The tacit knowledge of entrepreneurial design: interrelating theory, practice and prescription in entrepreneurship research’

in Journal of Business Venturing Insights (2019), 11

An important challenge facing entrepreneurship researchers is the “three-body” knowledge problem of how to use “theoretical knowledge” to produce “prescriptive knowledge” that communicates the “practical ... [more ▼]

An important challenge facing entrepreneurship researchers is the “three-body” knowledge problem of how to use “theoretical knowledge” to produce “prescriptive knowledge” that communicates the “practical knowledge” of situated practice to students and practitioners of entrepreneurship. We argue that a contribution can be made to solving this problem by theorizing practical knowledge as the “know-how” to do a situated entrepreneurial practice. “Know-how” is a cognitive “capacity to act” that prescribes for a practitioner how to produce a type of outcome in a range of circumstances. This “know-how” can potentially, therefore, be reconstructed theoretically as explicit micro-prescriptive guidelines for third-party practice. To exploit this connection between practical knowledge and prescriptive knowledge, however, we first need to overcome the problem that “know-how” is largely tacit in the moment of real-time forward-looking practice. In other words, the practitioner is not directly aware of their tacit “know-how”, or “tacit knowledge”, at the time of practice. In this article, we explore the contribution design theory can make to empirically eliciting, and conceptually inferring, the real-time “tacit knowledge” of entrepreneurial practice as a precursor to producing micro-prescriptive knowledge. [less ▲]

Navigating the growing field of entrepreneurship inquiry: successionist and relational modes of theory development

in Fayolle, Alain; Riot, Phillipe (Eds.) Rethinking Entrepreneurship: debating research orientations (2016)

Reflecting the energy and enthusiasm of a growing multi-disciplinary field, entrepreneurship inquiry has generated a profusion of research practices associated with understanding and fostering ... [more ▼]

Reflecting the energy and enthusiasm of a growing multi-disciplinary field, entrepreneurship inquiry has generated a profusion of research practices associated with understanding and fostering entrepreneurial attitudes, behaviours, environments, processes, structures and discourses. The research output that has been generated poses both an opportunity and a challenge. The opportunity concerns the possibility of combining multiple perspectives in new and innovative ways (Pittaway, 2011). The challenge concerns the problem of navigating the navigating the complex landscape of entrepreneurship research output (Murphy, 2011). The problem of field navigation persists because the criteria that has been used to differentiate research output, such as ontological and epistemological positions, explanatory foci, levels of analysis and research methods, are elements in the theory development process, that are neither mutually exclusive nor directly comparable. We propose, therefore, that the challenge of field navigation can be addressed by grouping and comparing entrepreneurship perspectives in terms of modes of theory development. In this article, we discuss how actions, contexts and outcomes are universal units of theory building and that causal relationships between actions, contexts and outcomes are organized temporally in the sense that they are related either successively or contemporaneously. [less ▲]

How does context become context: relating multiple contexts in entrepreneurial explanation

Presentation (2015, August)

The issue of how to ‘theorise context’ remains largely implicit in entrepreneurship research.  This means that although there is an increasing receptiveness to the meaning, role and function of context ... [more ▼]

The issue of how to ‘theorise context’ remains largely implicit in entrepreneurship research.  This means that although there is an increasing receptiveness to the meaning, role and function of context, the search for different ways to make context a theoretical (rather than factual or referential) concept is still underdeveloped. In this article, we identify three dominant conceptions of context in entrepreneurship research and discuss the limitations they engender for theorizing context. These limitations relate to the spatial and/or temporal separation of context and action, and the spatio-temporal conflation of action and context. Next, we offer a first step in theorizing context from the perspective of relational thinking.  From this perspective, we explain how entrepreneurial processes emerge through the circular causality of action-context relationships. This relational conceptualization also enables an evaluation of how multiple contexts are related to the spatio-temporal specificities of actioned events [less ▲]

The promise of relational modes of inquiry for entrepreneurship research

Scientific Conference (2013, March)

In this presentation, we review some of the diverse analytical strategies used to advance relational thinking in studies of management, organization and entrepreneurship. As well as reviewing the ... [more ▼]

In this presentation, we review some of the diverse analytical strategies used to advance relational thinking in studies of management, organization and entrepreneurship. As well as reviewing the different research problems that various relational perspectives address, consideration is given to whether it is possible to distinguish some defining characteristics of relational thinking. Furthermore, the presentation examines whether relational thinking can be extended more fully into entrepreneurship inquiry to provide a stronger theoretical foundation for understanding action-contexts than is currently offered by perspectives privileging opportunity development, action-interaction, artificial science or effectuation. [less ▲]