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

does discuss the various failings of the Cartesian ontologies from Foucher and so forth;
however it could be assumed that a number of these failings relate to the first ontological
categor y of the existence of God and the subsequent issues of trans-subs tantiation and so
forth. This could be considered a failing contemporaneous to that period of time when a
renunciation of God would have had some rather severe penalties.
2.4.3.04 Coming back to Heidegger’s ontological test with reference to the discipline of
entrepreneurship. Has the meaning of the being of entrepreneurship been sufficiently
clarified and has the discipline grasped this clarification as its fundamental task? The basic
problem that arises here is that, unlike the dualism of Cartesian ontology the ontology of
entrepreneurship, simply by being a human science, with a tendency towards the subjective
side of the epistemological dialectic used in Mode ls H and H3, shown respective ly in
Graphics 2g and 2i, firstly does not have the simple ontological dualism of Descartes and
secondly may not have the mutual exclusivity between its ontological domains.
2.4.3.05 It could be said that the ontology of the discipline of entrepreneurship does
have a wide range of ontological domains. Whether these are ‘rich and tightly knit’
[Heidegger, 1993, p 53] is a moot point. Heffalumps [Kilby, 1971], elephants [Gartner,
2001] etc., have all being used to describe the discipline and there are frequent comments
[Carton, Hofer and Meeks, 1998; Gartner, 1988; Montayne, 2006; Murphy, Liao and
Welsch, 2005; Thornton, 1999; Virtanen, 1996] on its diverse range of definitions.
2.4.3.06 However does this diversity of definitions mean that the ‘being’ of
entrepreneurship has not been clarified? An elephant is still, generally speaking, an
elephant despite its wide range of ontological thematic conceptualisations. Some of these
conceptualisations e.g. ‘tusks’ and ‘trunk’ are more significant than are other
conceptualisations such as ‘round feet’ and a ‘quirty tail’, which incidentally also de scribes
hippopo tami. So having a wide range of thematic conceptualisations as ontologies is not
necessarily a measure of Heidegger’s ontological test. Some conceptualisations, e.g. tusks
and trunk, may be more exclusive to the ‘being’ however those that lack such exclusivity
76