Theorizing entrepreneurship: whither the context? A bibliometric analysis

In an ideal continuum between agency and structure, entrepreneurship research has largely focused on the first, while treating contexts as backdrops for venture creation. The paper aims at assessing the state of the art of the field in theorizing the co-evolution of agency and contexts in entrepreneurship processes. We do so by illustrating the results of a bibliographic analysis of the development of the literature on the interplay between entrepreneurship and contexts, and by isolating both the intellectual base of the scholarly debate and the research front –that is the recent developments of the investigation– in order to identify promising areas for empirical and theoretical analyses. In the first part of the paper we aim at uncovering the structure of the scholarly debate tackling processes and phenomena at the intersection between entrepreneurship in general and contexts. In the second part of the paper we narrow down the scope of our analysis by focusing on literature that sits at the intersection between the creation of new ventures –thus we concentrate on the emergence of new firms–, social networks and social embeddedness. The paper presents the exploratory results of a bibliometric analysis considering literature in the period 1985-2014. The paper provides an exploratory analysis of the bibliometric structure of the debate on new venture emergence and contexts and will identify the emerging bibliometric structure of the scholarly debate. Results provide evidence of the “empirical” nature of the current debate, wherein a majority of studies leveraged upon theories matured in other fields –sociology in particular. Moreover, it allows to appreciate how the debate crossed field boundaries and became a lively conversation among diverse communities of scholars, involving researchers in organization studies, innovation, regional studies and many more. Finally, the analysis provides a preliminary overview on the structure of the debate and on the most prominent scholars animating it in the last decade. Implications for research are offered.