Entrepreneurship: an evolving conceptual framework

Abstract

Scholars have been trying to give entrepreneurship an identity that describes its distinctive nature ever since the phenomenon was first observed. Research progress has spurred scholarship to the opportunity-based concept of entrepreneurship. Moreover, the entrepreneur who is seen as contributing to enterprise growth and wealth creation is often contrasted with the administrator who acts as steward or preserver of status quo. This paper integrates prior concepts and utilises entrepreneur's natural referent point, innovative practices, and its complementary counterpart, best practices, to form constructs that support a new business development framework. The resultant framework provides an understanding of the relationships between the entrepreneur, intrapreneur, administrator, and promoter beyond what is currently found in research literature. In addition, the work advances a new perspective on entrepreneurship boundaries and its distinctive domain. Propositions are derived from the new theoretical framework and practical implications are presented.