G. Dale Meyer, PhD
*Originally prepared for the Journal of Small Business Management (JSBM) Special Edition 49.1. Article adapted to fit the style of this blog and represents ICSB’s new mission to provide more synergy with the journal through outlets where our members can actively discuss JSBM content. You can find the complete JSBM article here –http://www.icsb.org/assets/reinventionofacademicentrepreneurship.pdf.
In the heat of the long “battle” advocating the legitimacy of academic entrepreneurship, few, if any, of we early advocates predicted the great swarm of colleges and universities that now embrace the academic entrepreneurship discipline. Present-and-growing, one now finds academic departments, hybrid departments, institutes, centers and even one encompassing school now focusing on academic entrepreneurship. I celebrate the positive outcome after the long trek for acceptance and support for entrepreneurship in the academic world. That world often is known to resist change (as one long-ago colleague often said “changing a university is like moving a cemetery”). I applaud the teachers and researchers who are currently plowing the ground by teaching entrepreneurial “skills” and researching and publishing “entrepreneurship” content in the huge number of academic journals now open to SME and entrepreneurship subject matter.
My focus here, however, is on a number of “elephants in the room.” I have been known for pointing out such elephants – such as the worship of the rational business plan in curricula; the blind pursuit of magazine entrepreneurship reputation rankings; and that academic entrepreneurship is not the property of B-Schools. Who better to point a few foibles and stumbling blocks than an old guy (Dr. Quandam Erstwhile – look up the words folks).
Elephants and More Elephants
First, with the academic entrepreneurship boom going strong, is it not about time that rigorous measurements of results and accountability be required? Accountability is more than cheer-leading; it is providing metrics to report results that create a platform for improvement. Those academic entrepreneurship programs that are, in fact, conducting rigorous measurement on how entrepreneurship education and research are benefiting students and society should also publish their results in academic journals and in other media that reach important populations. Over 10 years ago in what was then labeled the USASBE Coleman White Paper Series, I spoke of the dangers in magazine reputation rankings. These rankings have proliferated and all PR materials of ranked entrepreneurship programs loudly tout their rankings. Sorry, but rankings are not rigorous metrics to account for the results of academic entrepreneurship.
Second, academic entrepreneurship is constrained by old paradigms that are primarily the products of neoclassical economics and its attendant theories. Another of my former PhD students, Sharon Alvarez of Ohio State, now focuses on theory building in academic entrepreneurship. Alvarez has published articles and a monograph titled Theories of Entrepreneurship (2005). And economist Scott Shane published a book in 2003 titled A General Theory of Entrepreneurship. My point is that, when one examines carefully the scholars and the academic jargon utilized in these efforts at entrepreneurship theory building, it is apparent that economic theory is the overwhelming backbone of what is presented and published. The modern field of strategic management attained legitimacy by assimilating industrial organization economics. Why comment on this? – The Academy of Management Entrepreneurship Division greatly overlaps membership with the AOM Strategic Management Division. This overlap is one of the reasons that Ted Baker was able to assert in Strategic Organization (2007) that “strategy is succeeding in its takeover of the academic field of entrepreneurship”.
Third, academic research in entrepreneurship has forfeited much of its uniqueness at the alter of academic journal publishing leading to tenure. Historically, young PhDs focusing on entrepreneurship were counseled early in their careers before tenure to publish in “A-level” journals. In addition, they were apprised that these journals would not publish entrepreneurship subject content. The validity of this advice can be questioned but, personally, I knew quite a number of young scholars who were denied tenure even though they had published in the available entrepreneurship journals. This perhaps faux situation has changed dramatically partially due to the fact that entrepreneurship journals have transformed themselves to accommodate tenure portfolios. The research designs, database creation, and econometric statistical techniques are the key to the A-level journal count. This transformation to the A-level journal model progression is over 50 years old in business disciplines.
Fourth, it is notable that the topics that are chosen for research are often compatible with easily available secondary databases. Examples of this are the plethora of articles that deal with venture capital, IPOs, and other financial topics. In addition the richly endowed Kauffman Foundation has worked hard to create and lobby for more small business databases to support research in entrepreneurship. This comes as no surprise since the CEO and his research director at Kauffman are educated in economics. But consider the following: Abraham Maslow in a neglected book titled The Psychology of Science (1966) spoke of “problem-centered” and “means/methods-centered” research. In problem-centered research the “messiness” of the research project is put aside because it can create real understanding and advance science. In the “methods-centered” approach to research, one is schooled in “rigorous” methods that are ready to be applied, and then the statistical technician researcher looks for a research problem on which to apply that magical method.
