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Social Structuration of the Field of
Entrepreneurship: A Case Study
Richard Dery
Jean-Marie Toulouse
kcole des Hautes ktudes Commerciales

授課老師：李元德教授
報告人：博一研究生
高秉毅

Abstract
As part of the emergence of an epistemology specific to the field of
entrepreneurship research, this article aims to reveal the social structuration of
knowledge in entrepreneurship, through the empirical study of articles published
in the Journal of Business Venturing between its founding in 1986, and 1993.
This research, by virtue of its empirical approach based on methods of
network analysis widely used in the sociology of science and technology, tends
to substitute a social representation of the field of entrepreneurship research for
the essentially cognitive and formal representation characteristic of most
epistemological reflections in this field.
At the end of this study, the field of entrepreneurship research appears as an
intricate network, where researchers and institutions are involved in a social and
collective game of strategic struggles and alliances.
Furthermore, this field of research appears as a largely fragmented space
fraught with the traps inherent to disciplinary introversion.

Emergence of an Epistemology of
Entrepreneurship Research
?Already rooted in a long tradition of research, with
ramifications extending to the borders of political economy
and opening onto a variety of seminal works, the problematic of
entrepreneurship was structured into a true field of research
during the 1980s.
?There is much evidence of this. The corpus of texts published
on entrepreneurship has grown exponentially; scientific journals
and associations devoted to entrepreneurship have been founded;
conferences have been organized; research centres have been
inaugurated or, at least, rendered more visible; university courses
and programmes of study in entrepreneurship have been
instituted, and so on.

? Putting its own stamp on the self-reflexivity characteristic
of modernity (Giddens, 1990, 1991) and joining the contemporary
movement to develop epistemologies specific to the different
fields of research, the epistemology of entrepreneurship research
is mainly dominated by theoretical and methodological
considerations.
? T wentieth-century epistemology is marked by emerging
systems based on empirical research, a descriptive and
omprehensive approach which replaces a resolutely normative
one,
and research scenarios featuring historical and sociological
perspectives rather than the essentially formal and philosophical
ones dominant at the turn of the century.

? Working from within the structuration trends haracteristic
of contemporary epistemology, this article contributes to the
emerging epistemology of entrepreneurship research.
? This is done by gearing our reflection to an empirical approach
based on the theoretical and methodological contributions of the
sociology of science and technology, which are currently front
stage centre in epistemological debates.
? Such an approach requires choosing a theoretical option as to
what the field of entrepreneurship actually is and then onfronting
this option with empirical reality.

Social Construction of the Field of
?Representing the field of entrepreneurship research In terms of
social construction is part and parcel of a search to understand the
concrete practices of entrepreneurship research.
? It is therefore not a matter of establishing criteria to evaluate the
scientific value of existing knowledge, designing research
protocols to guarantee the scientific value of findings, or proposing
avenues of research, study perspectives and paradigms capable of
unifying the efforts of researchers in the field.
?It is, rather, a matter of understanding how the common
competitive arena of entrepreneurship research is concretely
structured by the social and collective interplay among members of
the field and participating institutions.


?In order to shed light on the social construction of
entrepreneurship research, it is important to note that the variety of
knowledge is rooted in, among other things, the social context of
research, and that it is this context which must be elucidated if we
are to understand this variety (Whitley, 1984~)
?the field of entrepreneurship research is perpetually tom
between the expectations of the researchers in the first sphere and
the entrepreneurs in the second.
?Entrepreneurship research is, in a sense, caught between two
projects: the development of scientific knowledge related to the
realities of entrepreneurship, and active participation in those
realities.

? As a rule, the very definition of validity in entrepreneurship
research is the main stake in social relations. The race to gain
control over this definition is manifested on two levels.
? On the one hand, researchers who take up the debate are
directly involved in the development of knowledge.
? On the other hand, the debate takes place in institutions which
foster entrepreneurship research.
? At this level, researchers engage in relations of cooperation
and competition, with a view To gaining control over the
institutions involved in concrete research projects.

Object and Method of Research

? Our study concerns the 237 articles published in the
Journal of Business Venturing between its founding
in 1986, and 1993.
? Analysis of the corpus was based on co-citation
analysis widely used in the sociology of science and
technology and in scientomertry.
? In administrative studies, scientometrical analysis has
been used mainly in marketing, finance,
accounting,management informance systems, and
organizational behaviour.


? Wether in sociology of science or in administrative
studies, scientometrical analysis has been used in
particular to establish the influence─measured by the
number of citations─of authors, titles, and periodicals
in the construction of a given field.
? This research was accomplished in three
methodological stages.
? In the first stage, the social content of the 237 articles studies
was revealed through an inventory of three sociological
markers: the authors, the institutions with which they are
affiliated, and the references cited in each article.


