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

However the emergence of a discipline cannot be expected to be smoo th and in the next
section I detail some of the problems being faced by the emergent discipline.
2.5.2.2 Adolescent angst and acne
2.5.2.2.00 This section continues the process of ‘mapping the first surface of their
emergence’ and describes some of the problems being faced by the discipline of
entrepreneurship and also outlines efforts by some to bypass the epistemic justification that
I have used, to partly define the knowledge accepted into the discipline, by post-disciplinic
assumptions.
2.5.2.2.01 The focus of the emergent discipline has come under criticism for many
reasons. In 1988, one year after the establishment of the division status by the AMA,
Gartner [1988 ] lists 32 different definitions of what is an entrepreneur. As commented by
Carton, Hofer and Meeks [2004], the list of criticisms is ‘daunting’:
(1) that many (and often vague) de finitions of the entrepreneur have been used (in
many studies the entrepreneur is never defined);
(2) that there are few studies that employ the same definition;
(3) that lack of basic agreement as to “who an entrepreneur is” has led to the selection
of samples of “entrepreneurs” that are hardly homoge neous …… ; and
(4) that a startling number of traits and characteristics have been attributed to the
entrepreneur, and a “psychological profile” of the entrepreneur assembled from
these studies would portray someone larger than life, full of contradictions, and,
conversely, someone so full of traits that (s)he would have to be a sort of generic
`Everyman' [Gartner, 1988, p48, p57].
2.5.2.2.02 Also in 1988, Low and MacMillan published a review of developments in
entrepreneurship that included the following critiques:
• Specification of purpose – little clarity, descriptive, lack of unity;
• Specification of theoretical perspective – weak theory development, implicitly
assuming strategic choice;
• Specification of focus – focus on personality or cultural determinants;
• Specification of level of analysis – primarily single level of analysis;
• Specification of time frame – narrow time frame; and
• Specification of methodology – case studies, cros s sectional surveys, singl e
method, descriptive [Low and MacMillan, 1988].
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