Fifth, entrepreneurship theory building, research, and teaching mostly ignore the effectual creative energy of real entrepreneurs. Some of my colleagues are aware that in addition to my 35 years in academia that I left that world midway in my career to found and successfully grow three thriving entrepreneurial businesses. These are not small hobby businesses but those that eventually catalyzed their way to millions and one to billions of dollars in revenue. I know just a little firsthand about the creative processes of true entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship theory building and research by academics have the potential to understand more. Creativity and creative self-organizing systems are mostly neglected in entrepreneurship curricula. The Neck and Greene paper in this issue of JSBM is worth not only reading but also applying to the teaching of entrepreneurship. It is built on the neglected creative self-organizing process that is so fundamental to entrepreneurship. As I wrap up this essay, I will offer what I consider a new way to theorizing about entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship.
Sixth, another elephant in the room is the blurring of the domains of entrepreneurship and SME management. Pascal Zachary wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times that appeared on June 3, 2007 titled “Creativity and Misfits as the Genesis of Entrepreneurship”. In this editorial Zachary also mentions Kuhn’s analysis of paradigms. Zachary argues that what is often ignored in Kuhn’s theses is that for long stretches of time institutions [for example, research paradigms, small business management, academic research] continue established regimes growing blind to signs that “the times are a-changin.” During these times, quietly in the background are those “creatives” who “see the unseen wind” of a new grand vision. And the contented “gatekeepers” continue to mend their fated garden. Some SME owners and managers are certainly among the creative coterie. However, the SME processes are seldom creative in the same mode as are the most successful and society-changing entrepreneurs. Renowned Professor Jonathan R. T. Hughes in 1983 stated the following about how Professor A. C. Cole, who founded and directed the Harvard Center for Entrepreneurship History from 1948-1958. Cole defined what entrepreneurship research should focus upon. Hughes quotes Cole as follows:
“The study of entrepreneurship is similar to the study of creativity in any field, for example, musical composition. On the grand scale of Schumpeter’s conception (“creative destruction”) to the more modest approach of Kirzner (the entrepreneur as arbitrager), it is creativity, originality which should be the central focus of entrepreneurial studies. The entrepreneurial contribution is precisely that of original perception, new ideas, new departures. The unexpected is made to happen.”
(Hughes, 1983, p. 136).
A New Paradigm for Entrepreneurship Research Teaching at the Back Door!
My personal view is that both economists and economist wanna’ be’s who are the current gatekeepers in entrepreneurship are leading others down a dead-end road. How many quite brilliant people who are not economists now read economics journals? Are entrepreneurship journals migrating down the same dead-end road that economics journals continue to travel? I say yes, but a new paradigm is rustling in the bushes.
In my opinion: (a) the academic field of entrepreneurship is “stalled” in both research and teaching; (b) modified economic theory and secondary database/model testing/econometric methodologies distance researchers from actual people and behaviors that catalyze entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship; (c) small business management and entrepreneurship are different phenomena – if entrepreneurship is everything, maybe it is nothing; (e) substantive entrepreneurship research is best created utilizing interdisciplinary theories and methods; and, (f) tenure and its gatekeepers are the “elephants in the room” that preclude more innovative and meaningful research and teaching in the field of entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurship scholarship has, so far, mostly excluded rigorous examinations of complexity science. I highly recommend Bill McKelvey’s article in Journal of Business Venturing in 2004.
I think you may have something. The trouble is that for us academic types, we have to live in the world you outline in your article and until we are able to establish Entrepreneurship as a distinct discipline in the B-School we will continue to have these problems. I say that making Entrepreneurship a legitimate discipline, and not a part of Strategic Management, or something else, is something we must strive for. The way to legitimize it is to have it recogized as such by the appropriate agencies and groups such as the AACSB as a part of the curriculum for business which it currently is not. Ethics is; gkobalization is; marketing and accounting are; and even human resources has developed a program through SHRM to recognize HR as a legitimate part of the curriculum with a highly developed major. Entrepreneurship comes in under the heading of “Other” in the AACSB Accreditation Standards. We entrepreneurship educators need to achieve a level of recognition and legitimacy that will lead to recognition by the business academy before we can start establishing our own criteria for tenure and promotion and the type of research and publication that will support those efforts. Without that recognition and legitimacy we will continue to be subject to the paradigms of the other disciplines, no matter how inappropriate they may be to entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship educators play in the same league as the other B-School academics. We are, in many ways, the expansion team and often in the position of the visiting team where we are playing in other team’s ballparks. Right now we are still playing by their ground rules. Until we are able to establish our legitimacy, have our own ballpark if you will, and the other disciplines have to come to our place to play, we will be forced to always play by their groundrules. That is why establishing entrepreneurship as a legitimate discipline in the business academy is so important. We cannot be a “sub-discipline.” We need to be an established discipline and recognized as such.
