Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Mapping the (in)visible college(s) in the field of entrepreneurship

  • Published:
Scientometrics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Despite the vitality and dynamism that the field of entrepreneurship has experienced in the last decade, the issue of whether it comprises an effective network of (in)formal communication linkages among the most influential scholars within the area has yet to be examined in depth. This study follows a formal selection procedure to delimit the ‘relational environment’ of the field of entrepreneurship and to analyze the existence and characterization of (in)visible college(s) based on a theoretically well-grounded framework, thus offering a comprehensive and up-to-date empirical analysis of entrepreneurship research. Based on more than a 1,000 papers published between 2005 and 2010 in seven core entrepreneurship journals and the corresponding (85,000) citations, we found that entrepreneurship is an (increasingly) autonomous, legitimate and cohesive (in)visible college, fine tuned through the increasing visibility of certain subject specialties (e.g., family business, innovation, technology and policy). Moreover, the rather dense formal links that characterize the entrepreneurship (in)visible college are accompanied by a reasonably solid network of informal relations maintained and sustained by the mobility of ‘stars’ and highly influential scholars. The limited internationalization of the entrepreneurship community, reflected in the almost total absence of non-English-speaking authors/studies/outlets, stands as a major quest for the field.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. The Entrepreneurship Division of the Academy of Management increased its membership by 230%—more than any other established division—and with over 2,700 members, it now ranks among the largest in the Academy of Management. At the same time, the number of dedicated entrepreneurship journals listed by the Social Science Citation Index increased from one to more than half a dozen, among which the one in the lead has achieved impact factors in the same range as highly respected management and social science journals (Katz 2003; Wiklund et al. 2011).

  2. Schildt et al. (2006).

  3. Scopus, officially named SciVerse Scopus, is a bibliographic database containing abstracts and citations for scholarly journal articles. It is owned by Elsevier and is provided on the Web for subscribers. Searches in Scopus incorporate searches of scientific web pages through Scirus, another Elsevier product, as well as patent databases.

  4. Campbell (2011, p. 44) argues that “[t]he academic community is geographically very dispersed and therefore has, at best, superficial social/spatial cohesion; collaboration tends to focus exclusively on task”, whereas Reader and Watkins (2006, p. 417) state that the entrepreneurship community encompasses “real and robust social and collaborative networks underlying the generation of the work which is cited jointly by third parties”.

  5. The author deeply thanks one of the referees for proposing such an insightful method which helped to mitigate the dependence of results on the choice of entrance journals.

  6. These three journals stand as the top three (Level I journals) in the John Carroll University Classification (Katz and Boal 2006). Fried (2003) also documents that these three journals were the most highly-ranked journals by a set of leading scholars in the field of entrepreneurship.

  7. JCR is a database of ISI Web of Knowledge.

  8. Number of times the articles published in a given year (e.g., 2009) in a set of journals were cited articles published in the entrance or ‘seed’ journal (e.g., ETP, JBV or SBE).

  9. Number of times the articles published in a set of journals were cited in the entrance or ‘seed’ journal (e.g., ETP, JBV or SBE) in a given year (e.g., 2009).

  10. In order to obtain the citation matrix of the seed journal X (ETP, JBV or SBE) in the year T (2005; …; 2009), we had to gather the citing data of each journal belonging to the citation environment of that seed journal—in the case of ETP, the average number of journals included in the citation environment was 24 (minimum of 21 in 2008 and a maximum of 27 in 2006), whereas the corresponding average was 29 for JBV (minimum of 25 in 2006 and a maximum of 36 in 2008), and 32 for SBE (minimum of 29 in 2009 and a maximum of 35 in 2006). Given that this procedure was done manually, it was rather demanding and time-consuming task.

  11. Preference was given to Scopus, a more recent bibliographic database from Elsevier, instead of the more widely used database, the ISI Web of Knowledge, because although both are similar in coverage for the period analyzed (2005–2010), the former (Scopus) provides the name of all (co)authors of the cited studies, whereas ISI only supplies the name of the first author, limiting substantially a comprehensive analysis of top-cited authors in a given field.

  12. In their paper, Ravallion and Wagstaff (2011) propose and discuss a new approach that is grounded on a theoretical ‘‘influence function’’ representing explicit prior beliefs about how citations reflect influence.

  13. This does not, however, solve an important problem which consists in identifying the citation threshold above which the researcher is included in the category of ‘influential’ author. Acknowledging this important limitation, we decided to consider a rather conservative approach by computing top-50 most cited authors instead, as most common, top-10 (Frey 2006) or top-25 (Silva and Teixeira 2008) rankings.

