The nature and focus of entrepreneurship research in France over the last decade: a French touch?

From an international perspective, French scholars (10) display a low level of internationalization: in our observation period of 10 years, we could only identify slightly more than a dozen publications in the three international entrepreneurship journals of our sample (JBV, ETP, and ERD; Table 7). Our indicator of international visibility is limited to high ranked journals and should be in future studies extended to other, more European international journals, but it nevertheless reflects a harsh reality. Regarding the size (11) of the French research community in management science in general, and entrepreneurship in particular, a stronger international presence should be expected, when compared with smaller research communities of countries that actively converse and publish internationally (i.e., the Nordic countries; see also Hjorth in this issue). Table 7 lists 13 published articles between 1995 and 2005 we were able to identify. (12) French entrepreneurship research, or to put it more precisely, entrepreneurship research outcomes produced in France, represent only 1.6% of all the articles published during the period of observation (JBV, 5 out of 324; ERD, 4 out of 205; ETP, 4 out of 263). Nevertheless, this needs to be relativized, as it reflects a facet of research in management science in general, that is a dissemination of knowledge favoring the French-speaking research community and probably a less journal-oriented output strategy compared with other countries. Mangematin (2004), for example, analyzing the international visibility of French research in management science, measures only a share of 2.1% for the 1991-2002 period. (13)

Three centers of journal-oriented output strategy appear: INSEAD, the University Pierre-Mendes-France of Grenoble, and EM Lyon business school. Specifics of the French system related to publication and internationalization strategy are revealed when we look closer at the structure of co-authorship. From the 13 articles identified, three appear to be based upon French or French-Canadian cooperation (Corolleur & Courlet; Bruyat & Julien; Durand & Coeurderoy). Five articles are published in co-authorship with U.S./ Anglo-Saxon scholars and the other five are publications of "incomers" to the French system (educated in a different country and affiliated to a French university or business school at the time of publication).

The share of articles published by researches in business schools (5 out of 13) indicates a stronger journal-oriented output strategy for French business schools compared with public universities. Obviously, the research and publication strategy is more internationalized in business schools taking into account the relatively small community of researchers at business schools compared with those at public universities in France.

Toward the Future: Perspectives of French Entrepreneurship Research

To discuss our findings about the emergence, nature, and focus of entrepreneurship research in France, we now address two broad questions in this section:

* How can the French touch of entrepreneurship research be described and what can French entrepreneurship research contribute to the international community?

* What factors explain the low level of internationalization of French entrepreneurship research?

Specificities and Perspectives of Entrepreneurship Research

Entrepreneurship is a young and (still) emerging discipline in France. Entrepreneurship publications and discussion forums multiplied in the second half of the 1990s and scientific production has grown constantly ever since. French entrepreneurship research is grounded in small business studies and continues this tradition with a distinctive focus on SMEs and microfirms. Our review of the French entrepreneurship landscape confirms and clarifies a French touch, distinctive to the large-scale, secondary data driven firm-level studies typical for the U.S. research community.

French scholars are especially focused on the entrepreneurial process (however, a growing interest in antecedents and external environment is visible). Within this theme, French scholars emphasize the temporal dimension and argue that each entrepreneurial process can be split in different stages from the very beginning of the idea or project to the "ignition" moment (the decision to create, the creation of a new organization, etc.). Research themes are often linked to SMEs or microfirms as important types of organization studied. Therefore, another French contribution might be in bringing more knowledge on entrepreneurship to small and medium-sized organizations.

From a methodological perspective, French scholars demonstrate a preference for qualitative research designs. But even if the mainstream of entrepreneurship research begins to make space for more qualitative research, recent discussions about research designs and construct measurements are still held within a positivist empirical perspective and claim for a stronger use of multivariate statistics or analysis (Chandler & Lyon, 2001), longitudinal research, and application of more sophisticated theoretical models (Schwartz & Teach, 2000). Consequently, the contribution of French scholars, specialized in field work, experiments, and generally qualitative methods, to the field and the mainstream debate is insufficiently valuated. Paradoxically, methodological preferences typical for French scholars are highly valuable to deepen research results obtained at an aggregate level or with the use of empirical, quantitative methods.

The strong emphasis on qualitative research methods is contrasted by the availability of excellent statistics and empirical mass data on the whole firm stock (existing and new ventures; cohort analyses; various data for different spatial and sectoral aggregate levels, etc.), collected by the National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies. Many international scholars may envy their French colleagues for this. Paradoxically, these databases are rarely used by entrepreneurship scholars. However, the availability of those data offers important opportunities for empirical-deductive and quantitative approaches. A stronger use of existing secondary statistics for entrepreneurship research would offer the opportunity to study one industry at a time, to apply longitudinal perspectives or multi-level analyses, etc. Here lies a great potential for future research of French scholars.

The diversity of conceptual and methodological approaches used by French scholars is another distinctive facet. The French contribution to developing international entrepreneurship research might be in bringing more theoretically grounded viewpoints. However, for researchers from outside the French context, the preference for theoretical reflections is perhaps difficult to understand. French scholars do not hesitate to base arguments on literature from disciplines outside management sciences such as economy, sociology, psycho-sociology, philosophy, or even history and semiology (Saporta, 2003, p. VII). As a consequence, the dissemination of knowledge and research outcomes is frequently confined to scholars familiar with the philosophical background of European, especially French, cultural and scientific traditions. Moreover, a specific vocabulary, originating from the richness and finesse of the French language itself, considerably narrows the access to French research outcomes for more "pragmatic" U.S. and other international scholars (Saporta, 2003, p. VII).

Internationalization of French Entrepreneurship Research

The distinctiveness of French entrepreneurship research contrasts with a mainly French-speaking dissemination of knowledge and low levels of international journal-oriented output strategies. Therefore, the French touch of entrepreneurship research is difficult to access for the international research community. Methodological preferences of the French community keep the entry barrier to publishing in renowned international journals relatively high. However, this alone cannot explain the low level of internationalization measured in our sample. Here, several factors serve as explanations for this specific facet of entrepreneurship research in France.

First, a "structural" effect influences the necessity to converse internationally. Network and publication strategies depend on the size of a research community. Small research communities demonstrate a high propensity to converse, to network, and to publish internationally. The research community in countries such as Sweden, Norway, and the Netherlands participate and publish actively at an international level (i.e., Hjorth in this issue). In France or Germany, the size of the research community (according to the size in terms of population) is large, but the level of internationalization is relatively low compared with the countries mentioned earlier (see Schmude et al. in this issue). This "structural" effect also relativizes other explanations like language barriers. We argue that language barriers have only a small effect in France (as a non-English-speaking country), because satisfying opportunities for discussion, publication, and career advancement exist in the French or Francophone research community.