This book examines the challenges and opportunities for entrepreneurship scholars in relation to the institutionalization process of their field. It was originally published as a special issue of Entrepreneurship and Regional Development.

The institutionalization of entrepreneurship is undeniably a good thing for the members of the research community, as it implies the legitimization of particular research topics and research practices; the emergence of norms for developing and publishing this research; and the creation of structures that provide employment opportunities and a conducive environment for pursuing research. However, we can also question if this institutionalization is such a good thing when it comes to producing critical, innovative, contextualized, and complex research or when considered from the point of view of non-academic entrepreneurship stakeholders and society in general. The objective of this book is to challenge the main research streams, theories, methods, epistemologies, assumptions and beliefs dominating the field of entrepreneurship. In order to achieve this objective, this book comprises six conceptual and empirical contributions, each one unorthodox, controversial, inspiring and challenging. This book was originally published as a special issue of Entrepreneurship and Regional Development.

Examines how the institutional environment affects entrepreneurial organizations, and vice-versa.

The growth of entrepreneurship research has been accompanied by an increased convergence and institutionalization of the field. In many ways this is of course positive, but it also represents how the field has become "mainstream" with the concomitant risk that individual scholars become embedded in a culture and incentive system that emphasizes and rewards incremental research questions, while reducing the incentives for scholars to conduct challenging research. This book challenges this status quo from accepted theories, methodologies and paradigmatic assumptions, to the relevance (or lack of) for contemporary practice and the impact of key journals on scholars’ directions in entrepreneurship research. An invited selection of the younger generation of scholars within the field of entrepreneurship research adopt a critical and constructive posture on what has been achieved in entrepreneurship research, the main assumptions which underly it, but also open-up new paths for creative entrepreneurship research in the future. This is a must-read for all scholars, educators and advanced students in entrepreneurship research.

This book is about the role of agents in policy and institutional change. It draws on cross-country case studies. The focus on ‘agency’ has been an important development, enabling researchers to better reveal the causal mechanisms generating institutional change (i.e., how institutional change actually takes place). However, past research has generally been limited to specific intellectual silos or scholarly domains of inquiry. Policy scholars, for example, have tended to focus on the various mechanisms and levels at which agency operates, drawing on institutionalist perspectives but not always actively contributing to institutionalist theory. Institutionalist perspectives, by contrast, have tended to operate at macro-levels of enquiry, embracing the ontological primacy of institutions in processes of isomorphism but not necessarily contributing to or embracing policy perspectives that engage in more granular analyses of policy making processes, implementation, and the instantiation of institutional and policy change. Despite the obvious complementarities of these two intellectual traditions, it is surprising how little collaborative work, or indeed cross fertilization of theory and analytical design has occurred. The core novelty of this volume is thus its focus on agential actors within institutional settings and processes of entrepreneurship that facilitate isomorphism and policy change. The book’s theoretical framework is grounded in variants of institutional theory, especially historical, sociological and organisational institutionalism and policy entrepreneurship literature. The overall conclusion is that that both institutionalists and public policy scholars have largely overlooked the importance of complex interactions between interdependent structures, institutions, and agents in processes of institutional and policy change.

This book draws attention to the classic, seminal articles in entrepreneurship that have made profound contributions to the field’s emergence, development, and maturity. In each chapter, a classic is identified, ideas contained therein that are still relevant to the field are discussed, and subsequently follow-up research that is being conducted based on these ideas is highlighted, including possible areas of future research. Scholars will embrace this systematic effort to identify and reveal the contribution of classic articles in entrepreneurship research and their impact on subsequent scholarship.

. . . the Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods in Entrepreneurship is an important contribution to the field, and should be referenced in any paper using qualitative methodologies to investigate the entrepreneurial phenomenon. Craig S. Galbraith, Journal of Enterprising Communities There is no hiding behind the ramparts of dry scholarship here. The credibility of the theory being spoken of is not the stuff of constructed proofs, but alignments of critical insight and utility. This is where qualitative work can make a difference to the field, and where this book makes its mark. Robin Holt, International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research The Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods in Entrepreneurship is an unusually solid and multifaceted book on what qualitative methods have done, are doing and will do in entrepreneurship research. Every serious entrepreneurship scholar should read it. It points at the future! Björn Bjerke, University of Kalmar, Sweden I would warmly recommend this unique collection of qualitative methods of entrepreneurship research to both mature and beginning researchers as a menu to choose from for their planned empirical studies. For those who try to get away from only quantitative studies in both business practice and academic research, this book is their chance to find a rich inspiration in reflecting on entrepreneurship as a lived experience using grounded theory and ethnographic, discourse and narrative approaches. It might convince editors of top journals of entrepreneurship research to welcome qualitative research submissions as an indispensable complement to quantitative only submissions. This domain is not physics. In bringing together such a variety of experts from so many nationalities in this Handbook, our Danish colleagues are making entrepreneurship research a realistic global venture. Jan Ulijn, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands Helle Neergaard and John Parm Ulhøi have compiled a remarkable collection of work that both represents the range of methods and demonstrates the depth of insight that can be achieved through qualitative approaches. This book is not simply a handbook of qualitative research methods, though it well achieves this aim, it is also an important contribution towards the field of entrepreneurship research. From the Foreword by Sara Carter This expansive and practical Handbook introduces the methods currently used to increase the understanding of the usefulness and versatility of a systematic approach to qualitative research in entrepreneurship. It fills a crucial gap in the literature on entrepreneurship theory, and, just as importantly, illustrates how these principles and techniques can be appropriately and fruitfully employed. The Handbook is underpinned by the belief that qualitative research has the potential to charter hitherto unexplored waters in the field of entrepreneurship and thus contribute significantly to its further advancement. The contributors seek to assist entrepreneurship researchers in making more informed choices and designing more rigorous and sophisticated studies. They achieve this by providing concrete examples of research experiences and tangible how to advice. By clarifying what these research methods entail, how they are currently being used and how they can be evaluated, this Handbook constitutes a comprehensive and highly accessible methodological toolbox. Dealing with both well-accepted qualitative approaches and lesser-known, rarer and more novel approaches to the study of entrepreneurship, this Handbook will be invaluable to those studying, researching and teaching entrepreneurship.