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

4.3.8.3.05 While this section has focused on small businesses, it should also be read in
conj unction with the next section on ‘the self-employed individual’. As probably
benefiting their more traditional status as domains in entrepreneurship these sub-aliran
have a significant number of articles, some with high gravitas. I suggest that these are two
of the core ontologies to the discipline not only because of the number of articles but also
because of the high level of interaction along the interstices to other sub-aliran.
4.3.8.4. The self-employed individual
4.3.8.4.00 Evans and Leight on’s [1989] (106) high gravitas article ‘Some empirical
aspects of entrepreneurship’ discuss the ‘disadvantage theor y’ which ‘views entrepreneurs
as misfits cast off from wage work’ and suggest this aspect of entrepreneurship “is
consistent with many findings ” [Evans and Leighton, 1989, p1]. This introduces another
ontology within the aliran, that of self-employment. The smallest denominator of the
entrepreneurial world, the sole operator, attracted a number of articles in the aliran as
listed in Graphic 4t. While Evans and Leighton’s [1989] (106) article has the highest
gravitas in the sub-aliran, the concept of self-employment was initially seen in Light’s
[1979] (19) lower gravitas ‘Disadvantaged minorities in self-employment’.
4.3.8.4.01 The self-employed individual sub-aliran covers both unemployment and self-
employment. I suggest that the difference between unemployment and self-employment is,
as per the frame of reference of my heffalump model, the difference between reactive and
planned approaches to entry into entrepreneurship. The unemployed entry po int is a
reactive approach that ends in self-employment, while the other approach suggests that this
was part of a planned process towards self-employment. In other words, they planned the
process rather than simply it being a reaction to getting fired.
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