International Entrepreneurship as an Admittance-Seeking Educational Field

ABSTRACT

International entrepreneurship (IE) research has gained significant attention over the last 30 years, but IE education has not yet obtained the same recognition. We investigate whether and how IE might gain admittance as a specific educational field. By employing the Delphi method with expert scholars and practitioners from around the world, we identify the key knowledge base and attributes that potential IE graduates should possess. We position our findings relative to extant research on education from IE’s parent disciplines of international business and entrepreneurship. This allows us to discuss whether and how our identified IE curriculum is differentiated and potentially legitimate. We show that while our IE curriculum has these characteristics, it requires contributions from both parent disciplines. From these results, we discuss the pedagogical implications of our study.

KEYWORDS:

• International business
• International entrepreneurship
• Education
• Curriculum
• Delphi method

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the international entrepreneurship scholars and practitioners who participated in this research. A previous version of the article was presented at the 2014 McGill IE Conference in Santiago, Chile. We thank Rod McNaughton and Hamid Etemad for their specific comments and support.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Aune ja Yrjö Rekolan rahasto and the Foundation for Economic Education (Liikesivistysrahasto).

Notes on contributors

Valtteri Kaartemo

Valtteri Kaartemo (D.Sc.), is a University Teacher at Turku School of Economics, University of Turku, Finland. A coauthor of several books, book chapters, conference papers and peer-reviewed articles, his research interests include roles of technology in market shaping, service research, network dynamics, international entrepreneurship, value co-creation and related processes.

Nicole Coviello

Nicole Coviello, is the Lazaridis Research Professor and Professor of Marketing at the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada. Her research is in the context of technology firms where she studies topics at the intersection of marketing strategy, international business and entrepreneurship. Nicole’s work appears in the Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Business Venturing, Academy of Management Review, among others.

Peter Zettinig

Peter Zettinig, Adjunct Professor in International Business at the University of Turku, Finland. His central curiosity in research and education revolves around the question how change unfolds in different contexts and on different levels related to international business phenomena. This includes research in entrepreneurial firms, which transform into multinational corporations; global virtual teams and their development trajectories; cluster organizations and their collective dynamics; and the central questions regarding knowledge and learning in their various forms either on individual or organizational levels. These central research interests feed a deep passion for experimenting and developing exciting teaching and learning designs, which present themselves as transformation process in which learners discover new knowledge and develop new solution trajectories across disciplinary boundaries.