? In the seccond stage, the occurrence matrix was transformed
into two co-occurrence matrices─one for the articls, the other
for all the refernces in those articles.
? The first co-occurrence matrix shows classic co-author and co-
institution networks.
? The second co-occurrence matrix was used to analyze the
references by studying the co-citation.
? In the third stage, the reference co-occurrence martix shows all
the reference networks according to a threshold of citations
and co-occurences.

Description of Findings
? General Portrait of the Corpus
? As can be seen from Table 1, in eight years the Journal of
Business Venturing (JBV) published a total of 237 articles by
280 different authors, 84 of whom contributed more than one
article. Through these authors, a total of 149 institutions
(almost all universities) have taken part in constructing the
field of entrepreneurship research. Of this number, only 45.6%
appear more than once in the corpus.
? The articles published in the JBVcontain 3,714 different
references, the vast majority of which appear only once. These
3,714 titles were written by 2,989 different authors, the
majority of them being cited only once.

? Networks of Authors and Institutions
? Analysis of the 143 groups of authors in the corpus brings to light the
network of co-author relations among researchers publishing in the JBV, as
well as the network of relations among institutions that these concrete co-
author relations construct, whether implicitly or not (see Figures 1 and 2).
? Largely dominated by its editor, I.C. MacMillan, whose name appears as
co-author for 26 of the 237 articles in the corpus, the JBV‘s network of co-
author relations is an intricate weave of authors from a multiplicity of only
loosely connected subnetworks. Seven main subnetworks headed by
MacMillan, Bygrave, Cooper, Kanter, Birley, Gartner, and Robinson
emerge from the global network. Furthermore, the network organized
around MacMillan consists of three completely unrelated subnetworks.

? The Network of References
? Etles. With regard to the most frequently cited texts in the corpus and the
co-citations linking them, the field of entrepreneurship, as used by the
authors publishing in JBV, takes the form of a network composed of two
main subnetworks organized around different research problematics
(see Figure 3).
? As the network mapped out in Figure 4 clearly reveals, authors publishing
in the JBV collectively con-struct, through their reference-making
practices, a very tight-knit network of periodicals. Indeed, out of a
theoretical possibility of 28 relations among the network’s 8 periodicals,
we note 26 empirical relations, which give rise to 1,112 co-periodical
citations.

Interpretation of Findings
? Structuration Trends
? Social fragmentation. Study of the references in the corpus’ articles
clearly indicates that the field of entrepreneurship is characterized by the
fragmentation of social relations among its members. There is already a
hint of this fragmentation in the 3,714 different titles cited by the authors
in
the corpus, but it is made most obvious by the fact that a vast majority of
the references (75.9%) are used only once and that less than 12% of the
titles are cited more than twice.
? Struggles and alliances. Second characteristic of the social structuration of
the corpus, the game of struggles and alliances is apparent in co-author and
co-institution relations, as well as in the reference networks.
? Disciplinary space (Amit et al., 1993; Bygrave, 1989a; Low & MacMillan,
1988; MacMillan & Katz, 1992; Wortman, 1986, 1987), the field of
entrepreneurship, as revealed by this study, is both more and less of a
discipline than is commonly asserted.

? From Epistemological Norms to Concrete Research
? The variety of knowledge. Whether viewed as a problem to be solved or as
a sign of cognitive vitality, the variety of knowledge here appears to be the
result of social relations.
? The imbrication of disciplines. While certain authors such as Bygrave
(1989a) have, identified theoretical networks of disciplines used in the
study of entrepreneurship, a completely different network of disciplines
is collectively and concretely constructed by the authors publishing in the
JBV.
? Relative importance of places of publication. This study also makes it
possible to add some nuances to MacMillan’s (1993) ranking of
entrepreneurship journals.

? Research Problematics
? Though the present study reveals fragmentation to be one of the field’s
main characteristics, study of the core of references does bring to light a
network of research problematics around which the field of
entrepreneurship seems to be organized and where there is some sort of
coherence (Figure 3).
? This competition in some sort actualizes a highly structured version of the
classic oppositions found in the field: micro/macro, characteristics of
entrepreneurs/entrepreneurial processes, and voluntarism/determinism.

Limitations and Future Research
? In conclusion, we would like to point out the limitations of this study and outline
ways in which it might be followed up. In the first place, its main limitation is its
singular character. In choosing a case study, what one gains in control and depth,
one loses in the possibility of applying the results obtained to the whole field of
entrepreneurship.
? Secondly, the research sketches a static portrait, whereas structuration of the field is
dynamic. The research thus offers an ahistorical image of this structuration.
? Thirdly, in confining the study to the sociological markers found in the articles, the
research masks the links between the theoretical and methodological content
of the articles studied and the structuration movements it reveals.
? Finally, although co-citation analysis methods made it possible to construct the
characteristic networks involved in the social structuration of the corpus studied,
they alone are not enough to exhaust the sociological complexity of the corpus.

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