Entrepreneurship and Business History: Renewing the Research Agenda Geoffrey Jones R. Daniel Wadhwani

During the 1940s and 1950s business historians pioneered the study of
entrepreneurship. The interdisciplinary Center for Research on Entrepreneurial History,
based at Harvard Business School which included Joseph Schumpeter and Alfred
Chandler, and its journal Explorations in Entrepreneurial History were key institutional
drivers of the research agenda. However the study of entrepreneurship ran into formidable
methodological roadblocks, and attention shifted to the corporation, leaving the study of
entrepreneurship fragmented and marginal. Nevertheless business historians have made
significant contributions to the study of entrepreneurship through their diverse coverage of
countries, regions and industries, and – in contrast to much management research over the
past two decades - through exploring how the economic, social, organizational, and
institutional context matters to evaluating entrepreneurship.
This working paper suggests that there are now exciting opportunities for renewing
the research agenda on entrepreneurship, building on the strong roots already in place, and
benefiting from engaging with advances made in the study of entrepreneurial behavior and
cognition. There are opportunities for advancing understanding on the historical role of
culture and values on entrepreneurial behavior, using more careful methodologies than in
the past, and seeking to specify more exactly how important culture is relative to other
variables. There are also major opportunities to complement research on the role of
institutions in economic growth by exploring the precise relationship between institutions
and entrepreneurs.
vous trouverez la suite de l'histoire en pdf sur ce lien
http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/07-007.pdf