Commentary: on the integration of strategic management and entrepreneurship: views of a contrarian.

A Few Observations on the Words Integrate and Inferface (or Intersections)

Hitt et al. (2002) staked out their claim to the word "integration" during their well-conceived strategy discussions leading to the implementation of the planned takeover/ acquisition of entrepreneurship. It is illuminating to examine the definition of the word integration.

* To unite or combine into one system

* To meld and become a part of a dominant culture

* To put together parts or elements and combine them into a whole

* "The conquest rounded and integrated the glorious empire." (Thomas de Quincy)

Meyer, Neck, and Meeks (2002) authored the first chapter of the popular book edited by Hitt et al., Strategic Entrepreneurship: Creating a New Mindset. Our chapter was iconoclastic because we presented a pertinacious view as indicated by the title The Entrepreneurship-Strategic Management Interface (emphasis mine). The editors were kind in their introduction of the book but in precursor invited Conference discussion after papers were presented and it was clear that the word interface did not fit the norms of the groupthink that was in control. Yet, in the editors' introductory comments in the aforementioned book they did state that "Entrepreneurship and strategy are complementary, not interchangeable" and cited both Meyer and Heppard (2000) and McGrath and MacMillan (2000) as authorities on this "complementarity." But when the 10 themes for the SEJ were created, the first one listed was "Strategy vs. Entrepreneurship." One must be reminded that "words are not pebbles in alien juxtaposition" (Supreme Court Justice Cardoza). Why the word "versus"? I present a glimpse of the meaning of this word next.

* Against: as in a court of law or sports contest; in contrast to

* In opposition to

* In contrast with

Neither "integration" nor "versus" appears friendly or complementary with the meanings of interface or intersection. Perhaps Baker and Pollock's (2007) use of "takeover" and "acquisition" are in fact borne out in the aforementioned analysis.

The Meeks-Meyer Venn diagram in Figure 1 illustrates the historic interfaces between entrepreneurship and SM. In another paper soon to be published, we provide empirical support for this diagram. After studying this, it becomes apparent that there exists a serious problem in labeling these intersections as integration. The Venn diagram and the research that supports it are historical as is the Nag et al. (2007) article. What is clear is that in the past there were two mostly distinctive fields of research. What unfolds post-acquisition will be interesting to follow. More than likely, in some form, the research activity of SM will change rather definitively away from the obsession with corporate bureaucracies into the work previously undertaken by true entrepreneurship scholars. If this is so, the normal-science, logical-positivist dogma will also further dominate entrepreneurship research. The essence of beyond three sigma entrepreneurial phenomena will be lost in this process. This insistence on database dances will integrate with new databases being developed by the powerful influence of the Kauffman Foundation. The ideology of the powerful gatekeepers of manuscripts that make it past the first cut in top-tier SM-acceptable journals will be the final forces who "academize" entrepreneurship research. Thus, the issue of integration will fall into place for the new tenure-seeking entrepreneurship professors. Many of the SMS guilds are the keepers-of-the-coin in academic personnel decisions.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

The viewpoint presented in Figure 1 was developed to facilitate conversation between both the pioneering entrepreneurship and neophyte strategic entrepreneurship scholars.

A Few Predictions About the Unknown World of 2039 C.E.

The next 20 years will bring unorthodox, awakened, and stirring changes in the research and teaching of entrepreneurship. My prediction is that the "takeover" will turn out to be overstated and perhaps downright silly. Yet, I do believe that significant change is on the horizon. One colleague wrote that this whole "takeover-acquisition speak" is a "red herring." He also argues that the AOM Entrepreneurship Division Research Excellence Initiative "will quietly prevail." My position is that the normal-science, logical-positivist paradigm will prevail and entrepreneurship research will continue to be peripheral to actual entrepreneurs and small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) owners. However, more entrepreneurship scholars will receive tenure.

SM scholars will continue to search for their ultimate paradigm with many Schendel "shifts." However, entrepreneurship scholars will join the strategy scholars in embracing the normal-science, logical-positivist ideology and the latest cabalistic data analysis techniques will be much more prevalent due to more available government databases. Entrepreneurship research will become even less relevant to practice.

