The social structure of entrepreneurship as a scientific field

Hans Landström and Gouya Harirchi

Research Policy, 2018, vol. 47, issue 3, 650-662

Abstract: Entrepreneurship as a scientific field has grown significantly, irrespective of the measures used. In this article we raise the question: How can we understand the evolution and success of entrepreneurship as a scholarly field? In particular, we focus on the social structure of entrepreneurship scholars to explain (1) how they are becoming integrated into larger scholarly communities and (2) how they differ from the way scholars integrate within the field of innovation studies. Based on a unique database and responses from 870 entrepreneurship scholars, we demonstrate that entrepreneurship can be regarded as a phenomenon-driven field bound together by a shared communication system and social interaction rather than strong theoretical influences, i.e., a social scholarly community. We identify two broader social communities; one embedded in entrepreneurship conferences that includes a rather eclectic group of entrepreneurship scholars, and another related to entrepreneurship journals and entrepreneurship economics, characterized by a stronger domain orientation. In contrast, scholars in innovation studies tend to be more theory-driven and are bound together by their disciplinary and theoretical background, i.e., an intellectual scholarly community.

Keywords: Scientific fields; Entrepreneurship; Innovation; Scholarly community; Networks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 M0 O39 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:respol:v:47:y:2018:i:3:p:650-662

DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2018.01.013

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