Title: Discourse analysis of entrepreneurship definitions and theories: implication for strengthening academic research

Authors: Lukman Raimi

Addresses: Leicester Business School, De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester, LE1 9BH, UK; Centre for Entrepreneurship Development, Yaba College of Technology, PMB Yaba, Lagos, Nigeria

Abstract: Entrepreneurship although old, is still an emerging field, which attracts attention from academics and practitioners across wide disciplinary boundaries. It finds relevance in the fields of economics, finance, management and sociology. This paper critiques entrepreneurship definitions and theories to aid theory identification, selection and adoption by researchers across multidisciplinary fields. The paper adopts a discourse analysis to do justice to the critique, relying on journal articles and online resources. At the end, three definitional perspectives of entrepreneurship emerged, while economic, human capital, sociological and psychological theories of entrepreneurship were identified as dominant theories with different strands. The paper concludes that the success of entrepreneurship research is strongly dependent on sound understanding of entrepreneurship definitions and theories. The implication of the paper is that understanding of entrepreneurship and its theories strengthen conceptual/theoretical framework of exploratory and empirical research. The paper is therefore a contribution to raging debates in the field of entrepreneurship.

Keywords: entrepreneurship definitions; entrepreneurship theories; discourse analysis; entrepreneurship research.

DOI: 10.1504/IJESB.2015.072399

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 2015 Vol.26 No.3, pp.368 - 388

Received: 12 Feb 2015
Accepted: 02 Apr 2015
Published online: 12 Oct 2015 *

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