Awareness of Social and Environmental and the Entrepreneur.
Research Paper Title:
“Trends and patterns in sustainable entrepreneurship research: A bibliometric review and research agenda”
Authors:
Amitabh Anand (SKEMA Business School, University Cote d’Azur)
Padmaja Argade (KEDGE Business School)
Background:
Sustainable entrepreneurship (SE) has attracted significant scholarly attention over the last decade. Given its rapid development and its multidisciplinary character, the SE literature is increasingly difficult to navigate. The authors take stock of progress within the field, mapping out focal points as well as blind spots in the SE research agenda. Authors show how distinct subfields have formed around key ideas expressed in subsets of seminal papers, shedding light on the relational nature of knowledge creation – uncovering the characteristics, evolution and future trajectories of these subfields
Methodology:
Sample: Scopus Database
Sample Size: 299 articles published between 2002-2020 with 19,427 cited references
Analytical Approach:
1- Co-citation analysis of reference (CCA-R)
2- Bibliography coupling of publications (BCA-D)
Results:
Factors affecting SE uptake are:
Internal: One of the central components of sustainable entrepreneurship research is the individual sustainable entrepreneur. The primary focus when studying sustainable entrepreneurship is on the factors that encourage individuals to pursue sustainability-oriented activities.
External- Furthermore, the role of industry networks and how universities can combine entrepreneurship studies with sustainability issues are addressed in SE research.
Bibliometric approaches were particularly useful given the multi-disciplinary and heterogeneous nature of SE, spanning over various natural and social science disciplines. These studies showed that distinct trajectories have formed around specific ideas developed in subsets of seminal papers within the field. The identification of field-level and subfield-level trends, patterns, and trajectories has informed the development of a future SE research agenda.
Conclusion:
Over the last decade, research on sustainable entrepreneurship has gained significant attention. While some studies have taken stock of this literature, a review demonstrating the relational nature of knowledge creation, given the nascent, evolving, and multi-disciplinary nature of sustainable entrepreneurship; has been missing. The study makes two main contributions. First, at a methodological level, augmented bibliometric approach has allowed us to better understand the relationships between ideas, authors, and research streams and how the field is structured. Second, at the level of SE research, the application of bibliometric techniques has allowed us to tease out subfields within the SE literature and to characterize them on the basis of the seminal papers they build on, dominant research designs, types of empirical enquiries they tend to engage in, and assumptions that underlie their research.