Introducing three academic conversations: Critical Entrepreneurship Studies, Entrepreneurship as Practice and a Radical Processual Approach to entrepreneurship

Abstract

In this chapter, the authors have introduced three recent conversations within entrepreneurship research that diverge from ‘mainstream’, functionalist entrepreneurship research: Critical Entrepreneurship Studies, Entrepreneurship as Practice and the Radical Processual Approach. They have used the question of “Why do some become entrepreneurs and others don’t” as an illustrative tool for bringing out the conversations’ interrelations, idiosyncratic foci and ways of asking questions. All in all, the authors emphasize that it is not a matter of what approach to entrepreneurship is the ‘best’, but rather about understanding what makes them unique, and how they can complement each other, ultimately to provide spaces for novel, radical, complexified and nuanced ways of understanding and researching entrepreneurship phenomena.