Introduction

Entrepreneurship is still largely seen as an emerging field, and its theoretical development has proven over time to be gradual but inconclusive, leaving the field permeable in terms of its boundaries (Busenitz et al., 2003). The field has seen a host of emerging social science approaches, such as the use of ‘grand narratives’, typically in the form of the theory of capitals (Bourdieu, 1986) applied in the study of various aspects of the entrepreneurial process, amongst others, in garnering resources for addressing entrepreneurial opportunities (Karatas-Ozkan & Chell, 2010; Pret, Shaw, & Drakopoulou Dodd, 2015). An alternative perspective has focused on the integration of insights from a social science-informed perspective, in order to study in depth the context of entrepreneurial activity (Shane & Venkataraman, 2001) and the interaction between context and process involved in entrepreneurship through a relational, or social constructionist approach (Hosking & Hjorth, 2004; Chell & Baines, 2000; Jack & Anderson, 2002).

Theoretical framing

In order to offer our perspective in this field-wide conversation, we are proposing to position our thesis within the overarching framework of research oriented towards addressing the ‘grand societal challenges’ (George, Howard-Grenville, Joshi, & Tihanyi, 2016) and the ways in which these priorities have been shaping research funding initiatives such as the GCRF as well as the Newton Fund. The basic tenet of this position is that global challenges address global problems which call for solutions that can be drawn from the space of pluralism and interdisciplinarity. Such challenges, according to George et al. (2016) pose research problems that are not only managerial, but also scientific. The Going Global initiative organized annually by the British Council had introduced, in 2015, the idea of supporting the resolution of societal challenges through revisiting the study and application of humanities and social sciences as frameworks of thinking and potential repertoires/spaces of solutions. Within the same logic, the emergence of the Sustainable Development Goals as a global ‘benchmark’ against which to develop business solutions affords an opportunity to consider more holistically priorities of enterprising. The entrepreneurship community has also followed this trend – the 2016 ICSB global forum had been dedicated to the engagement of the field with the Sustainable Development Goals and ways in which new entrepreneurship forms could emerge to address what effectively could be termed as global challenges. The 2016 Special Forum of the Journal of Management Studies (Markman, Russo, Lumpkin, Jennings, & Mair, 2016) on Sustainability, Ethics and Entrepreneurship is another example of that. Researchers such as Jack, Dodd, and Anderson et al. (2008) as well as Welter (2011) have hinted at the notion that, as a response to the consideration of context in entrepreneurship, the interaction with disciplines such as sociology and anthropology can be of importance, as those can afford the theoretical tools to explore in depth the variety and nuances of ‘context’.

Context matters

The circumstances, the events and the space around any activity can hinder or facilitate the entrepreneurial process. Aoyama (2009, p. 497) claims that entrepreneurs’ decisions and practices are shaped by economic, societal and cultural surroundings. Other studies have emphasised that contextual aspects as culture, social support and trainings play an imperative role in the entrepreneurial process (Fischer & Nijkamp, 2009). Low and MacMillan (1988) highlight that entrepreneurship is a process that can be commenced in different contexts. The way that entrepreneurial processes unfold is dependent on the context; these processes develop differently in diverse settings and do not develop consistently across regions (Mueller, 2006). Lately, there has been a shift in the entrepreneurship discussion “away from the entrepreneur as an island of exchange towards entrepreneurship as a contextual process” (Kalantaridis & Bika, 2006, p. 110). Scholars have called for further research on the interaction between the entrepreneur with the different spheres of context (Zahra, 2007; Welter, 2011; Shane, 2012; Wright, 2012; Gaddefors & Anderson, 2017).

Context can be defined as “circumstances, conditions, situations, or environments that are external to the respective phenomenon and enable or constrain it” (Welter, 2011, p. 167). In his study, Leighton (1988, p. 74 and 76) concluded that “studying entrepreneurs as individuals is a dead end” while “environment, culture, etc., the context of entrepreneurial behaviour is important”. Given the significance of context in influencing and shaping the entrepreneurial processes (Mair, Marti, & Ventresca, 2012), it is essential to for researchers to also discuss the place and space in which entrepreneurs are embedded. Lefebvre (1991) introduced the notion that space is deeply connected with social action; he clarified that space is not simply a social product but rather a producer as well as a controller of social action (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 358). Space works as a medium of social communication and it embodies differences of power. According to Gregory, Meusburger, and Suarsana (2015), space is understood as relative or relational space, and that space is “conceptualized as a product of interrelations and interactions”. The authors add that space is not a closed system; it is always “in a process of becoming, always being made” (Massey, 1999, p. 28).

