Studying the Emergence of New Organizations: Entrepreneurship Research Design

Entrepreneurship is a fundamental phenomenon in society around the world, but empirical work to improve its understanding has struggled to gain legitimacy. This article examines the challenge of establishing the field of research by comparing six recent studies on entrepreneurship research design an...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Entrepreneurship research journal 2011-01, Vol.1 (1)
Main Author: Woolley, Jennifer L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Entrepreneurship
mixed methods
Mixed methods research
new venture creation
organizational emergence
origins
research design
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Summary:Entrepreneurship is a fundamental phenomenon in society around the world, but empirical work to improve its understanding has struggled to gain legitimacy. This article examines the challenge of establishing the field of research by comparing six recent studies on entrepreneurship research design and methods. Consistently, scholars have defined entrepreneurship as a phenomenon of emergence; however, most entrepreneurship research has focused on questions regarding new ventures characteristics and outcomes after a new venture is started. One reason scholars continue to struggle with origins and emergence questions is the difficulty in obtaining relevant data. This paper recommends a series of tools and strategies to gather and analyze holistic data on entrepreneurship and organizational emergence. Specifically, the use of multi-level longitudinal data from several sources by multiple collection methods can provide the rich context necessary to illuminate venture emergence. To inform future studies, examples from nanotechnology entrepreneurship research are provided.
ISSN:2157-5665
2194-6175
2157-5665
DOI:10.2202/2157-5665.1005