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

ontologies, without such a simplistic dualism, the aspect of construction may be more
apparent.
2.4.1.04 The question that comes to mind initially is ‘construction of what?’ If we
follow Gruber [1993] the ‘what’ is a ‘set-of-concept-definitions available to a community
of agents.’ Following the issue of ontology as discussed in 2.1.1.13, with reference to
Heide gger, the ‘what’ is the construction of ‘perceived domains that are used as
frameworks for such defining of being.’ Both Mulhall [2005, p4] and Smith [2003, p7] use
the terms ‘themes’, (albeit in relationship to the unthematized that will be discussed next)
so the ‘what’ could also be considered to be the construction of themes.
2.4.1.05 However the more appropriate question is ‘whether there is an actual
construction of anything?’ Two previously citations are significant here, first Smith [2003,
p7] in section 2.1.1.11 and the second by Mulhall [2005, p4].
2.4.1.06 There could well be an unwillingness to construct anything simply because, as
pointed out by Mulhall [2005, p91], “making an assertion about an object restricts our
openness to it in just the way that interpretation restricts our pre-interpretive
understanding”. The ‘ontological commitment’ [Gruber, 1995] in any discipline may be an
issue because the ontology, or part of it, may not have been constructed, clarified or
defined in any manner. Such commitment may be to something that lacks construction. It
could only be, as per Smith [2003] and Mulhall [2005], when discontinuities are presented
to the discipline, by way of a ‘state of crisis’ that such construction becomes necessary.
Whether such discontinuities are presented and the resultant construction has occurred, or
not, could be a measure of a discipline’s status as being dubious or not. The other aspect of
ontological construction is whether the construction is part of a natural process of the
development of knowledge or it is perceived to be overtly undertaken, and influenced, by
those with high gravitas.
2.4.1.07 Ironically, while I separate epistemology a nd ontology, it would seem that they
are also co-dependent, in that the possibility of ontological construction is dependent upon
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