the importance of passion to producing interesting research. To do so they assess two of their recent publications from Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice in terms of the passion they felt for the research and the interest of the research outputs against a range of aesthetic criteria. They conclude that the study with greater passion behind it produced a more interesting paper. This appears to, potentially, be an accident of study design rather than the nature of the outputs in any way that could be clearly linked to the passion of the authors. Nonetheless, Fink and colleagues argue that passion is a vital component in the production of interesting research and this is certainly a worthwhile aspiration for all researchers. Chapter 3 (Berglund and Wennberg) further expands the characterisation of the research questions, units of analysis and research design within the entrepreneurship field as institutionalised and therefore restricted in terms of scope and originality with too many core areas of practice left unquestioned. They suggest an alternative, more practice-oriented approach derived from the philosophical tradition of pragmatism.

The remainder of the first section continues to question and probe assumptions in the literature. Korsgaard (Chapter 4) engages in depth with the legacy of Austrian economics and in particular Israel Kirzner for studies of entrepreneurship, calling for a broader conception of value to include the non-economic, further exploration of uncertainty and a shift in focus from opportunity to resources. This latter point is in some ways engaged with by Alsos (Chapter 5) who develops a less individualistic approach to entrepreneurship, including a valuable focus on the household in relation to the identification and exploitation of opportunities. Nightingale and Coad (Chapter 6) conclude the first section by questioning assumptions in policy and research about the role of entrepreneurial firms in job creation, productivity, innovation and well-being. They identify a positive bias towards these firms, for example in how a great deal of research and policy relating to them has been framed. This potentially obscures important factors such as the lower quality and security of many of the jobs created by small firms.

Where the first section of the book is framed as challenging from within, the second part presents five chapters that seek to question the underlying assumptions of entrepreneurship research from alternative perspectives. This section is well-represented by Pittaway and Tunstall (Chapter 9) who utilise Burrell and Morgan’s work on sociological paradigms to analyse common underlying meta-theories in entrepreneurship research. Their analysis suggests that these underlying meta-theories have led to three common traps: a desire to create scientific rather than social scientific research; an under-estimation of contextual and social factors; and a belief in the specialness of the entrepreneur. However, they only look at publications from 1960s to 1990s. This allows them to identify a paradigm shift with a move from psychology to social psychology in the 1980s, but lessens the value of their analysis for debates on the contemporary nature and future of the field. In response to their analysis they call for a greater meta-theoretical diversity in entrepreneurship scholarship, and this again suggests the need to question underlying assumptions whilst providing support for the dissensus approach collected in this half of the book.

Other chapters in this dissensus section of the book include a useful review of critical work on entrepreneurship (Chapter 7, by Fletcher and Seldon) that concludes with a call for further critical work rooted in a social ontology. This is followed by a series of arguments that continue to question underlying assumptions. Barinaga (Chapter 8) argues for the importance of engaged scholarship and greater awareness of the simplifying nature of research methods, for example by engaging more closely with the communities studied. Tedmanson and Essers (Chapter 10) challenge the assumptions behind the dominant conception of a white, male entrepreneur, focussing on intersectionality and hybridity in the identity work of entrepreneurs who do not fit this conception. The final chapter (Chapter 11, by Verzat and colleagues) takes a different approach by exploring the effectuation approach to entrepreneurship education, highlighting it as one means to overcome, for example, individualistic assumptions in the teaching, research and practice of entrepreneurship.

Challenging Entrepreneurship Research presents a broad range of ideas and it benefits from the contrasting of perspectives in terms of the challenges they present in their critiques of the existing literature (principally in questioning specific underlying assumptions) and the challenging alternatives they propose. The degree of challenge this collection presents to dominant studies of entrepreneurship could perhaps have gone further and there is little here that is radically new, for example several of the authors build upon their own earlier work. Nonetheless, several of the chapters are still interesting and impactful in their own right. Overall, the diverse collection of chapters therefore provides a useful starting point and provocations for further reflection. Many of these ideas continue to reside on the margins of entrepreneurship scholarship and emphasise the importance of continually seeking to challenge assumptions and to developing challenging entrepreneurship research.