Archives
Editorial
Entrepreneurship Research
Follow the yellow-brick road?
Patricia Corner
Faculty of Business, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand
Kathryn Pavlovich
Waikato Management School, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand
Abstract
If entrepreneurship theory, research, and practice represent Oz at the culmination of the yellow-brick road, Dorothy and her companions have much company on their journey. For example, one source estimates that 460 million people worldwide either start a new business or become the owners of new businesses annually (Reynolds et al 2002). Moreover, entrepreneurship is the fastest growing field of study in tertiary education in North America and Europe (Bygrave 2004) and fifteen specialized scholarly journals disseminate research on the topic globally. Within the policy-making arena, the governments of both Australia and New Zealand seek to promote entrepreneurship as an engine of economic growth. This special issue on entrepreneurship thus appears to be timely and can help to take stock of this topic within our Australasian context. It can also serve as a baseline from which to consider directions for future research in this important area of inquiry.
Historically, research on entrepreneurship has been informed by multiple disciplines. The influence of economics is seen through the ideas of Schumpeter (1976) and Kirzner (1997) especially. For example, Schumpeter's notion of creative destruction described how existing product markets are destroyed by entrepreneurs who create new markets from information asymmetries or other market disequilibria. Contributions from psychology have focused on explaining entrepreneurship as a function of core human characteristics including tolerance for ambiguity (Schere 1982) and need for achievement (McCelland 1961). The discipline of sociology identified properties of the broader external environment that appear to influence the likelihood of entrepreneurial activity occurring. These include competence-destroying technological change (Tushman & Anderson 1986) industry dynamics (Hannan & Freeman 1987), and market structures (Acs & Audretsch 1990).
References
Acs Z & Audretsch D (1990) Small firm entry in US manufacturing, Economica 56: 255-266.
Alvarez SA and Barney J (2005) Discovery and Creation: Implications for practice and policy. Paper presented at the 2005 Enterprise and Innovation Research Conference, Waikato Stadium: Hamilton, New Zealand.
Bygrave W (2004) ‘The entrepreneurial process' In Bygrave W and Zarcharakis A (eds) The Portable MBA in Entrepreneurship, 3rd edn. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons (pp 1-28).
Burgelman R and Sayles L (1986) Inside corporate innovation: Strategy, structure, and managerial skills. New York: The Free Press.
Chan D (1998) Functional relations among constructs in the same content domain at different levels of analysis: A typology of composition models. Journal of Applied Psychology 83: 234-246.
Chen G, Mathieu J and Bliese P (2004) ‘A framework for conducting multilevel construct validation' in Yammarino F and Dansereau F (eds) Research in multi-level issues 3: 273-303 London, Elsevier.
Cohen WM and Levinthal DA (1990) Absorptive capacity: A new perspective on learning and innovation. Administrative Science Quarterly 35: 128-152.
Cope J (2005) Researching entrepreneurship through phenomenological inquiry: Philosophical and methodological issues. International Small Business Journal 23: 163-189.
Corner P and Pavlovich K (2005) Collective Entrepreneurship: Construct Definition and Development. Proceedings of the AGSE (Entrepreneurship Research Exchange), Auckland: Unitec.
Coviello N and Jones M (2004) Methodological issues in international entrepreneurship research. Journal of Business Venturing 19: 485-508.
Davidsson P, Low M, Wright M (2001) Editor's introduction: Low and MacMillan ten years on: Achievements and future directions for entrepreneurship research. Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice Summer, 5-15.
Dess G, Lumpkin G and Covin J (1997) Entrepreneurial strategy making and firm performance:Tests of contingency and configuration models. Strategic Management Journal 18: 677-695.
Grant R and Baden-Fuller C (2004) A knowledge accessing theory of strategic alliances. Journal of Management Studies 41: 61-85.
Hannan M and Freeman J (1987) The ecology of organizational founding: American labor unions, 1836-1975. American Journal of Sociology 92: 910-943.
Hill J and McGowan P (1999) Small business and enterprise development: questions about research methodology. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Research 5: 5-13.
