Entrepreneurial Theorizing: An Approach to Research

ISBN-13: 9783031240478 / Angielski / Miękka / 2023 / 210 str.

Dean A. Shepherd; Holger Patzelt

Opis

This open access book investigates an entrepreneurial approach to building new theories. It provides a rich understanding of how specific tools facilitate aspects of the theorizing process and offers a clearer big picture of the process of building important new entrepreneurship theories. The authors show that anthropomorphizing has been a critically important tool for developing influential entrepreneurship theories. They reveal how scholars build on their rich and highly accessible understanding of humans (i.e., the self and others) to make guesses and sense of entrepreneurial anomalies, articulate theoretical mechanisms to build more robust entrepreneurship theories, and create plausible stories that facilitate sensegiving. Further, they offer a framework that guides entrepreneurship scholars in finding a balance to maximize their contributions and guides reviewers and editors in managing the revise-and-resubmit process to advance the entrepreneurship field. Finally, they present lean scholarship as an approach to developing a portfolio of high-quality, high-impact papers. Lean scholarship starts with an entrepreneurial mindset and involves creating a minimum viable paper, exploring its validity, adding a plausible paper to one’s portfolio, and managing the portfolio by periodically deciding whether to persevere, pivot, or terminate each paper. This seminal work will appeal to entrepreneurship researchers, both those new to the field as well as seasoned veterans, who want to learn more about the tools that can be used to generate new knowledge about new ventures and other entrepreneurship topics.

Spis treści

Chapter 1: Theorizing and Entrepreneurship[1]

Building theories is essential for advancing knowledge of entrepreneurship. But it is also a highly challenging task. Although there is considerable advice on the many theorizing tools available, we lack a coherent understanding of how these tools fit together.  This chapter highlights the literature on theory building around the five critical elements of a good story: conflict, character, setting, sequence, and plot and arc. We offer advice on when to use a particular tool and which combination of tools can be used in the theorizing process. This chapter provides a rich understanding of how specific tools facilitate aspects of the theorizing process and a clearer big picture of the process of building new entrepreneurship theories. We also offer an approach that uses quantitative empirical findings to stimulate theorizing on entrepreneurial anomalies.

 

Chapter 2: Generating Ideas for Entrepreneurial Theorizing[2]

The future of the entrepreneurship field is bright primarily because of the many research opportunities to make a difference.  However, as scholars, how can we find these opportunities and choose those most likely to contribute to the literature?  This chapter explains me-search as a tool for generating or finding research opportunities to advance entrepreneurship.  Me-search focuses scholarly attention on issues from one’s personal experiences as a valuable tool for generating research opportunities in which one has personal knowledge and is motivated to see it through to publication. In conducting me-search, we highlight the importance of solving a practical problem, problematizing, contextualizing, and abstracting entrepreneurship research, and using empirical theorizing to explore entrepreneurial phenomena.  We hope that this chapter gives scholars the direction to find research opportunities and the confidence to pursue them. 

 

Chapter 3: Anthropomorphizing for Entrepreneurial Theorizing[3]

In this chapter, we show how anthropomorphizing has been a critically important tool for developing influential theories in entrepreneurship. Analyzing the literatures related to an organization’s entrepreneurial orientation and organizational knowledge reveals how scholars build on their rich and highly accessible understanding of humans (i.e., the self and others) to (1) make guesses and sense of entrepreneurial anomalies at the organizational level, (2) articulate theoretical mechanisms to build more robust entrepreneurship theories, and (3) create plausible stories that facilitate sensegiving to editors, reviewers, and other audiences. However, anthropomorphizing does not always lead to such positive outcomes. We conclude the chapter with a discussion of the conditions under which entrepreneurship scholars’ anthropomorphizing will be more or less effective.

 

Chapter 4: Managing Trade-offs in Entrepreneurial Theorizing[4]

While several editors and scholars have shared critical insights into the craft of writing a theory paper, there is an essential aspect of publishing a theory paper that is less understood: the process by which expert reviewers and authors engage in the review process, which has a significant influence on theory.  We identify three major challenges of entrepreneurship theorizing: (1) the scope of the entrepreneurship paper’s theorizing being either too narrow or too shallow; (2) the common features of the paper’s contextualization, boundary conditions, and time considerations; and (3) the “point of view” of the entrepreneurship paper’s perspective—theoretical, philosophical, level, and purpose. This chapter offers a framework that guides (1) entrepreneurship scholars to find a balance to maximize their contributions and (2) reviewers and editors in managing the revise-and-resubmit process to advance the entrepreneurship field.

 

Chapter 5: Writing Entrepreneurial-Theorizing Outcomes[5]

There are several excellent “From the Editor” notes, but we offer something more hands-on with a perspective directly applicable to entrepreneurship in this chapter. We believe that sometimes papers are rejected, not because the research is fundamentally flawed but because authors miss some of the fundamentals of a strong paper. Therefore, this chapter aims to offer some advice on writing entrepreneurship papers. We offer (1) 11 simple rules for constructing an entrepreneurship paper; (2) six templates for what is to be included in each section of an entrepreneurship paper and provide illustrations of how we have previously executed these tasks; and (3) five heuristics for improving one’s writing quality. 

