There is a major disconnect between theory and phenomenon in the study of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is the study of diversity (Welter et al., 2017), yet the body of knowledge developed over the past decades has been built primarily by studying start-ups with elite characteristics such as high tech, high growth, venture capital investment, or IPO status. The reality is that most entrepreneurship is not so glitzy. The highest rates of new venture activity are in the global south (GEM, 2020) and even in the United States, most start-ups are relatively mundane (Aldrich & Ruef, 2018) and many entrepreneurs are small business owners that do not want to grow (Wiklund & Shepherd, 2003). At the same time, other forms of organizing are being infused with entrepreneurial activity including non-profits, social enterprises, and social movements.
This special issue serves to address this important gap between theory and phenomenon – seeking to move towards recalibrating what we study and how we study it in entrepreneurship research. This effort is important because of its implications for broader management theory and because a theory-phenomenon disconnect exists in other domains of management research. Strategy and organizational behaviour over-examine the precious few large public corporations and human resources concentrates on professional white-collar jobs. The recent-point counter point on Management Theory in Journal of Management Studies (JMS) started this conversation and laid a strong foundation for the further exploration of this topic (Bruton et al, 2022; Filatotchev et al, 2022; Muzio, 2022; Banerjee, 2022). We introduce this special issue to build on this momentum and serve as a model for how to unearth latent assumptions and redress problematic patterns not only in entrepreneurship, but across domains of management scholarship.
Read the full issue here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14676486/2025/62/5 or browse the individual articles below.
Recalibrating Entrepreneurship Research: Decolonizing and Embracing the Pluralism of Entrepreneurial Activity by Robert Nason, Pablo Muñoz, Helen Haugh, Friederike Welter, Gerard George, and Shameen Prashantham
Decolonizing Scaffolding: Learning from First Nations’ Resurgence to Recalibrate Entrepreneurship by Maggie M. Cascadden, François Bastien, Emily Block, and P. Devereaux Jennings
From ‘Dirty Boots’ to ‘Distant Friends’: How A Colombian Social Intermediary Integrates Communities through Entrepreneurship by Andrea Caldwell Marquez, Emily Block, Kelly Rubey, and Viva Ona Bartkus
‘Marching to Someone Else’s Beat or Creating Your Own Groove?’ Towards a Rhythmic Understanding of Context, (Entrepreneurial) Agency, and Transformative Change by Pascal Dey, and Simon Teasdale
Embodied Territories: The Gendered-Classed Economies of Entrepreneurship in India by Vijayta Doshi, Kathleen Riach, and Srinivas Venugopal
Beyond Rugged Individualism?: Exploring the Resilience of Black Entrepreneurs to Chronic Racism by Saran Nurse, Kisha Dasent, Alex Rivera, John Pastor Ansah, and Janine Black
If You Can’t Let Go: The Role of Emotional Dependency in Global South–North Social Enterprises by Carina Keller, Vera Schwarzmann, Karin Kreutzer, and Patricia Hein
Contending with Perceived Legitimacy Tensions: Impact Investing in Pluralistic Institutional Environments by Jessica Jones, and Alex Murray
ESSAY | Learning About Local Culture to Research Developing Markets: How I Rediscovered the Importance of Lakou in Haiti by Howard Jean-Denis
List of People Who Reviewed for this Special Issue