It was a delight to read the deeply insightful and refreshingly candid assessment by Dr. Meyer on academic entrepreneurship. I agree with his analysis and in particular his statement that “entrepreneurship theory building, research, and teaching mostly ignore the effectual creative energy of real entrepreneurs”. I have a deep interest in academic entrepreneurship, but I live in the world of real entrepreneurs. Having attended couple of USASBE conferences and having sat through many presentations of selected research papers, I find it difficult to point to a single study presented that would of practical significance to the world of practice. Data bases used in many cases were irrelevant and in many cases researchers seemed eager to impose their quantitative skills on a problem that was based on contrived hypotheses. Therefore I am happy to see well respected academicians such as Dr Meyers and few others like Dr Bygrave before him, call a spade a spade. I believe that what entrepreneurship education and research needs is a dose of reality. I question if an applied subject like entrepreneurship can be effectively taught by a academic with no real world experience in the filed? While I do respect any one who can complete a Ph.d and teach, just imagine how much more effective they would be if they had actually been part of a start up team, taken real risks, foregone a paycheck, ran a payroll or actually made a sale. For the progress of the field I believe that there has to be stronger bridge build between researchers and practitioners.
As a total non-academic, an SME and a lobbyist and advocate on SME issues Meyer’s analysis is refreshing. We (www.contractworld.com.au) have been searching for academics with whom we can partner in our lobbying for global reform of government policies and approaches to SMEs. It’s been staggeringly frustrating finding an academia, frankly that seems too often highly disconnected from the very population it alleges to be studying. It’s also been refreshing discovering some academics in the field who well and trully recognise the elephants in the room as described by Meyer. I attended my first ever academic conference (ISBC in Taiwan) and was staggered by Ken O’Neill’s analysis of failed government policies towards SME entrepreneurship.http://www.contractworld.com.au/ilo/small-business-policy-failure-ISCB.php. I’m foolish enough to think that there are clear solutions. But from what I’ve observed and Meyer seems to confirm is that there’s a lack of innovation and entrepreneurship within the very academia that’s supposed to be studying and teaching innovation and entrepreneurship. Am I too harsh?
Dr. Meyer has addressed an issue that has the potential to keep me awake at night. Indeed, the shortcomings of entrepreneurship research and the lacking establishment of entrepreneurship as a distinct field in its own right – as mentioned by Fred Maidment – root in systematic causes. Concerned by to those systematic causes let me add some more elephants to the room:
[PhD Education] With regard to these systematic causes I presented a paper at a conference in 2011 (the “Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship International Research Exchange”) on 1) why PhD students and other research scholars in entrepreneurship need to establish a new approach to defining research topics and 2) how this could be done if entrepreneurship research is to be cured. In short I argue as followed:
[Transients] One of the systematic causes hindering entrepreneurship research to become a well-established academic field of its own is based on the fact that the majority of entrepreneurship professors in the current generation have earned their PhD in many different fields (e.g. marketing, finance, strategy, organizational theory, economics, physics, sociology, engineering to name just a few) but not in entrepreneurship. Even though they have moved to a new phenomenon, they predominantly stick with the paradigms of their origins (see Landström 2005 on “transients” in entrepreneurship research).
[External paradigms] This results in PhD instructors who pass on paradigms which are not grounded in entrepreneurship research but in economics, marketing, finance, or whatever field in science instructors have their origins in. That’s why often PhD theses and other research papers do not address entrepreneurship at its core but rather re-combinations of existing fields with some empirical phenomena of entrepreneurship.
