Entrepreneurship research in Europe: taking stock and looking forward.

With this article, as introduction to a special issue on entrepreneurship research in Europe, we hope to initiate a discussion about the importance of grounding entrepreneurship research in its national context. Different European researchers, all knowledgeable about the entrepreneurship research scene in their respective country, present the state of the research field for France, Germany, the United Kingdom (Blackburn & Smailbone, 2008); and Scandinavia. Two articles from U.S. authors complement this issue, reviewing differences in how entrepreneurship scholars measure the phenomenon and assessing the European approach(es). This special issue sets out to demonstrate the value of variety in the field--variety that very much depends on the different national, methodological, and thematic contexts entrepreneurship research takes place in.

Why Study European Entrepreneurship Research?

Entrepreneurship research has gained prominence over the past decade. This also is reflected in the number of reviews published in handbooks or special journal issues, assessing achievements, progress and future trends of the field (e.g., Cooper, 2003; Davidsson, Low, & Wright, 2001), discussing methodological issues (e.g., Aldrich & Baker, 1997; Chandler & Lyon, 2001; Davidsson & Wildund, 2001), concepts and research paradigms (Bruyat & Julien, 2000; Busenitz et al., 2003; Davidsson, 2003; Phan, 2004; Shane & Venkataraman, 2000; Steyaert & Katz, 2004), or analyzing research communities (Gartner, Davidsson, & Zahra, 2006).

Moreover, several articles and books have been taking stock of European entrepreneurship research, analyzing themes, topics, and factors studied in published European research (Hisrich & Drnovsek, 2002), either reviewing general progress in the field (Landstrom, Frank, & Veciana, 1997), discussing differences between Europe and the U.S. (Aldrich, 2000; Huse & Landstr6m, 1997) and the European position in the entrepreneurship debate (Fayolle, Kyro, & Ulijn, 2005), or publishing a volume with contributions from the emerging "new breed" of Europe-based entrepreneurship scholars (Wiklund, Dimov, Katz, & Shepherd, 2006, p. 4). All of the European reviews concluded that the European research field differed from U.S. research because of methodological openness (Aldrich, 2000; Huse & Landstrom, 1997; Wiklund et al., 2006) and a strong interest in contextual dimensions of entrepreneurship (Huse & Landstrom, 1997; Landstrom et al., 1997); that European entrepreneurship research consists of broad and diverse approaches with a bright future (Hisrich & Drnovsek, 2002, p. 199); that these European approaches reflect the richness and diversity of European cultures and traditions (Fayolle et al., 2005; Wiklund et al., 2006); and that European approaches have "something to offer to research, business, and community development in the United States" (Huse & Landstrom, 1997, p. 3).

Why then another special issue on this topic? Why resurrecting an old debate around cross-national differences and similarities (Aldrich, 2000, p. 6)? Both editors had attended presentations at European conferences, where scholars took stock of their country's entrepreneurship research. This initiated a discussion which we thought fruitful to share with a wider audience, namely, about both the importance of grounding entrepreneurship research in its national context and the value added by this to the academic debate. Therefore, the approach used in this special issue differs from the review articles and books mentioned above: European researchers, all knowledgeable about the entrepreneurship research scene in their respective country, present the state of the research field for France (Lasch & Yami, 2008), Germany (Schmude, Welter, & Heumann, 2008), the United Kingdom (Blackburn & Smallbone, 2008); and Scandinavia (Hjorth, 2008). Two articles from U.S. authors complement this issue, reviewing differences in how entrepreneurship scholars measure the phenomenon (Brush, Manolova, & Edelman, 2008) and assessing the European approach(es) (Gartner, 2008).

We thus intend to add another perspective to the current debate on progress within the field and its future, by drawing attention to the context in which entrepreneurship research takes place. This reflects the recent debate in entrepreneurship research, where scholars increasingly recognize entrepreneurship not only as a scientific phenomenon, but also try to identify ways of how best to study its societal dimension and facets. Davidsson (2003) pointed to the different domains of entrepreneurship research, delineating entrepreneurship as having both a scientific and societal dimension. "Entrepreneurship as societal phenomenon" draws attention to antecedents and outcomes of entrepreneurial behavior, and "entrepreneurship as a scholarly domain" aims at understanding what entrepreneurship is about. We suggest taking the attention paid to context a step further. Context matters not only for entrepreneurship as such, because it is influenced by culture, political, and economic environments, thus explaining cross-national differences in themes and topics, but context also matters for the institutionalization of entrepreneurship research and research communities. We will use the remaining pages of this introduction for some thoughts on the different facets of context.

National and/or International Research Communities in Europe

Research communities are needed for the field in order to gain legitimacy because a new research field requires a critical mass of individuals and "a core group of leading authors" (Cornelius, Landstrom, & Persson, 2006) to achieve progress. Otherwise, the field will continue to rely on individual initiative thus "running the risk of remaining fragmented, not attaining academic reputation, and missing the possibilities to realize progressive accumulation of knowledge" (Huse & Landstrom, 1997, p. 6). Such institutionalization is, for example, reflected in the growth of academic infrastructure as measured in the numbers of chairs and research centers dedicated to entrepreneurship research, or the emergence of forums where entrepreneurship researchers can meet either nationally or internationally.

In Europe, the number of entrepreneurship researchers at universities and research centers has been increasing steadily over the 1980s and 1990s, which partly also reflects a growing interest of governments in entrepreneurship themes. Where entrepreneurship had strong roots in small business research, as for example in the United Kingdom or the Nordic countries, research communities emerged early on, while in other countries such as France and Germany the field only took off ground from the mid- to late 1990s onwards. Overall, we can observe two main trends with regard to entrepreneurship research communities, which reflect the national context in terms of the size of the country: some academic communities are more inward-looking, while others are outward looking, building and gaining legitimacy internationally. In large countries, such as France, the U.K., and Germany, inward-looking communities abounded, especially in the early years of the institutionalization of the field. For example, Blackburn and Smallbone (2008) illustrate the benefits of a densely knit research community which has emerged over many decades, in driving the field. For Germany, Schmude et al. (2008) outline the institutionalization of a growing, but mainly inward-looking academic community in entrepreneurship research through endowed chairs, a national conference, and a major interdisciplinary research program. In France, it is not only the large size of the country or the Francophone research community driving an inward-looking strategy, but also system-specific factors such as the specifics of the higher education and research system as discussed by Lasch and Yami (2008).

In smaller countries, where there was only a limited number of researchers on the national level, entrepreneurship researchers have been much more outgoing, indeed internationalizing early, as Huse and Landstrom (1997) attributed generally to European entrepreneurship research, by attending international conferences in the U.S. and Europe. This is also reflected in a larger number of international (that is to say: English-written) publications of, for example, Scandinavian researchers compared to German or French ones.

While a large critical mass in the national context might be one reason for mainly inward-looking research communities, another reason might concern language(s). Where the national community is large enough as for example in France and Germany, there is not much of an incentive for entrepreneurship scholars to present and discuss ideas internationally. While this "partial isolation" (Aldrich, 2000, p. 9) will help create an identity for the national research community thus fostering its legitimacy, such an inward-looking "behavior" might "lock-in" national research, which could hamper knowledge spillover of national discussions and ideas.