Abstract
Many entrepreneurship scholars call for greater methodological and theoretical innovation and plurality in entrepreneurship research, the lack of which has implications for Academia, policy and practice. This edited book Nurturing Modalities of Inquiry in Entrepreneurship Research endeavours to bridge the relevance gap between theory and practice by questioning assumptions, methodologies, analyses and practices of entrepreneurship research and teaching. The book unfolds through 16 chapters, offering a space to reflexively consider questions and assumptions in the researching and teaching of entrepreneurship. The collection is framed around three critical questions with contributors from across the globe speaking to them respectively through modalities of inquiry.
The first is the questioning of our assumptions as scholars, who we are and what we want to achieve.
In Chapter 2, Parkkari offers a personal account of the multi-faceted nature of academic writing in entrepreneurship research to make the writing process more visible. Interestingly, the learned practice of academic writing, deeply intertwined with the formation of academic identity, is at odds with the act of being entrepreneurial in our writing and we are urged to be daring and to boldly experiment with different styles, forms, voices and methods.
Boughattas and Tornikowski in Chapter 3, seek to develop a deeper understanding of the lived experience of entrepreneurial individuals. Through a reflexive confessional tale, the authors show how their own experiences have shaped the research process and analysis. To achieve data congruence in qualitative fieldwork, they assert that greater attention to the subjects’ feelings and non-verbal signals, as well as what they say and do, is needed as this is largely absent from traditional methods of data collection.
Chapter 4 furthers the discussion by looking at ‘non-core’ areas of prevailing methodological approaches with Johnson locating the debate in entrepreneurial ecosystems research and policy development. Critical realism is put forward as a framework to understand the dynamics of this ecosystem from which researchers and policymakers can work together to generate successful context-relevant entrepreneurial activity.
The final chapter in this section by Wapshott and Mallett continues with a critical realist research philosophy in relation to policy development arguing for the unrealised potential of methodologies rooted in this approach to inform impactful future enterprise policies.
The second section questions what makes sense of how we live and experience our own and other voices and conversations.
Through the use of visual methods, Preedy and McLuskie, in their chapter, explore entrepreneurial identity from their perspectives as researchers. Whilst acknowledging such methods may involve individual bias, cultural interpretation and potential power dynamics, they highlight the playful engaging approach, proffering the opportunity to make research more accessible, particularly for non-native English speakers. To mitigate some of the pitfalls, they call for further exploration of visual methodologies to provide guidelines and protocols to ensure rigour and authenticity.
Chapter 7 further investigates the lived experience of entrepreneurs through an approach developed by the authors, Williams and Pritchard called ‘brickstorming’ whereby Lego was used during interviews as part of a study employing interpretive, phenomenological analysis to understand how entrepreneurs become employers. The chapter builds on prior discussions of visual methods, suggesting that scrutinising the interactive dynamics of interviews can uncover new insights applicable to other approaches.
Kaffka and Krueger, in Chapter 8, look at why diary data analysis can help significantly enhance inquiry into the inter-subjective aspects of entrepreneurial opportunities. They argue this modality of inquiry presents a very relevant yet, largely ignored method of studying inter-subjective dimensions of entrepreneurial agency. They aim to demonstrate how the diary data collection method provides opportunities for inquiry into relevant entrepreneurship phenomena.
In Chapter 9, Olphin, Larty and Tyfield examine the methodological challenges of studying place in entrepreneurship research. Despite widespread recognition of place-based approaches to regional sustainability challenges, its methodological exploration has been limited. Reflecting on engagement with stakeholders in a place-based university programme highlights the difficulties in articulating the meaning of place, emphasising its complexity in entrepreneurial inquiry and its role in shaping sustainability initiatives.
In the final chapter of this section, Foliard et al. further advance the discussion on using materials to elicit meaning in research interviews through collage as a creative qualitative method for data collection. As a visual medium, it allows for the exploration of complex ideas, with semiotic analysis recommended to uncover its deeper meanings. A notable contribution is the means to express personal emotions capturing multi-layered insights that might otherwise remain hidden in traditional data collection methods.
