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

2.1.1.11 Smith [2003], comments that such conceptualizations, as those that I attach to
the ontic state and discourse, are generally tacit.
Such concept ualizations are often tacit; that is, they are often not thematized in any
systematic way. But tools can be developed to specify and to clarify the concepts
involved and to establish their logical structure, and in this way we are able to
render explicit the unde rlying taxonomy. We get very close to the use of the term
‘ontology’ in Gruber’s sense if we define an ontology as the result of such
clarification – as, precisely, the specification of a conceptualization in the intuitive
sense described in the above [p7].
2.1.1.12 In developing my mode l, I assume that Smith’s tacit conceptualisations are more
likely to be found in the ontic and discursive states. While Smith’s cites Gruber’s rendition
of the term ontology it does seem that the process of clarification mentioned by Smith is
more the epistemic process of justification associated with the increasing contextualisation
rather than the conceptualisation process of ontology, discussed above. As mentioned by
Gruber himself epistemology and ontology are often confused. “It (ontology) is also often
confused with epistemology, which is about knowledge and knowing” [Gruber, 1995,
p907]. The difference between ontology and epistemology is covered in more detail in
section 2.4.
2.1.1.13 If I follow Heidegger [1993, 2002] and look at ontology as the collective domains
that are used to define ‘being’ then ontology is not so much about methodology nor
epistemology, as in realist or relativist but is about the perceived domains that are used as
frameworks for such defining of ‘being’. Within the ontic state and discursive state of
entrepreneurship there are domains of the ‘nature of reality’ as to what, in this particular
investigation, is conceptually perceived as entrepreneurship.
2.1.1.14 Gruber [1995] offers a definition of ontology that pertains to the
conceptualisation discussed above.
In the context of knowledge sharing, I use the term ontology to mean a
specification of a conceptualization. That is, an ontology is a description (like a
formal specification of a program) of the concepts and relationships that can exist
30