[Tempted by multiple career opportunities] PhD students are tempted by those external paradigms because sticking with them keeps a back door open on their career path. If employment chances in the academic field of entrepreneurship stall, one can still apply for positions in the other, the re-combined field, e.g. marketing, finance, economics etc. The PhD thesis will then indicate that one is a scholar who has taken a PhD not just in entrepreneurship, but in marketing, finance, economics etc.
[Researching entrepreneurship at its core] We need a new generation of scholars who are willing to take the risk of conducting entrepreneurship research at the core of the field, not just at the intersections with other fields. Past years have seen slow but considerable progress in establishing original cores of entrepreneurship research, such as entrepreneurial opportunity (e.g Kirzner 1979, Shane & Venkatarman 2000, Sarasvathy et al. 2002, Eckhardt & Shane 2003, Blenker & Thrane-Jensen 2007), entrepreneurial effectuation (e.g. Sarasvathy 2001a, 2001b, 2004), entrepreneurial orientation (e.g. Covin & Slevin 1986), entrepreneurial intention (e.g. Boyd 1994, Douglas 2002), and entrepreneurial management (e.g. Stevenson 1984, Stevenson & Gumpert 1985). As empirical measuring of those core concepts improves (e.g. Lumpkin & Dess 1996, Knight 1997, Brown, Davidsson & Wiklund 2001) we are in the phase of moving the field from “anything goes” (Feyerabend 1976 & 1993) towards “hard cores” in science (Lakatos 1970).
[Core concepts remain theoretically underdeveloped, not operationalized for empirical validation, and unchallenged by empirical testing] However, many core characteristics of entrepreneurship have remained almost unaddressed by entrepreneurship scholars so far, so there is still much more work to be done in developing and shaping the core concepts of the field. E.g. we still have hardly fully understood how entrepreneurial opportunities really arise (recognized, discovered, created, enacted etc.) and how to operationalize the term “entrepreneurial opportunity” for empirical research. Other concepts that are well established have remained unchallenged by empirical testing. For instance our dominant perception of the ideal typical entrepreneurial life cycle is the one of a linear sequence in multiple steps in a certain order with a final destination. This framework needs to be challenged by empirical validation more intensely and probably needs to undergo reassessment (see Perényi et al. 2011).
[Adding relevance to rigor] Last but not least, research scholars in entrepreneurship research need to add relevance to rigor. I agree with the previous comment by Ken Phillips. His arguments are linked to Dr. Meyer’s notion on the influence of economics on entrepreneurship research. I recall a scientist who presented a paper at a conference in Lisbon (Portugal) he was so proud to show. He was able to explain 0.5% more of GDP than previous researchers did – by improving the term for entrepreneurial activity in his equation. Even though I understand that this kind of fundamental research is very important (and I truly appreciate the superior intellectual capabilities needed for such an achievement), I still believe that the paper was a great piece of macroeconomic research, not of entrepreneurship research. Especially entrepreneurship scholars with an interest in economics often tend to examine macroeconomic variables which cannot be influenced by either entrepreneurs or policy makers. Hence they deliver rigid analyzes and robust results, but without any practical impact since the independent variables of their models are out of reach for managerial or political action. Instead, entrepreneurship scholars should be reminded on a discussion that arose at the Academy of Management after Goshal’s (2005) article on how bad management theory destroyed good management practice by being based on false assumptions. Furthermore Vermeulen (2007) called for management research that is not only rigid but also relevant. This call is due for entrepreneurship research too (see Davidsson 2002). PhD students need to be guided to work with realistic assumptions and to analyze variables which can be influenced by entrepreneurs. Then, entrepreneurship research as well as entrepreneurship researchers “shall not remain insignificant”.
Dr. Sean Patrick Sassmannshausen
Schumpeter School of Business and Economics
University of Wuppertal, Germany
PS: For more details and list of references see the conference proceeding mentioned above, published on the internet:
1) for full paper go to: http://www.swinburne.edu.au/lib/ir/onlineconferences/agse2011/000144.pdf)
2) for information on how to cite the proceedings go to:
http://www.swinburne.edu.au/business/agse/conference/entrepreneurship-research-exchange/proceedings/
Dr Sean: Thanks for sharing your findings. All excellent recommendations. I will like to add that of all your recommendations, perhaps the relevance of research to practice is perhaps the largest elephant in the room. Maybe if we can get more researchers to team-up with entrepreneurs and do more field studies of real issues faced by entrepreneurs, we can start to close the gap a little.