The third section questions the understanding of our relationship with the dynamic and emergent nature of our social world. Here we are confronted with modalities of inquiry through inductive methods of ethnography and grounded theory.
In Chapter 11, Lindvert provides compelling insights from stories of women in the global South and their unique contexts, alongside her own reflective accounts of ethnographic research and analysis. Power dynamics and ethical considerations are brought to the fore, urging a critical examination of existing entrepreneurship theories. A challenge is posed to us to move beyond narrow, Western-centric perspectives, advocating for a more inclusive and nuanced understanding of entrepreneurship.
The next two chapters, 12 and 13, debate the role of grounded theory in research design and analysis. Schmidt and Santamaria-Alvarez take a metaphor of ‘warp and weft’ to reflect on their experience of studying the unfolding processes in international new ventures highlighting the usefulness of diaries and interviews. In the uncertain and turbulent environment of the start-up process, a witness approach is presented to draw attention to the constantly shifting interpretations that entrepreneurs have of their past, present and future.
Arboleya explores the methodological choices in grounded theory in the study of Mexican immigrant entrepreneurs in Quebec, Canada. As well as a contribution to the study of immigrant entrepreneurship through selection of study territory, of particular interest is the unexplored area of the dominant role of language in grounded theory. English is the language in which grounded theory was conceived yet three languages are used in the methods and data collection and analysis of the corpus of information. The author brings to the fore the methodological choices exploring the process of business creation by immigrants which is underexplored.
The purpose of Chapter 14 by Ellborg and Nybye is to take an inter-subjective route of inquiry to explore pedagogical choices of entrepreneurship education tools, using the Business Model Canvas as an example. They address how methodological reflection can help uncover values and preconceptions that have wider consequences in the classroom. In doing so, they hope to encourage the practice of research and teaching to continuously inquire into the various entrepreneurship, phenomena, asking why we use the tools we do.
In the final chapter of this section, Gross puts forward critical reflexivity as an exercise to explore entrepreneurship-as-practice researchers’ beliefs and identity, and tease out their relationships with the discipline. The author draws attention to the danger of stagnation in the discipline if we fail to engage with the ideologies that underpin everyday work urging researchers to be curious and questioning of our role in entrepreneurship’s ideological apparatus.
The book finishes with an epilogue summarising the goal of the book to stimulate discussion, share practice and explore new approaches to inquiry seeing the world through the contributors’ eyes. The epilogue aims to provoke thinking and action towards how we intentionally create a movement towards a world worth living in for all highlighting the role of entrepreneurship in un/sustainable development calling for the need for new modes of inquiry that puts the world at the centre.
This book is a valuable addition to the quest of developing a plurality of methodologies and inquiry in entrepreneurship research and teaching, urging us to be entrepreneurial and innovative in our endeavour, indeed in the very practice of writing about it. It is perhaps axiomatic to suggest that such entrepreneurial behaviour is at odds with mainstream scholarly practice, academic identity and the rules of academic writing and publishing. How then do we address this tension and advance the field of entrepreneurship in our actual practice?
The editors want to equip the readers with the confidence to generate and interpret findings with a view towards creating an impact on policy and practice. However, the contributors could go further in offering practical suggestions to speak to the very call for challenging methodological rigidity and prompting novel approaches. Some attention is paid to policy although recognising policy makers are not the main readership. This could be taken further in a future call to bring in the voices of policymakers and entrepreneurs to offer a rounded approach to making a difference in scholarship and practice. Similarly, some attention is given to the sustainability agenda, inclusive entrepreneurship and a tentative step towards acknowledging the growing influence of artificial intelligence in academic writing. These are increasingly important areas to expand on in the domain of entrepreneurship and the intersection of reflexivity and methodology to further our practice as researchers and educators.