 

Chapter 6: Inductive-Top-Down Entrepreneurial Theorizing[6]

Given the limitations of traditional deductive and inductive approaches, it is not surprising to find repeated calls for improvements to theorizing, including entrepreneurship. Bringing inductive methods to bear on a top-down approach to theorizing can circumvent several limitations. Building on coherence theory and a pragmatist tradition, we explain an inductive model of top-down theorizing that can be a source of new theories of entrepreneurship. We propose that inductive top-down theorizing begins with data contained in the Literature from which problems (tensions, conflicts, and/or contradictions) and potential solutions (literature, theories, constructs, relationships) emerge to offer a description and then a coherent resolution of a research problem, ultimately constituting a new entrepreneurship theory.

 

Chapter 7: A Lean Approach to Entrepreneurial Theorizing[7]

We offer lean scholarship as an approach to developing a portfolio of high-quality, high-impact papers. Indeed, our scholarly identity is typically generated and reinforced by our portfolio of published papers than by any one paper.  Lean scholarship refers to iterative experimentation, stakeholder engagement, and collective learning in generating a portfolio of papers. This scholarship starts with an entrepreneurial mindset and involves creating a minimum viable paper, exploring its validity, adding a plausible paper to the portfolio, and managing the portfolio by periodically deciding whether to persevere, pivot, or terminate each paper. Therefore, this chapter moves away from our emphasis on a single paper to think more broadly about the entrepreneurial process of constructing and managing a portfolio of entrepreneurship studies.  This approach is essential for those with limited financial, social, and time resources.

1 This chapter is written by Shepherd, Suddaby, and Patzelt.  It is based on Shepherd, D.A. and Suddaby, R. (2017). Theory building: A review and integration.  Journal of Management 43: 59-86.

 

[2] This chapter is written by Shepherd, Wiklund, Dimov and Patzelt.  It is based on Shepherd, D. A., Wiklund, J., & Dimov, D. (2021). Envisioning Entrepreneurship’s Future: Introducing Me-Search and Research Agendas. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice 45(5): 955-966.

[3] This chapter is written by Shepherd, Sutcliffe, and Patzelt.  It is based on Shepherd, D.A., and Sutcliffe, K.M. (2015). “The Use of Anthropomorphizing as a Tool for Generating Organizational Theories.” Academy of Management Annals 9: 97-142.

[4] This chapter is written by Shepherd, Williams, and Patzelt.  It is based on Shepherd, D. A., & Williams, T. Does it need to be broader or deeper?  Trade-offs in entrepreneurship theorizing. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice in press.

[5] This chapter is written by Shepherd, Wiklund and Patzelt.  It is based on Shepherd, D.A. and Wiklund, J. (2020). Simple rules, templates, and heuristics! An attempt to deconstruct the craft of writing an entrepreneurship paper. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice 371-390.

[6] This chapter is written by Shepherd, Sutcliffe, and Patzelt.  It is based on Shepherd, D.A. and Sutcliffe, K.S. (2011). “Inductive top-down theorizing: A source of new theories of organization.” Academy of Management Review 36 (2): 361-380.

[7] This chapter is based on Shepherd and Patzelt.  Lean Scholarship. Small Business Economics, 1-21.

 

O autorze

Dean A. Shepherd is the Ray and Milann Siegfried Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Mendoza College of Business, Notre Dame University, USA. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Business Venturing and has published over 180 scholarly journal articles and 23 books on entrepreneurship.

Holger Patzelt is Chair in Entrepreneurship at the School of Management, Technical University of Munich, Germany. He is currently an Associate Editor of Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice.  His research interests include entrepreneurial cognition and economic, emotional and psychological consequences of failure.

Blurb

This open access book investigates an entrepreneurial approach to building new theories. It provides a rich understanding of how specific tools facilitate aspects of the theorizing process and offers a clearer big picture of the process of building important new entrepreneurship theories. The authors show that anthropomorphizing has been a critically important tool for developing influential entrepreneurship theories. They reveal how scholars build on their rich and highly accessible understanding of humans (i.e., the self and others) to make guesses and sense of entrepreneurial anomalies, articulate theoretical mechanisms to build more robust entrepreneurship theories, and create plausible stories that facilitate sensegiving. Further, they offer a framework that guides entrepreneurship scholars in finding a balance to maximize their contributions and guides reviewers and editors in managing the revise-and-resubmit process to advance the entrepreneurship field. Finally, they present lean scholarship as an approach to developing a portfolio of high-quality, high-impact papers. Lean scholarship starts with an entrepreneurial mindset and involves creating a minimum viable paper, exploring its validity, adding a plausible paper to one’s portfolio, and managing the portfolio by periodically deciding whether to persevere, pivot, or terminate each paper. This seminal work will appeal to entrepreneurship researchers, both those new to the field as well as seasoned veterans, who want to learn more about the tools that can be used to generate new knowledge about new ventures and other entrepreneurship topics.

Dean A. Shepherd is the Ray and Milann Siegfried Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Mendoza College of Business, Notre Dame University, USA. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Business Venturing and has published over 180 scholarly journal articles and 23 books on entrepreneurship.

Holger Patzelt is Chair in Entrepreneurship at the School of Management, Technical University of Munich, Germany. He is currently an Associate Editor of Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice.  His research interests include entrepreneurial cognition and economic, emotional and psychological consequences of failure.