Entrepreneurship Theories

Guest Post by: Antje Fiedler Power lets actors influence others towards desired ends. Power provides an alternative lens on entrepreneurship to institutional, networks and cognition lenses from an economic sociology perspective. Our introductory conceptualisation surfaces multifaceted dynamics of this fundamental force that most entrepreneurship literature, unlike social sciences and management, treats somewhat loosely, latently or lopsidedly. Power “comes from everywhere” (Foucault, 1978, p. 96). Not only well-resourced states and legacy firms, but entrepreneurs can shape the perception and development of entrepreneurial opportunities and potentially influence power structures.   In Audretsch and Fiedler (2023), we pioneer a power lens for entrepreneurship research comprising three forms, two overarching types and three main actor groups. First, building on Wrong’s (2017) work in sociology yields three forms of power. Coercive power imposes on subjects’ will via rules, dominance, ...

“Who am I?” / “ Who are we? ” Social identity theory (SIT) has long been a mainstay of social psychological thinking about politics and human behaviour in general. SIT is at its core a theory about in-groups and out-groups, as easily formed social constructions that can manifest with real consequences. Consider football hooligans beating each other over their team colours. We all have multiple identities, and some scholars propose that the more central one's entrepreneurial identity, compared with family and other identities, the more likely they will start a venture, grow a startup, or developing a capability ( Hayter et a., 2021) . In entrepreneurship, SIT is pointed at the entrepreneurial identity, defined as a set of attitudes, beliefs and behaviours reinforcing being an entrepreneur. According to Shepherd et al. (2018) "a meaningful self-identity is central to individuals’ psychological functioning and well-being" "I am an Entrepreneur" The liter...

International entrepreneurship may be unique domain or phenomenon differentiated from mainstream entrepreneurship research by its cross-border and cross-cultural dimensions. It may be viewed as a sub-field of international business, or as a cross-disciplinary areas between international business, entrepreneurship and strategy. It may also be thought of as a taxonomic theory . According to Oviatt and McDougall (2005): "International entrepreneurship is the discovery, enactment, evaluation, and exploitation of opportunities—across national borders—to create future goods and services." Jones et al. (2011) reviewed 323 international entrepreneurship articles and classified them into three types into three major types.  1) Entrepreneurial Internationalization research is concerned with the internationalization process and the role of networks (including social capital), and organizational issues and entrepreneurship. The goal is to understand how entrepreneurs internationalize th...

"75% of entrepreneurs in 48 economies around the world said that their family was involved in starting their businesses, either as co-managers or co-owners. The vast majority of startups around the world are, in fact, family businesses." - Babson Entrepreneurship has non-economic dimensions as a vehicle for legacy or building family institutions. Many aging entrepreneurs wish to pass the business to the next generation, while other feels to pull of the family business as they reach maturity.  However, it's not all about succession! Family entrepreneurship is about families building businesses together, often for the first time. Perhaps one of the most interesting characteristics of families is their ability to pool together resources to spawn new ventures that achieve family goals (Chrisman et al., 2003).  Randerson et al. (2015) propose a number of interesting new topics for family entrepreneurship scholars to pursue. They suggest researching 'copreneurs', ...

When we think about a digital entrepreneur, we might imagine a single person making millions of dollars through a fully automated website or app. That seems very different from the traditional view of entrepreneurship as a process of organization-building. Where is the organization in digital entrepreneurship? Zaheer et al. (2019) review the literature and find that focus on 'digital entrepreneurship' is relatively new, starting in 2013. Before that, the research attention was on the transformation of business models due to the spread of the internet and the rise of e-commerce. It only became a big topic when entrepreneurs in the digital space started making waves with digital business models that have very small human organizational footprints. There has been a growing movement to distinguish digital entrepreneurship from traditional types of entrepreneurship. For example, Kraus et al. (2019) stimulate attention to digital entrepreneurship by suggesting that we need new the...