The beginning of the twenty-first century heralds a golden era for entrepreneurship and scholars engaged in its research. Significant growth of entrepreneurial activity is being witnessed, and the business world talks of an entrepreneurial revolution comparable to the industrial revolution of the twentieth century. Having become widely accepted that entrepreneurship makes vital contributions to the world economy, the field has gained considerable prominence in academic curricula and programs, conferences, as well as in leading disciplinary and mainstream management journals.
At the heart of this trend, Neergaard and Ulhøi detect several challenges that are related to the academic legitimacy of the entrepreneurial phenomenon, particularly when explored by means of qualitative research. According to critics inside the research community, entrepreneurship is a field lacking methodological diversity and stringency. However, even though calls for more qualitative approaches are made regularly, their perceived shortage of rigour becomes a barrier to publication in peer-reviewed mainstream journals. With this book, Neergaard and Ulhøi raise the visibility of qualitative entrepreneurship studies and offer tangible “how-to” advice on the use of qualitative research methods.
The edited volume consists of 17 original contributions and one reprint of an epoch-making article. The editors bring together 23, both junior and more experienced researchers from Scandinavia, Europe, the USA and New Zealand. The fact that only six of the contributors are from outside Europe is, as stated by the editors, attributed to the richer qualitative research tradition in Europe than elsewhere, further linked to less publication pressure on European scholars. However, and particularly if this assumption is true – a more balanced mixture of authors would have provided more insight into inter-continental methodological preferences, heightening their prominence and exposing them to an international audience. As one could guess from the book title, there are no quantitative papers, although some may use certain types of quantification, as for example Brundin's classification of emotions into groups. Neergaard and Ulhøi envision entrepreneurship as “a race against time” and structure the volume around the vehicle metaphor, organising it through a procedural perspective that reflects four steps of the research journey: from the paradigm in which the research is anchored (choosing a vehicle), the research strategy (starting out and gearing up), data collection and analysis (gaining speed), and finally, quality considerations and achieving publication (winding down and assessing the ride).
Part I: choosing a vehicle
To begin with, I wish to declare myself as a fan of critical realism and supporter of the use of qualitative methodologies in social science research. As such, I greatly enjoyed reading the first part of this book which deals with “alternative” research paradigms. The first chapter introduces major models and tools available to entrepreneurship researchers and revisits the paradigm in two parts: a reprint of an original article and a commentary by Bygrave. The author builds a bridge from the state of entrepreneurship research in 1989 to its condition in 2007 and comes to the sad conclusion that there has barely been any methodological advancement. The field remains deeply steeped in quantitative research “addicted” to SPSS and it is almost impossible to publish purely empirical papers in leading journals despite their findings having the potential to improve the practice of entrepreneurship. In the second chapter, Blundel turns to critical realism, its origins and principal features, to clarify its distinctive ontological and epistemological assumptions. By means of three studies as examples, the author assesses the limitations and strengths of the paradigm's applicability to provide informed explanations of entrepreneurial activity. It is demonstrated that critical realism's multi-level analysis moves beyond the description of social situations to more sophisticated causal explanations, based on the critical assessment of the relationship between structures and agency. Finally Berglund, discusses phenomenological methods as powerful tools to capture and communicate the meaning of entrepreneurs experiences in everyday life. After a brief review of the phenomenological tradition and practical instructions for its application on entrepreneurship research, the value of a phenomenological methodology is illustrated in a worked example of entrepreneurial risk enactment.
Part II: starting out and gearing up
The second part, Chapters 4 through 9, deals with how to frame scientific questions, identify the major concepts of the topic and choose the relevant research strategy. The first three chapters provide more holistic perspectives to the study of entrepreneurship, while the last three suggest methodologies for the analysis of visual and textual carriers of the entrepreneurial action. Accordingly, Johnstone, Leitch, Mäkelä and Turcan, offer overviews of ethnographic methods, action research and grounded theory research, discuss their origin and developments, and refer to examples of their application on contemporary cases. In Chapter 7, which could have as well carry the title “semiotics 101”, Smith and Anderson argue that only by exploring entrepreneurship's different meanings to different people will we be able to understand the concept and its application. The authors do an excellent job explaining the nature of semiotics and the basic generic steps for data analysis.
