Contextualizing Theory Building InEssay Preview: Contextualizing Theory Building InReport this essayAbstractTheory development and testing are central to the advancement of entrepreneurship as a scholarly field. For nearly three decades now, researchers have borrowed popular theories from other disciplines and adapted them to the study of diverse entrepreneurship phenomena. This has enhanced the rigor of research findings. Future studies can achieve greater rigor and relevance by paying more attention to the context of their investigations. Understanding the nature, dynamics, uniqueness and limitations of this context can enrich future studies. This article describes common problems revealed in recent entrepreneurship research when applying existing and new theories to well known vs. emerging and novel phenomena. The article also suggests strategies to enrich creative and constructive theory building.
“Cultural Influence” is one of the most frequently discussed and applied problems of theory development, with a major contribution to this field by Benjamin W. Schoenberg (1962, p. 624-627). The concept of cultural influence implies that people who have developed a new theory of human potential are responsible for a shared share in its success. In this article, Schoenberg introduces the concepts of cultural influences, cognitive biases, and cultural evolution (see a review of Schoenberg’s work in Science & Policy) in understanding how this occurs. These can lead to changes in thinking about how the world works–including, for example, how people are perceived to be or are not perceived to be different (Eckmann & Totten, 1998). This approach may even lead for those who have been influenced by a theory of human potential to question that theory (Eckmann & Totten, 1998; Totten & Wirth, 1986, p. 8-9). When there is any new idea emerging from a research design study, this may be evidence that a related area of research is underway or, more likely, has been conducted (e.g., Totten & Wirth, 1986; Totten & Wirth, 1988). A further problem with cultural diffusion, of which Schoenberg discusses a number in this article, is that it often results in the emergence of more distinct and complementary concepts used to describe different phenomena. This approach leads to an imbalance in understanding what can be produced, given the nature and history of different kinds of experimental experimentation. Schoenberg describes how culture influences development and experimentation and how such influences can influence the way researchers attempt to define new concepts. He further describes the development of research practice and the value of learning new concepts and experiments. Schoenberg’s ideas on what is important in theoretical research have been used in research setting, such as in his work on psychology and experimental design, to improve conceptual analysis (Barr, 2005; Dworkin, 2006). “Human Potential” is one of these problems, but it offers a valuable complement to the field of theoretical research. Schoenberg addresses the issues with which he focuses in this case. This paper, which also discusses research using different groups of people of differing ethnic and cultural backgrounds, is a major step toward understanding how different individuals interact in different ways to maximize their performance. It’s not just about academic performance, it’s about personal relationships and research needs and concerns. The issues covered in this article are especially relevant because the issues highlighted in this paper can be examined objectively: How can research be evaluated for their relevance to the current social questions and political issues? How can researchers address the issues in a way that facilitates new approaches? What is the extent to which research of a different group could be useful if we focus solely on the social questions and political issues? Who can and cannot contribute to the field in an important way? Can it be done consistently? How can researchers use their research resources and data to further increase the scope and depth of study of the topic of particular interest as they work on other topics? How can researchers contribute to the field more effectively by making decisions about how best to study a topic or a topic in general? When research researchers focus on specific people, they often ignore issues that have historically been overlooked, such as the development and value of different technologies (Gauke, 1992; Stigler, 1998). To remedy the present situation, Schoenberg offers a more direct way to examine the question of whether research can be done systematically on the question of how research should be done. This approach could also address the questions of how do researchers use their own research resources and data for other kinds of research, such as policymaking and policy development? In one recent paper (Lembeck, 1998
Keywords: Theory building; Entrepreneurship; Context of entrepreneurial phenomena1. Executive summaryTheory drives the evolution of scholarship in an academic discipline. It also shapes the academic conversation by delineating a field’s boundaries, the core questions to be examined and preferred research methods. Research in entrepreneurship has benefited from borrowing theories from other disciplines, notably sociology, psychology and economics. Yet, for many entrepreneurship researchers building and testing theory remain an onerous challenge, leading some to ignore theory in conducting their research, arguing that entrepreneurial phenomena fall outside the boundaries of known theories. Other researchers have failed to invoke theory in innovative ways that enrich the academic conversation. Still, others have imported theories from other disciplines without considering the key and distinguishing qualities of entrepreneurial phenomena.
This article discusses ways that researchers can use to better apply existing and emerging theories by anchoring their analyses in entrepreneurial phenomena and their contexts. It also identifies key pitfalls of applying theories that have been developed in other disciplines to the study of fundamental entrepreneurial research questions and issues. The article also highlights the major challenges researchers might encounter as they introduce and develop new theories when examining established and emerging entrepreneurial phenomena. The discussion outlines several strategies that researchers can use to develop or introduce these theories, while safeguarding against over-
generalizations that limit the relevance and rigor of their findings.Effective strategies that link theory to entrepreneurial contexts center on: delineating the boundaries and sources of newness of these contexts; questioning and probing widely held assumptions about a given theory and prior findings using it; and recognizing key contingencies that influence relationships within a given context. One approach is to question the key assumptions underlying a particular theory or even relax those assumptions, opening the door for more creative applications of the theory. This article proffers that the usefulness and efficacy of these strategies vary between variance and process theories that address different entrepreneurial phenomena and research questions. Process and variance theories can complement each other, adding to the rigor and
relevance of emerging research in the field of entrepreneurship.Theory-based research can contribute greatly to our understanding of complexentrepreneurial phenomena and the challenges entrepreneurs confront as they conceive, develop and manage their new firms. Rigorous and theoretically grounded research can give entrepreneurs important insights into what works and does not, reducing the odds of their failure. It can also give policy makers an effective foundation on which they can map out their plans to nurture, support and harvest entrepreneurial activities in ways that improve our quality of life.
2. IntroductionTheory building is a process of creativity and imagination. It demands careful reflection on the importance and uniqueness of the phenomenon at hand, the questions explored, and the context of the research. Theories serve as signposts that tell us what is important, why it is important, what determines this importance, and what outcomes should be expected. Theories also guide the reader through what was found and why it enriches or even challenges our understanding. Theoretically grounded studies pay particular attention to the context of their research and account for its complexity, uniqueness and richness. These studies also offer compelling arguments, provide a fair test of these arguments, and use findings to refine and enrich the theory they have invoked.
Reading recent entrepreneurship papers, however, one rarely gets a sense of the substance, magnitude or dynamics of the research context. These variables are often described in terms of summary statistics that are easy to understand but leave the reader wanting more information about the context of the research. Readers have no sense of what the researchers have observed, felt or thought. Alternative arguments or explanations are often omitted. Thus, theories are applied to sterile and highly sanitized settings, leaving a major gap in our understanding. As in silent movies, there is action—but readers have to
watch carefully to infer what actors say and do. They need to read the actors’ lips in order to decipher what is happening. Few entrepreneurship papers give us enough clues about the nature of their research settings and, instead, ask us to use our imagination to appreciate what has been done.
The sterility of our description of research sites and context is compounded by another problem. Entrepreneurship researchers frequently apply theories developed in other disciplines with different phenomena in mind. As such, these theories are grounded in assumptions that reflect the nature of distant phenomena, actors and sites. These assumptions may or may not apply to entrepreneurial contexts. A mismatch between theory and context can result in false leads and inconclusive findings. As often happens, inconclusive results encourage authors to question the utility of their chosen theories, invite calls for further research and lead to confusion about the relationships of interest.
Even meta-analyses can prove inconclusive, magnifying concern about the theories used and phenomena examined. Some of these issues could be overcome by linking the theory of choice with the phenomenon being explored. Entrepreneurship researchers miss an opportunity to enrich