Entrepreneurship as a family resemblance concept: A Wittgensteinian approach to the problem of defining entrepreneurship

Leunbach, Daniel

doi:10.1016/j.scaman.2021.101141

Cited by 12 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 74 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…That is, “sciences” can be grouped together by open-ended features that are shared by some members, but not all the features need to be shared amongst all members. Apart from the famous example of “games” used by Wittgenstein himself, scholars in different fields have since capitalised on its explanatory power to provide definitions of abstract concepts such as fine art (Weitz, 1956 ), religion (Saler, 1999 ), power (Haugaard, 2010 ), fascism (Eco, 1995 ), literary genres (Fishelov, 1991 ), intellectual property (George, 2012 ) and entrepreneurship (Leunbach, 2021 ), which demonstrates the fruitfulness of family resemblances in understanding complex concepts. John Dupré was amongst the first to note the potential of family resemblance in explaining what science is.…”

Section: What Science Is and Is Notmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is There a Limit to Resemblances?

Park

Brock

2022

Sci & Educ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The notion of family resemblance has recently emerged as a promising and fruitful approach to characterising the nature of science (NOS) in science education research, offering solutions to some perplexing challenges such as capturing both the domain-general and domain-specific features of science with a single framework. At the same time, however, criticism has been levelled that the resemblance might eventually extend to certain activities that are not scientific but pose as science. This would be an undesirable consequence for science educators, particularly given the increasing need for individuals to discern pseudoscientific claims circulated on social media from scientific information. Many pseudoscientific and non-scientific activities resemble science in terms of their aim to explain nature, their use of evidence-based methods, and their interrelation with politics and society. In this theoretical article, we build on the concept of family resemblance to consider how it can simultaneously explain the diversity and unity of science and help students to learn about the nature of science and that of pseudoscience in science education. We put forward three principles that can guide teaching about pseudoscience based on the family resemblance conceptualisation of science.

show abstract

Section: What Science Is and Is Notmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is There a Limit to Resemblances?

Park

Brock

2022

Sci & Educ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Second, to the extent that entrepreneurship concepts are deemed to mirror an external reality, the meaning that arises is a matter not of objective perception but of interpretation and use. As Leunbach (2021) recently argues, entrepreneurship concepts are family resemblance concepts. Family resemblance concepts are those whose extensions do not share a common essential feature, but instead a series of overlapping similarities.…”

Section: Problems Of Extension and Objectivity In Rigor-as-correspond...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, Wittgenstein (1958) applies the idea of family resemblance to our understanding of games. We can think of many games that we call a ''game'' that share no essential set of defining characteristics but simply bear certain family resemblances to one another (Leunbach, 2021). As Wittgenstein (1958) argued, the ultimate thing that all games share is in fact the very word ''game'' is used to refer to them.…”

Section: Problems Of Extension and Objectivity In Rigor-as-correspond...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Concepts as Mirrors and Torches: Rigor and Relevance as Scholarly Performativity

Thompson

Byrne

Dimov

2022

Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article aims to further the rigor and relevance discussion in entrepreneurship studies. It argues that tensions arise due to an adherence to a rigor-as-correspondence perspective, which can be addressed through the advancement of a rigor-as-performativity perspective. Entrepreneurship concepts are tools used to define, represent, and explain entrepreneurial experience, yet how these tools hook onto the world is a question of performance and application rather than unambiguous correspondence. We advocate for a view of rigor and relevance that appreciates the torch-like features of concepts—how they help entrepreneurs deal with the world so that they may fulfil their intentions—whilst retaining an understanding that the future is unknowable and change a constant.

show abstract

“…The quintessential example of the family resemblance concept is that of the concept of 'game' (Haugaard, 2010;Wittgenstein, 1967). Leunbach (2021) summarizes this example:…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition to the concept of power, the family resemblance approach has been applied to multiple other fuzzy concepts, such as law (Bix, 2003), religion (Harrison, 2006), and entrepreneurship (Leunbach, 2021). Adopting power as a family resemblance concept "give[s] the theorist or scientist freedom to create their own conceptual tools best suited to the task at hand" (Haugaard, 2010, p. 436).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking Perspectives of Power in Collaborative Governance

Hafer¹,

Ran²,

Hossain³

2022

J. Public Nonprof Aff.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Power is an important concept in understanding collaborative governance, however, the existing research is largely dominated by the functional and critical perspectives of power. Aided by a conceptual content analysis of power used in collaborative governance literature in the top public administration journals, we viewed power as a family resemblance concept that should be conceptualized through four perspectives: functional, critical, social construction, and pragmatic. We provide elaboration of each of these four perspectives and propose counterarguments to assumptions that have arisen due to the reliance on a functional or critical perspective of power. We conclude that viewing power as a family resemblance concept with at least four perspectives offers collaborative governance researchers the ability to adopt the best perspective that is the most useful for their analysis and most helpful for public administrators to understand power in their collaborative efforts.

show abstract

Entrepreneurship as a family resemblance concept: A Wittgensteinian approach to the problem of defining entrepreneurship

Cited by 12 publications

References 74 publications

Is There a Limit to Resemblances?

Is There a Limit to Resemblances?

Concepts as Mirrors and Torches: Rigor and Relevance as Scholarly Performativity

Rethinking Perspectives of Power in Collaborative Governance

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About