Entrepreneurship as practice: systematic literature review of a nascent field

ABSTRACT

This paper provides a Systematic Literature Review (‘SLR’) of the emerging ‘entrepreneurship-as-practice’ (EaP) research field. It advances EaP as a ‘platform of expression’ that enriches entrepreneurship research. Following the ‘practice turn’ in social sciences, entrepreneurship is also interested in this new approach. The goal of this article is to map and critically review the literature within the EaP field. The Systematic Literature Review returned 76 articles contributing closely to EaP. Beyond descriptive analytics, results highlight the main research topics of EaP stream as well as multiple methodologies that connect researchers and participants through various research practices. The paper identifies a spectrum of seven theoretical frameworks underlying EaP studies and puts forward examples of research and empirical contexts to provoke the entrepreneurship research community to study actual practices in their diversity. Lastly, the authors detail in five propositions the promising avenues for future research opened by EaP.

KEYWORDS:

• Entrepreneurship as practice
• entrepreneuring
• entrepreneurial practice
• relationality
• processual
• materiality
• practice turn
• entrepreneurship
• systematic literature review

Acknowledgments

This paper is a collaborative effort, as reflected in the alphabetical ordering of authorship. We thank the anonymous reviewers and editors of the special issue, particularly William Gartner, and Neil Thompson, for their valuable feedback on earlier versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. See https://www.entrepreneurshipaspractice.com.

2. A practice perspective differs from a radical processual approach in that practice research aims at explaining action first, whereas process theories attempt to understand movement (change) first.

3. For a presentation of the interest of Giddens’ structuration theory for practice research, see Whittington (2010).