The use of language has potential far beyond the use of interviews, and in the last two chapters, Ahl, Achtenhagen and Welter, undertake discourse analyses of media material and research articles on women's entrepreneurship. It is revealed that the discourse in popular press and research involves significant messages about social norms, influencing our general understanding of women's role in entrepreneurship.
Part III: gaining speed
The debate surrounding sampling procedures in qualitative research exists for almost as long as qualitative research itself. With particular attention to entrepreneurship research, Neergaard highlights the difficulties in sampling associated individuals and ventures and guides us into how to select cases and informants purposefully to secure the quality of the research outcome. Providing an example from her own research on emotions of entrepreneurs and how they matter within the business context, Brundin focuses on micro-processes and real-time methodologies for collecting empirical material. Despite the manifestation of ethical dilemmas and considerations about how much the researcher influences the process, the yielded material offers close-up, authentic insights in the daily life of the entrepreneur. In contrast, factuality is not an important concern in McKenzie's chapter that involves delayed verbal history collection, but what matters for the author is how the entrepreneur subjectively recollects past experiences. The technique is suitable for “thick description” of life histories but the researcher may have difficulty linking different entrepreneurs' interpretation of similar events. In Chapter 13, Wakkee, Englis and During present a rather novel source of qualitative data: company e-mails. However, instead of using e-mails as a survey distribution channel, the authors argue that researchers should concentrate on the messages, text format, signs and emoticons contained. Proposing a step-by-step account of the procedure Wakkee, Englis and During disentangle the practical issues related to the method. The authors do not recommend e-mails to be used as the only source of data but recognise the value of multiple sources to supplement or invalidate e-text information. In the last chapter of the third part, Piihl, Klyver and Damgaard develop the method of scientificated fiction – carried out by means of scientificating role playing-as an unconventional way to theorising. The approach is inspired by theatre and suggests that researchers can immerse themselves in a character – like actors do. Improvised dialogues are treated as data from which concepts and theories are developed. If you have been searching social scientific literature for fresh or extravagant ideas on qualitative data collection, this chapter is worth a read. When I started this review I was hoping to spot avant-garde techniques, and reading about scientificated fiction helped compensate for how sceptical I got as regards innovation with some of the rest of the book.
Part IV: winding down and assessing the ride
The last part addresses two concerns: the first two chapters deal with research quality control, and the last two turn to how to get qualitative research published. Consequently, Wigren's and Bøllingtoft's chapters prepare the basis for commonly understood quality criteria in qualitative research and from there they set off to examine the extent these criteria can be applied to ethnographic studies (Chapter 15) and to an observation study taking a critical realist approach (Chapter 16). The part finishes with two enlightening and at the same time entertaining chapters on a common worry among PhD students and junior researchers: getting qualitative research published. With an analogy to playing baseball and an anecdotal, impressionist tale, Brush, Smith and Anderson offer readers complementary advice with regard to abandoning or adhering to conformity of disciplinary conventions.
A postscript from the editors Ulhøi and Neergaard summarises the volume and addresses remaining challenges for the qualitative research of entrepreneurship.
To sum up, I come away from the book even more convinced than before that qualitative methods can play a vital role in enhancing our understanding of the entrepreneurial phenomenon, its processes and actors. One of its main strengths is the fact that several chapters are dedicated to showing readers how to properly put in application both established and original methods to the study of entrepreneurship. The concepts used throughout are comprehensively explained and the terminology is adequately defined. Opposite to some methodological literature which appears to be written by technical writers, another positive feature of this book is its readability. This might make it appealing to a range of scholars with different levels of experience in the field of entrepreneurship. Over the last few years I came across several edited collections that attempted to put together work on entrepreneurship, but few practical guides for its research; in this sense, this book fills an essential gap. At the risk of sounding picky, I must say that the volume seems a bit rushed editorially, due to some typos and inconsistencies in authors' names. However, because content is what matters, I would recommend the book to teachers, students and researchers of entrepreneurship, but also to all of us, irrespective of discipline, who are determined not to accept the uncritical dogma of positivism and empiricism which many business faculties and refereed journals adhere to.