Huse M and Landstrom H (1997) European entrepreneurship and small business research: methodological openness and contextual differences. International Studies of Management and Organizations 27 (Fall): 3-12.
Khilstrom R and Laffont J (1979) A general equilibrium entrepreneurial theory of firm formation based on risk aversion. Journal of Political Economy 87: 719-748.
Kirzner I (1997) Entrepreneurial discovery and the competitive market process: An Austrian Approach, Journal of Economic Literature XXXXV (1) March: 60-85.
Klein K and Koslowski S (2000) Multilevel theory, research, and methods in organizations: Foundations, extensions, and new directions. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc.
Koslowski SWJ and Klein K (2000) ‘A multilevel approach to theory and research in organizations: Contextual, temporal, and emergent processes' in Klein K and Koslowski SWJ (eds) Multilevel theory, research, and methods in organizations: Foundations, extensions, and new directions pp 3-90. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Lant TK and Mezias SJ (1992) An organizational learning model of convergence and reorientation. Organization Science 3: 47-72.
Lubatkin M, Florin J and Lane P (2001) Learning together and apart: A model of reciprocal interfirm learning. Human Relations 54(10): 1353-1382.
McClelland D (1961) The Achieving Society. Princeton, NJ: Van Norstrand.
Mitchell R, Busenitz L, Bird B, Gaglio C, McMullen J, Morse E and Smith JB (2007) The central question in entrepreneurial cognition research 2007. Entrepreneurship, Theory, and Practice 31: 1-27.
Pavlovich K and Corner P (2006) Knowledge Creation Through Co-Entrepreneurship. International Journal of Knowledge Management Studies 1: 178-196.
Reynolds P, Bygrave W, Autio E and Hay M (2002) Global Entrepreneurship Monitor-2002 Summary Report available at http://www.gemconsortium.org/.
Schere J (1982) Tolerance of ambiguity as a discriminating variable between entrepreneurs and managers. Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings 42: 404-408.
Schumpeter J (1976) The process of creative destruction, in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. Chapter VII, London: George Allen & Unwin, pp 81-86.
Shane S and Venkataraman S (2000) The promise of entrepreneurship as a field of research, Academy of Management Review 25: 217-226.
Shane S (2002) Introduction. The Foundations of Entrepreneurship: Volume 1. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Shane S (2003) A General Theory of Entrepreneurship: The Individual-Opportunity Nexus. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Shepherd DA (2003) Learning from business failure: propositions of grief recovery for the self-employed. Academy of Management Review 28(2): 318-328.
Simsek Z and Lubatkin M (2003) Toward a knowledge-based view of entrepreneurial initiatives and performance. Working Paper, School of Business: University of Connecticut.
Spender JC (1996) Organizational knowledge, learning and memory: three concepts in search of a theory. Journal of Organizational Change Management 9: 63-79.
Spender J-C and Grant R (1996) Knowledge and the firm: An overview. Strategic Management Journal 17 (Special Issue): 5-10.
Tushman M and Anderson P (1986) Technological discontinuities and organizational environments. Administrative Science Quarterly 31: 439-465.
Van de Ven A (2007) Engaged Scholarship. Oxford University Press: Oxford.
Van de Ven A (2007) Personal communication between first author and Professor Van de Ven at Academy of Management Meetings, Philadelphia, PA., USA.
Van de Ven A and Johnson P (2006) Knowledge for theory and practice. Academy of Management Review 31: 802-821.
Venkataraman S (1997) The distinctive domain of entrepreneurship research. Advances in Entrepreneurship, Firm Emergence and Growth 3: 119-138.
Venkataraman S and Sarasvathy S (2001) ‘Strategy and entrepreneurship: Outlines of an untold story' in Hitt M, Freeman RE and Harrison J (eds) The Blackwell Handbook of Strategic Management. Oxford: Blackwell (pp 650-668).
West GP (2007) Collective Cognition: When entrepreneurial teams, not individuals, make decisions. Entrepreneurship, Theory, and Practice 31: 77-78.
eContent Home
