This insightful book examines the need to bridge the gap between scientific rigour in entrepreneurship research and its practical relevance to external stakeholders, and demonstrates clearly how this can be achieved in practice. Featuring cutting-edge research, Rigour and Relevance in Entrepreneurship Research, Resources and Outcomes presents and evaluates current critical approaches in the field, analysing their theoretical value and their relevance to policy and practice.
"The applied nature of the field of entrepreneurship means it is crucial for scholars and researchers to connect with practitioners to ensure that their work has an impact on real-world activity. This insightful book examines the need to bridge the gap between scientific rigour in entrepreneurship research and its practical relevance to external stakeholders, and demonstrates clearly how this can be achieved in practice. Featuring cutting-edge research, Rigour and Relevance in Entrepreneurship Research, Resources and Outcomes presents and evaluates current critical approaches in the field, analysing their theoretical value and their relevance to policy and practice. Chapters examine these approaches through the lens of specific issues and circumstances such as intrapreneurship, freelancing, crowdfunding, family firms and technology-based start-ups, providing a variety of perspectives and exemplifying how pragmatic questions can productively influence research agendas. This book's up-to-date analysis and practical insight will prove invaluable to scholars and researchers in entrepreneurship as well as other business and management academics. Students at all levels in these fields will also find it useful for considering future research"--
As the breadth and empirical diversity of entrepreneurship research have increased rapidly during the last decade, the quest to find a "one-size-fits-all" general theory of entrepreneurship has given way to a growing appreciation for the importance of contexts. This promises to improve both the practical relevance and the theoretical rigor of research in this field. Entrepreneurship means different things to different people at different times and in different places and both its causes and its consequences likewise vary. For example, for some people entrepreneurship can be a glorious path to emancipation, while for others it can represent the yoke tethering them to the burdens of overwork and drudgery. For some communities it can drive renaissance and vibrancy while for others it allows only bare survival. In this book, we assess and attempt to push forward contemporary conceptualizations of contexts that matter for entrepreneurship, pointing in particular to opportunities generating new insights by attending to contexts in novel or underexplored ways. This book shows that the ongoing contextualization of entrepreneurship research should not simply generate a proliferation of unique theories – one for every context – but can instead result in better theory construction, testing and understanding of boundary conditions, thereby leading us to richer and more profound understanding of entrepreneurship across its many forms. Contextualizing Entrepreneurship Theory will critically review the current debate and existing literature on contexts and entrepreneurship and use this to synthesize new theoretical and methodological frameworks that point to important directions for future research.
Higher employment, economic growth and innovation are fundamental objectives of modern economies. One effective means of attaining these goals is the development of successful entrepreneurs, and this book aims to provide a deeper, research-based understanding of the factors influencing successful entrepreneurship. Mirjam van Praag compares and contrasts the economic theory of entrepreneurship with determinants of successful entrepreneurship derived from empirical evidence, in an attempt to discover what makes for an accomplished entrepreneur. The author's state-of-the-art historical, theoretical and empirical research on successful entrepreneurship - all from a explicit economic perspective - comprehensively addresses questions such as: 'What are the factors that influence individuals' decisions to start a business venture as opposed to working as an employee?' and 'What are the individual characteristics that make one successful as an entrepreneur?' thereby supporting or dispelling various existing myths. Individual factors contributing to the success of entrepreneurs that are considered include, amongst others, human capital, financial capital and psychological traits. The importance of such factors for the various phases of entrepreneurship, including start-up, delivery and performance is also measured.
The growth of entrepreneurship research has been accompanied by an increased convergence and institutionalization of the field. In many ways this is of course positive, but it also represents how the field has become "mainstream" with the concomitant risk that individual scholars become embedded in a culture and incentive system that emphasizes and rewards incremental research questions, while reducing the incentives for scholars to conduct challenging research. This book challenges this status quo from accepted theories, methodologies and paradigmatic assumptions, to the relevance (or lack of) for contemporary practice and the impact of key journals on scholars’ directions in entrepreneurship research. An invited selection of the younger generation of scholars within the field of entrepreneurship research adopt a critical and constructive posture on what has been achieved in entrepreneurship research, the main assumptions which underly it, but also open-up new paths for creative entrepreneurship research in the future. This is a must-read for all scholars, educators and advanced students in entrepreneurship research.
This Research Agenda aims to offer a coherent and articulate view on the future of entrepreneurship education from an internationally renowned group of scholars and educators.
The SAGE Handbook of Small Business and Entrepreneurship offers state-of-the-art chapters on all aspects of this rapidly-evolving discipline. Original contributions from the best international scholars map the development of Entrepreneurship as an academic field, explore its key current debates and research methods, and also consider its future directions. Part One: The People and the Entrepreneurial Processes Part Two: Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management and Organization Part Three: Entrepreneurial Milieu Part Four: Researching Small Business Entrepreneurship This handbook will be the leading reference book for Entrepreneurship academics and researchers, as well as those from other associated disciplines including business and management, psychology, marketing, sociology and anthropology.
The discussion around whether entrepreneurship can be taught is becoming obsolete as the number of entrepreneurship courses, specializations and degrees is rising at an unprecedented rate all over the world and the demand for entrepreneurial education teachers or instructors is constantly growing. The global community of entrepreneurial education proponents is enthusiastic about the possibility of spreading the idea of entrepreneurship, as it is believed to benefit societies and economies in addition to influencing human development on an individual level. The fervour is nurtured by public policies and the development of an enterprising culture in the public discourse. In this discourse, entrepreneurship is treated as a panacea for numerous social and economic problems. This book is a solid reference point for all who are interested in conducting research on entrepreneurial education or engaged in teaching entrepreneurship. It is a compendium of knowledge about entrepreneurial education as a research field, seen from the perspective of the last four decades, its complete contemporary history. It reviews the progress of the field from the outset to the present in terms of its socio-economic context, changes in the academic community, but also its research focus and methodological development. This uniquely comprehensive book is a resource of both knowledge on entrepreneurial education research and inspiration for future studies within the field. This timely and relevant book provides practical insights for educators when developing their teaching practice and will be of interest to entrepreneurship educators and entrepreneurship education researchers.
This insightful book explores the importance and influence of contextual heterogeneity in the field of entrepreneurship research, illuminating the circumstances, conditions or environments that may enable or constrain entrepreneurship.
