Mapping the aliran of the academic discipline of entrepreneurship: A ...

an elephant brings to mind Husserl’s example of walking around a table. “From each
position only a particular perspective of the table is experienced. You never see the whole
table, although in experience we are also conscious of the whole table” [Schmidt, 2006,
p50].
3.1.3.04 The question that then needs to be asked is whether the researchers of
entrepreneurship are ‘conscious of the whole table’? While, as pointed out by Schmidt
“phenomenological research means carefully to describe our experience without making
judgments about what the experience implies” [Schmidt, 2006, p7], phenomenology may
only be a first step in my epistemic analysis. A second step is required to examine what
phenomenology describes, as per Schmidt, “the descript ion is phenomenological and the
examination is hermeneutic [Schmidt, 2006, p7].
3.1.3.05 In my epistemic analysis, the two parts, discussed in section 3.1.1.05 being a
quantitative data collection process which provided a basis for a more qualitative analysis
of such da ta, correspond philosophically to firstly a phenomenological description of the
episteme and secondly a hermeneut ic examination of what phenomenology ‘ shows itself in
itself’ [Schmidt, 2006, p61]. In other words, to describe what the selected episteme on
entrepreneurship shows what it considers entrepreneurship ‘to be’ and secondly an
analysis, based, in part, on my own experience, as to whether such ‘to be’ could be
considered to be representative of the ‘being’ of entrepreneurship. Are the researchers into
entrepreneurship conscious of Husserl’s whole table, or following Gartner’s analogy, are
they conscious of the whole elephant?
3.1.4 Mixed theories – justifying the lineage used
3.1.4 01 In section 3.1.1.02 above I described how, as part of my mixed methodologies, I
am using philosophical sources from two different European schools of thought. To use
both Foucault from the 1960s with Heidegger from the 1920s may be an anathema to some
purist or situationalists [Niglas, 2000]. I adopt an approach from Bergson that is consistent
with the pragmatism I have discussed in section 3.1.1.10.
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