  14. We excluded from this figure the authors in Table 3 who have died or retired/are not active in the field (e.g., Schumpeter, Cooper, Birley, Kirzner) and those who are highly cited but are not from the area, i.e., ‘outsiders’ (e.g., Porter, Lerner, March, Granovetter, Williamson, Teece).

  15. Since its inception, in 1996, the Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research (before 2009, International Award for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Research) has become firmly established as the foremost global award for research on entrepreneurship (Henrekson and Lundström 2009). According to Henrekson and Lundström (2009, p. 11), “a prize-worthy contribution needs to be original and influential… a contribution is influential, notably through its impact on subsequent scientific work…, by furthering entrepreneurship as a field…, by furthering entrepreneurship education and training at the academic level, and by influencing policy-making and society more broadly.”

  16. Shaker Zahra has received several awards for his excellent service and teaching, including the Best teacher in the MBA and the Mentor Award from the Entrepreneurship Division, the Academy of Management.

  17. William Gartner also serves on the Board of Review of JBV and JSBM.

  18. He is also Associate Editor of The Annals of Regional Science, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, International Journal of Technology Transfer and Commercialisation, International Journal of Biotechnology, and International Journal of Industrial Organization.

  19. Using the ISI classification of scientific areas, demarking from the Business and Management (B&M) the specialty of Entrepreneurship (ENT), we considered 8 distinct ‘specialties’ or research subjects: Entrepreneurship (ENT), Business and Management (B&M), Economics (ECO), Sociology (SOC), Psychology (PSY), Finance (FIN), Planning and Development (P&D), and Labour and Education (L&E). It is important to note that Business and Management (B&M) includes Innovation, Marketing and Organization fields of research, whereas Accounting is included in Finance (FIN).

  20. The other two core entrepreneurship journals, FBR and ISBJ, appear in all but one (SBE) of the seven journals.

  21. In order to maintain the number of topic categories low, we included the Accounting-related sources that appear in FBR under the label ‘Finance’.

  22. This rather ad hoc ‘clustering’ by topics was based on the co-authorship linkages and information conveyed by the literature in the area, namely the papers by Cornelius et al. (2006) and Schildt et al. (2006).

  23. Detailed information is presented in Table A6 in the Online Appendix. Data was gathered from the Scopus bibliographic database (using the search machine ‘Authors’ Affiliations’) and authors'/organizations' webpages; the authors’ current affiliation reports to May 2011.

  24. 24 different countries are represented: 1 (0.5%) located in Africa; 10 (5%) in Asia; 65 (34%) in Europe; 3 (1.6%) in Oceania; and 113 (59%) in North America (it was not possible to identify the location of 5 institutions).

  25. By May 2011 this author was also affiliated to Växjö University (Sweden).

References

  • Albarrán, P., & Ruiz-Castillo, J. (2011). References made and citations received by scientific articles. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 62(1), 40–49.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Alvarez, S. A., Barney, J. B., & Young, S. L. (2010). Debates in entrepreneurship: Opportunity formation and implications for the field of entrepreneurship. International Handbook Series on Entrepreneurship, 5(Part 1), 23–45.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baumol, W. J. (1968). Entrepreneurship in economic theory. American Economic Review, 58(2), 64–71.

    Google Scholar 

  • Borgman, C., & Furner, J. (2002). Scholarly communication and bibliometrics. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 36, 3–72.

    Google Scholar 

  • Borgman, C. L., & Rice, R. E. (1992). The convergence of information science and communication: A bibliometric analysis. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 43, 397–411.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Borokhovich, K. A., Bricker, R. J., & Simkins, B. J. (1994). The streams of financial research and their interrelationships: Evidence from the Social Sciences Citation Index. Financial Practice and Education, 4(2), 110–123.

    Google Scholar 

  • Braunerhjelm, P., & Henrekson, M. (2009). Awarding entrepreneurship research: A presentation of the Global Award. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 33(3), 809–814.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Campbell, K. (2011). Caring and daring entrepreneurship research. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 23(1), 37–47.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Casillas, J., & Acedo, F. (2007). Evolution of the intellectual structure of family business literature: A bibliometric study of FBR. Family Business Review, 20(2), 141–162.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clements, K. W., & Wang, P. (2003). Who cites what? Economic Record, 79(245), 229–244.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cooper, A. (2003). Entrepreneurship: The past, the present, the future. In Z. J. Acs & D. B. E. Audretsch (Eds.), Handbook of entrepreneurship research (Vol. 1). Boston, MA: Kluwer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cornelius, B., Landström, H., & Persson, O. (2006). Entrepreneurial studies: The dynamic research front of a developing social science. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 30(3), 375–398.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crane, D. (1972). Invisible colleges: Diffusion of knowledge in scientific communities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davidsson, P. (2008). The entrepreneurship research challenge. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davidsson, P., Low, M. B., & Wright, M. (2001). Editor’s introduction: Low and MacMillan ten years on—Achievements and future directions for entrepreneurship research. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 25(4), 5–15.

