Reclaiming the space of entrepreneurship in society: geographical, discursive and social dimensions

Conceptualising entrepreneurship as economic 'explanation' and the consequent loss of 'understanding'

“…In contrast the broad view is "understanding" and has conceptual room for the subjectivities that characterise the practice of entrepreneurship. Such a view frees up entrepreneurship accounts from an econometric ghetto to provide a human (Polanyi, 1957) and spatial dimension (Steyaert and Katz, 2004). It allows us to see how context modifies general process and how the entrepreneurial self fits into the prevailing circumstance to bring about change.…”

“…Grant and Perren's (2002) analysis shows a dominance of the functionalist paradigm that pervades the elite discourse of research in leading journals and acts as a potential barrier to other perspectives. More problematically, as Steyaert and Katz (2004) point out, scholarship tends to follow to the path that is already illuminated. Granovetter (1992) challenges the dominant economic paradigm on three classic sociological grounds.…”

“…Moreover, but similarly, the enthrallment with economic outcomes gave rise to the picture of the entrepreneurial hero. Yet this ignores most entrepreneurship, the everyday prosaicness of being enterprising (Steyaert and Katz, 2004;189) "a matter of everyday activities rather than actions of elitist groups of entrepreneurs". Karp (2006) explains that most approaches to entrepreneurship theory are rationalistic and attributes this, in part, to systems thinking and attempts to apply the method of natural science to human action.…”

“…In other words, our understanding of entrepreneurship as a socially embedded process has been overwhelmed by a narrow functionalist perspective. Reflecting on the progress of entrepreneurship scholarship over the last 40 years or so, Steyaert and Katz (2004) regret that it has planted entrepreneurship so strongly in the middle of economic life instead of life tout court. Zhara (2007) expands on this; theories are applied to sterile and highly sanitized settings, leaving a major gap in our understanding.…”

“…Entrepreneurship, suggest Fuller et al (2005), can be theorised as the production of sustained novelty with theoretically knowable multiple causal mechanisms, but always as socially situated. Indeed, Hytti (2005) suggests that one of the most compelling suggestions has been to view entrepreneurship not merely as an economic activity but also as a social activity, which shapes and is shaped by our society (Steyaert and Katz, 2004). We argue too that the very concept of entrepreneurship is socially constructed.…”