Diversity of Literature

The history of entrepreneurship study is multi-disciplinary, multi-national and rather lengthy and abstruse. The scope of the literature, the number of authors and the multi-disciplinary nature of entrepreneurship complicate any comprehensive literature review. Yet, I’ll try to keep it manageable. The fact that entrepreneurial behavior occurs everywhere, and that it impacts all kinds of organizations, has made it a hot topic. It seems like every kind of thinker through history has thought about something related to entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship study has been appropriate for almost anyone to comment about or write about, and just about everyone has. Complicating matters even more, all these writers seem to take unique liberties in the assumptions they make about the definition of the concept of entrepreneurship and what the reader knows about it. Similar romantic descriptors of high profile behavior suffer from capricious use like: the hero, the villain, the superstar, the champion and so forth. I guess conspicuous behaviors will be noticed and chronicled; they pervade our markets and other systems of life. This makes entrepreneurship fair game for any qualified and casual interloper. Entrepreneurship has therefore been studied in academic disciplines other than management, economics and business. It's a social phenomenon, so sociologists have studied it intently; it's tied to our political infrastructure, so political scientists have their literature; it impacts upon community and environment, so the planners, developers and geographers have relevant information; psychologists study the mind of entrepreneurs; and so it goes. Practitioners like to write and theorize, too. A large variety of perspectives and discussions exist, which simply must be given their due. This broad study requires a fairly comprehensive review of diverse literature, theory and application.

As I undertake this categorization and organizing of the history of entrepreneurship, I have to give special credit to some of my fellow professionals who have diligently undertaken similar tasks, and from whom I have borrowed extensively. Not a whole lot of this chapter is really mine. My work is a mosaic created from a litany of theorists and writers on entrepreneurship, who have touched me, and who I believe are useful for creating the imagery that is my underlying theme.