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

1.3 Positionality
1.3.00 By conducting this investigation into the way the discipline of entrepreneurship
has evolved, while having had, and currently having an active involvement in the very
subject which the discipline purports to explain places me in a somewhat unique position. I
draw an analogy in that I am like a laboratory rat in a white coat examining researchers
who are examining other lab rats. In this chapter I explain my own position in this
investigation.
1.3.01 Being entrepreneurial, having established and de veloped businesses over the last
twenty five years in New Zealand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam as well
as doing business with, and in, other nations, I felt dissatisfied when reading academic
literature on entrepreneurship. While chuffed by the various traits, especially those heroic,
that have been developed, I can only evince a vague sense of connection to the concepts of
entrepreneurial processes, entrepreneurial orientation, corporate entrepreneurship, etc., and
the like that have been developed, but these are usually insufficiently specific to my own
entrepreneurial circumstances to feel a real connection, aside from that part of me that is an
aspiring academic.
1.3.02 I feel a sense of detachment. One of the most significant lacks in the research is
the approach to problem solving. Entrepreneurs face problems just like every business or
management person; however give n the nature of entrepreneurship that makes it distinctly
separate to the non-entrepreneurial and/or management function, it could well be expected
that not only the problems faced by entrepreneurs, but also the approaches taken by
entrepreneurs to solving these problems, have a degree of uniqueness.
1.3.03 While academics have a penchant for offering research based analyses, promoting
methodologies and theor ies, the simple everyday matter of solving problems, or
developing approaches to solving problems is under-addressed. This situation may help
explain the stated preference [Pfeffer and Fong cited in McKelvey, 2004] for business
people to prefer listening to consultants rather than academics.
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