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.

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.

The intersection of entrepreneurship research and institutional theory has begun to attract increasing scholarly attention. While much recent research has studied "institutional entrepreneurs" credited with creating new or transforming existing institutions to support their projects, less attention has been paid to the institutions that constitute the menus from which choices are made, and delineate resources for entrepreneurial or other agentic activities. While models of institutionalization frequently break down the process into different categorical stages, how an evolving context affords changing agentic latitude for actors merits more attention. We study the institutionalization of 'temporary work', a new employment practice led by temporary work organizations, a new organizational form in the Netherlands from the 1960s to 2008. Our account suggests an 'ecological' imagery of institutionalization; rather than entrepreneurs' with predetermined agendas shaping and reshaping institutions, we observed distributed institutional entrepreneurship - entrepreneurs seeking change in concert and in conflict with other interdependent actors simultaneously creating, disrupting and maintaining institutions. By examining how an evolving context influences the role of "actor configurations", whose actions, interactions and counteractions can collectively lead to change, but also unintended outcomes, we highlight the non-teleological nature of institutionalization. Finally, our findings suggest that while the legitimacy of a novel practice grows with increasing institutionalization, legitimacy contests may recur and that increasing institutionalization may provide the backdrop for novel practices to emerge.

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.

The Academy of Management is proud to announce the inaugural volume of The Academy of Management Annals. This exciting new series follows one guiding principle: The advancement of knowledge is possible only by conducting a thorough examination of what is known and unknown in a given field. Such assessments can be accomplished through comprehensive, critical reviews of the literature--crafted by informed scholars who determine when a line of inquiry has gone astray, and how to steer the research back onto the proper path. The Academy of Management Annals provide just such essential reviews. Written by leading management scholars, the reviews are invaluable for ensuring the timeliness of advanced courses, for designing new investigative approaches, and for identifying faulty methodological or conceptual assumptions. The Annals strive each year to synthesize a vast array of primary research, recognizing past principal contributions while illuminating potential future avenues of inquiry. Volume 1 of the Annals explores a wide spectrum of research: corporate control; nonstandard employment; critical management; physical work environments; public administration team learning; emotions in organizations; leadership and health care; creativity at work; business and the environment; and bias in performance appraisals. Ultimately, academic scholars in management and allied fields (e.g., sociology of organizations and organizational psychology) will see The Academy of Management Annals as a valuable resource to turn to for comprehensive, up-to-date information--published in a single volume every year by the preeminent association for management research.

Entrepreneurship is a growing field of research, attracting researchers from many different disciplines including economics, sociology, psychology, and management. The concept of entrepreneurship, and research in the field, is becoming institutionalized, increasingly oriented by influential trends, theories and methods, following the mainstream and being shaped accordingly. The objective of this book is to move beyond mainstream approaches and assumptions which are dominating the field, and to raise questions about the nature and process of entrepreneurship research. Over twelve chapters, leading international thinkers in the field debate the impact and the consequences of institutionalization. Taking key research orientations including multidisciplinarity, international entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, and ethics, it takes a critical and constructive and sometimes controversial posture and encourages a re-examination of the way we look at the social and economic phenomenon of entrepreneurship. This book is vital reading for entrepreneurship researchers and educators, advanced students and policy-makers in Entrepreneurship, Economics, Sociology and Psychology.