Towards a Conceptualization of Entrepreneurship

Suna Sørensen, Astrid Heidemann Lassen, Robert Hinson

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

5 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

In this paper we rethink the conventional ways of explaining the change process of new company formation. We base our analysis on two well established and dominating categories of entrepreneurship models, stages inspired models and interactive contingency models, and we argue that these do not sufficiently conspire to capture the entrepreneurial start-up process as an everyday phenomenon of multi-dimensional individual, social, and environmental interaction. In an effort to address this hypothesized theoretical gap, we apply ideas origination from Symbolic Interactionism to suggest a complementary conceptual model for comprehending the entrepreneurial process as an interactive construct. From here the idea of entrepreneurship as an ongoing “Social Journey of Opportunity Construction” arises. We argue that this idea has a potential impact on the practice of research, since it encourages scholars to step out of predictable zones of positivist research and enter a riskier research zone in which it is everyday interaction that makes the entrepreneurial process emerge.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)89-101
Number of pages13
JournalJournal of Research in Marketing and Entrepreneurship
Volume9
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jul 2007
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Business formation
  • Contingency planning

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Towards a Conceptualization of Entrepreneurship'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this