A Study on Disagreements over the Definition and Boundaries of Entrepreneurship Theory and Scope for Cross Fertilization between Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship Theory

Abstract

The literature on entrepreneurship research primarily focuses on aspects of the setting, ignoring the conceptual domain (Shane, Scott, 2000). The concept has been defined in terms of ‘entrepreneur’ alone, which, has resulted in incomplete definitions (Venkatraman (1997); Gartner (1988)). Overlapping of constructs and each operating within its own abuttal’s prevents a holistic definition of entrepreneurship (Low & McMillan, 1988). Also the confusion for researchers to decide on the efforts to have entrepreneurship as a distinctive domain (Shane & Venkatraman, 2000) or to continue developing models through other fields of social sciences (Bygrave,Hoter,1991) or to couple both in the development of research (Low, Murray B, 2001) continues. This paper seeks to identify, issues that have led entrepreneurship research as a field to become highly splintered and aims at understanding the current state of field and exploring new directions. Towards the end the researcher looks at the contributions of strategic management to entrepreneurship theory and the options of internalizing the knowledge and methods of strategic management with entrepreneurship.