Entrepreneurship education will progress into variations on virtual reality games but the business plan, whether truly relevant or not, will dominate coursework. Metrics for the value of entrepreneurship education will continue to be neglected. Many new varieties of "contests" will emerge and the value of these events will simply be assumed and serve as part of the public relations reputation game. Many other disciplines will develop entrepreneurship programs just as engineering schools have done to date. As with the SM field in 2007, others will "follow the money" per Deep Throat's advice. Entrepreneurship will be "academized" just as other new fields in the past (e.g., organizational behavior, business policy, etc.). However, a new breed of entrepreneurship professors akin to clinical medical professors will be developed by new Schools and/or Colleges of Entrepreneurship.

The great breakthroughs will be the product of intellectual but real-world oriented professors, sophisticated iconoclasts in the social sciences, and humanist book-writing biographers and storytellers. Just as Babson created a new type of engineering in the Olin School, some courageous academic leaders with financial support from a wealthy entrepreneur will create the first School/College of Entrepreneurship. Others will follow. The faculty will be an interesting salmagundi of scholars who are not confined to Plato's Cave. The bombastic "armchair" theory makers, who are blinded by their own entrepreneurship nescience, will be safely ensconced in their sandboxes.

Finally, a few entrepreneurship scholars will escape the straitjacket of academic egoism and logical positivism to pursue research that is meaningful to society. Training to teach people the practicalities of starting SMEs will become a large movement of 2-year community colleges with significant financial support by the federal government. And some of us who are presently in the "check-out lane" will depart this world hoping that wiser folks will prevail.

Addendum for Dialogue Between the Traditional Strategic Management and "Acquired" Entrepreneurship Scholars--Random Quizzicality from the Whilom World

* Are we deluded if we believe that the normal-science, logical-positivist model using the "epistemocracy" of the Gaussian distribution will work with entrepreneurs who operate beyond three sigma? Or does the "bell curve satisfy the reductionism of the deluded?" (Taleb, 2007).

* Why is it that SM with ties to industrial organization (IO) economics has transformed the original IO focus of developing effective antitrust policy criteria to advising corporate oligopolies how to sustain monopoly profits in the name of competitive advantage? Are strategy scholars actually paid apologists for corporate and executive greed while assuming away the efficiency of societal wealth creation through the purely competitive model?

* Since the SMS has succeeded in its "takeover" of entrepreneurship, and since many of the leaders of the SMS are also leaders in the Academy of Management should the AOM Entrepreneurship Division fold into the Business Policy and Strategy Division? Some would argue that the true original catalyst for the "integration" was the AOM Entrepreneurship Division in 1996 and 1997 when at the annual meetings there were two very visible 1.5-hour sessions; the first labeled "Entrepreneurship as Strategy" and the second, after the first session ideas were digested, "Strategy as Entrepreneurship." Finally, is it well known where the very first Ph.D. program actually labeled "Strategy and Entrepreneurship" was founded and by whom?

* Since the Kauffman Foundation has successfully lobbied for more government databases on entrepreneurship and small business to be created, will this reinforce and apotheosize the database dances so common in SM and therefore depersonalize entrepreneurship?

* In their classic book in 1970, The Organization Makers: A Study of Independent Entrepreneurs--1943-1958, Collins and Moore studied and wrote biographies of 100 entrepreneurs. SM is often criticized by its most senior scholars for having eliminated "management" from strategic management. Will the SMS takeover succeed in taking "entrepreneurs" out of entrepreneurship? Will we ever see entrepreneurial biographic studies from academics or are these not acceptable rigorous academic research?

* If entrepreneurship is everything, then maybe it is nothing. True or false? (Pozen, 2008).

* Are there cutting edge research technologies that should be explored for research in entrepreneurship (e.g., latent semantic analysis using Watt's concordance program to study comparative documents in successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurial ventures; functional magnetic resonance imaging technology to compare corporate executives and founding entrepreneur values and thinking processes; DNA studies to compare entrepreneurs and bureaucrats)?