    Google Scholar 

  • Doreian, P., & Fararo, T. J. (1985). Structural equivalence in a journal network. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 36, 28–37.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Etemad, H., & Lee, Y. (2003). The knowledge network of international entrepreneurship: Theory and evidence. Small Business Economics, 20, 5–23.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Frey, B. (2006). How influential is economics? De Economist, 154(2), 295–311.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fried, V. (2003). Defining a forum for entrepreneurship scholars. Journal of Business Venturing, 18(1), 1–11.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gamboa, E. C., & Brouthers, L. E. (2008). How international is entrepreneurship? Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 32(3), 551–558.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gartner, W. B. (2001). Is there an elephant in entrepreneurship? Blind assumptions in theory development. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 25(4), 27–39.

    MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Gartner, W. B., Davidsson, P., & Zahra, S. A. (2006). Are you talking to me? The nature of community in entrepreneurship scholarship. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 30(3), 321–331.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grégoire, D. A., Noël, M. X., Déry, R., & Béchard, J.-P. (2006). Is there conceptual convergence in entrepreneurship research? A co-citation analysis of frontiers of entrepreneurship research, 1981–2004. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 30(3), 333–373.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hagstrom, W. O. (1970). Factors related to the use of different modes of publishing research in four scientific fields. In C. E. Nelson & D. K. Pollock (Eds.), Communication among scientists and engineers. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Henrekson, M., & Lundström, A. (2009). The Global Award for entrepreneurship research. Small Business Economics, 32, 1–14.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hoang, H., & Antoncic, B. (2003). Network-based research in entrepreneurship: A critical review. Journal of Business Venturing, 18, 165–187.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Katz, J. (2003). Core publications in entrepreneurship and related fields: A guide to getting published. Version 4.1.1. http://eweb.slu.edu/booklist.htm.

  • Katz, J. & Boal, K. (2006). Entrepreneurship journal rankings. Accessed April 19, 2011, from http://www.marketingtechie.com/articles/mtart20020307.pdf.

  • Leydesdorff, L. (2002). Indicators of structural change in the dynamics of science: Entropy statistics of the sc journal citation reports. Scientometrics, 53(1), 131–159.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leydesdorff, L. (2004). Top-down decomposition of the journal citation report of the social science citation index: Graph- and factor-analytical approaches. Scientometrics, 60(2), 159–180.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leydesdorff, L. (2008). The delineation of nanoscience and nanotechnology in terms of journals and patents: A most recent update. Scientometrics, 76(1), 159–167.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leydesdorff, L., & Cozzens, S. E. (1993). The delineation of specialties in terms of journals using the dynamic journal set of the science citation index. Scientometrics, 26, 133–154.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leydesdorff, L., & Zhou, P. (2007). Nanotechnology as a field of science: Its delineation in terms of journals and patents. Scientometrics, 70(3), 693–713.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lievrouw, L. A. (1989). The invisible college reconsidered: Bibliometrics and the development of scientific communication theory. Communication Research, 16, 615–628.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Locke, J., & Perera, H. (2001). The intellectual structure of international accounting in the early 1990s. International Journal of Accounting, 36(2), 223–249.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Low, M. B., & MacMillan, I. C. (1988). Entrepreneurship: Past research and future challenges. Journal of Management, 14(2), 139–161.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Meyer, G. D. (2011). The reinvention of academic entrepreneurship. Journal of Small Business Management, 49(1), 1–8.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Price, D. J. de Solla (1963). Little science, big science. New York: Columbia University Press.

  • Price, D. J. de Solla (1971). Some remarks on elitism in information and the invisible college phenomenon in science. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 22, 74–75.

  • Price, D. J. de Solla (1986). Little science, big science and beyond. New York: Columbia University Press.

  • Ratnatunga, J., & Romano, C. (1997). A citation classics’ analysis of articles in contemporary small enterprise research. Journal of Business Venturing, 12(3), 197–212.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ravallion, M., & Wagstaff, A. (2011). On measuring scholarly influence by citations. Scientometrics, online first. doi:10.1007/s11192-011-0375-0.

