Does It Need to be Broader or Deeper? Trade-Offs in Entrepreneurship Theorizing

Abstract

Given the importance of theorizing about an entrepreneurial phenomenon, we seek to highlight the common challenges of entrepreneurship papers’ theorizing and offer suggestions for how we (as a community of scholars) can address these challenges to develop more robust and impactful entrepreneurship papers to advance the entrepreneurship field. Specifically, we identify the following major reviewer comments of entrepreneurship papers regarding their scope, common features (i.e., contextualization, boundary conditions, and time considerations), and “point of view”. Elaborating on these common comments of entrepreneurship theory papers, we offer guidance on incorporating these insights when writing or reviewing entrepreneurship papers.

Managing Trade-Offs in Entrepreneurial Theorizing

“…Figure 4.1 portrays our understanding of papers with different depthto-breadth ratios (Shepherd & Williams, 2022). However, it is important to note that each paper covers an optimal amount of explanatory terrain and contributes to the entrepreneurship literature.…”

“…Therefore, in this chapter, we aim to answer the following questions: what trade-offs do scholars face when engaging in entrepreneurial theorizing, and how can these trade-offs be managed to generate more robust and impactful entrepreneurship papers and further the field of entrepreneurship? In answering these questions, we outline three main challenges associated with entrepreneurship papers that provide a foundation for improving contributions to knowledge: (1) the scope of the entrepreneurial theorizing (either too narrow or too shallow); (2) the common features of a paper's contextualization, boundary conditions , and time considerations ; and (3) the point of view of an entrepreneurship paper's perspective-theoretical, philosophical, level, and purpose (Shepherd & Williams, 2022). In formulating our arguments on the major trade-offs of papers' entrepreneurial theorizing, we apply a mapping metaphor to demonstrate how each of the above themes affects the overarching "domain" of an entrepreneurship paper's contribution.…”

“…In this chapter (and the original article[Shepherd & Williams, 2022]), we draw on multiple sources to assess criticisms, including Academy of Management Review dialogues, editorials on theory development, and other review articles that explore theorizing. These critiques are of theory papers published in AMR.…”