  • Reader, D., & Watkins, D. (2006). The social and collaborative nature of entrepreneurship scholarship: A co-citation and perceptual analysis. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 30(3), 417–441.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rigney, D., & Barnes, D. (1980). Patterns of interdisciplinary citation in the social sciences. Social Science Quarterly, 61(1), 114–127.

    Google Scholar 

  • Romano, C., & Ratnatunga, J. (1996). A citation analysis of the impact of journals on contemporary small enterprise research. Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice, 20(3), 7–21.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sarasvathy, S. D., & Venkataraman, S. (2011). Entrepreneurship as method: Open questions for an entrepreneurial future. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 35(1), 113–135.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schildt, H. A., Zahra, S. A., & Sillanpää, A. (2006). Scholarly communities in entrepreneurship research: A co-citation analysis. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 30(3), 399–415.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shane, S., & Venkataraman, S. (2000). The promise of entrepreneurship as a field of research. Academy of Management Review, 25, 217–226.

    Google Scholar 

  • Silva, E. G., & Teixeira, A. A. C. (2008). Surveying structural change: Seminal contributions and a bibliometric account. Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, 19(4), 273–362.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Steyaert, C., Hjorth, D., & Gartner, W. B. (2011). Six memos for a curious and imaginative future scholarship in entrepreneurship studies’. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 23(1), 1–7.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, R. S. (1986). Value-added processes in information systems. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tuire, P., & Erno, P. (2001). Exploring invisible scientific communities: Studying networking relations within an educational research community: A Finnish case. Higher Education, 42, 493–513.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van den Besselaar, P., & Leydesdorff, L. (1996). Mapping change in scientific specialties: A scientometric reconstruction of the development of Artificial Intelligence. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 47(6), 415–436.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Venkataraman, S. (1997). The distinctive domain of entrepreneurship research. In J. A. Katz (Ed.), Advances in entrepreneurship, firm emergence and growth (Vol. 3, pp. 119–138). Oxford, UK: Elsevier/JAI Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vieira, P. C., & Teixeira, A. A. C. (2010). Are finance, management, and marketing autonomous fields of scientific research? An analysis based on journal citations. Scientometrics, 85(3), 627–646.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wallace, D. P. (2007). Knowledge management: Historical and cross-disciplinary themes. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.

    Google Scholar 

  • Waller, J. H. (2006). Evaluating scholarly communication at the subdisciplinary level. Collection Management, 30(2), 45–57.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Watkins, D., & Reader, D. (2004), Identifying current trends in entrepreneurship research: A new approach. Accessed April 2011, from http://www.kmu.unisg.ch/rencontres/RENC2004/Topics/Watkins_Renc_2004_Topic_A.pdf.

  • Werner, S., & Brouthers, L. E. (2002). How international is management? Journal of International Business Studies, 33(3), 583–591.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wiklund, J., Davidsson, P., Audretsch, D., & Karlsson, C. (2011). The future of entrepreneurship research. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 35(1), 1–9.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zahra, S. (2007). Contextualizing theory building in entrepreneurship research. Journal of Business Venturing, 22(3), 443–452.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zitt, M. (2006). Scientometric indicators: A few challenges. Data mine-clearing, knowledge flows measurements, diversity issues, invited plenary talk. In Proceedings international workshop on webometrics, informetrics and scientometrics & seventh COLLNET meeting, Nancy (France). http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00006306/.

  • Zuccala, A. (2006). Modeling the invisible college. Journal of the American Society for information Science and Technology, 57(2), 152–168.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zuccala, A., & van den Besselaar, P. (2009). Mapping review networks: Exploring research community roles and contributions. Scientometrics, 81(1), 111–122.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

I’m deeply grateful for useful comments and suggestions from two referees. The encouragement and patience of the Editor, Tibor Braun, is sincerely acknowledged. I’m also indebted to João Ramos, João Américo Ramos, Marlene Grande and Paulo Pires for their help in harmonizing some data/citations.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. CEF.UP, Faculdade de Economia, Universidade do Porto, Rua Dr Roberto Frias, 4200-464, Porto, Portugal

    Aurora A. C. Teixeira

  2. INESC Porto, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Aurora A. C. Teixeira

  3. OBEGEF, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Aurora A. C. Teixeira

Authors
  1. Aurora A. C. Teixeira
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Aurora A. C. Teixeira.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary material 1 (DOC 884 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Teixeira, A.A.C. Mapping the (in)visible college(s) in the field of entrepreneurship. Scientometrics 89, 1–36 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-011-0445-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-011-0445-3

Keywords

JEL Classification

Search

Navigation