Last but not least, Said (2003, p. 23) argues “that each humanistic investigation must formulate the nature of that connection in the specific context of the study, the subject matter, and its historical circumstances”. The argument against ‘cultural imperialism’ in the study of entrepreneurship, and for increased sensitivity to the culture of the nation and the psychology of its people, is also elaborately made by Dana (2000).

What we mean by social science – its scope and importance for entrepreneurship

For our work, we will be using the term social science in a two-pronged perspective; we are following the tenet of an institution like the London School of Economics, which presents an inquiry-based as well as action-oriented approach to engaging with social science i.e.: first, as its institutional mission and vision highlight, it is important to understand the causes of things and second, put those into practice for the betterment of societies. In that way, we make sure that the application of a social science-informed perspective not only is a theoretical exercise, but draws from, and informs, in return, real world action and practice. According to a definition from ESRC,

The ESRC defines in detail the disciplines covered within the range of social sciences eligible for funding by the council (www.esrc.ac.uk/about-us/what-is-social-science/social-science-disciplines/). It is beyond the scope of this chapter to conduct a systematic literature review of the exact coverage within the entrepreneurship field of all the social science subjects identified in the list. However, we believe that this topic merits further study, particularly because conceptualising the positioning of research as such, is important before moving to the concrete evidence-based research which can inform policy-making, a key concern for the funding councils. It would be interesting, for example, to see how many published entrepreneurship articles have drawn from environmental planning, human geography, development studies, social anthropology, international relations and social work. We are mentioning here some of the categories of social science, as listed within the ESRC website, which also seem to less likely to be prominent in terms of an interdisciplinary approach, when combined with the study of entrepreneurship. Our own life experience and research trajectory (working and living between different countries, contexts and institutions) have motivated us as authors to look further afield in order to effectively consider approaches which can support the use and applicability of social science for entrepreneurship. This concerns, in particular, the debates about context in entrepreneurship, as outlined in the theoretical framing and context sections. Here we can draw on two particular examples, i.e., orientalism and cosmopolitanism as context and disposition for entrepreneurship.

The case of cosmopolitanism as disposition for entrepreneurship

Alcaraz, Sugars, Nicolopoulou, and Tirado (2016, p. 315) highlight the elements of a framework for cosmopolitanism, based on premises of culture, morality and governance:

The cosmopolitan perspective can be understood as ‘being at home in all parts of the world’ and assumes that humans are to be considered citizens of a single community (Held, 2005), whilst it emphasises the decreased importance of nationality (Delanty, 2006). Work on cosmopolitanism and management (a comprehensive review completed by Levy, Peiperl, & Jonsen, 2013) includes concepts such as globally mobile managers and professionals (Sanchez-Runde, Nardon, & Steers, 2012); business leaders as citizens of the world (Maak & Pless, 2009); ‘global mindsets’ (Levy, Beechler, Taylor, & Boyacigiller, 2007) and ‘cultural intelligence’ (Vertovec & Cohen, 2002). In the field of management, Halsall (2009) highlights the elements of concepts, connections, competence, choice, flexibility and detachment (operating above context, and with fluid loyalty) as key components of cosmopolitanism in its application for organisations and corporate executives. Woodward, Skribs, and Bean (2008) argue that a globalised reality does not make everyone necessarily a cosmopolitan, as somebody can espouse cosmopolitan values, even if they are not world travelers; indeed, Levy et al. (2013) identify the category of ‘ordinary cosmopolitans’: individuals who are mostly outward-looking in terms of their preferences, although not necessarily globally mobile.

In this particular book chapter, we are following the understanding of disposition as an aligned perspective between Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice (1977) and Woodward et al. (2008); according to Woodward et al. (2008, p. 211), disposition interacts with practice, thus enabling social agents to obtain ‘a particular set of cultural understandings of the world’. Whilst a number of authors have already discussed disposition in the entrepreneurship field, mostly following a Bourdieuan approach (Anderson, Dodd, & Jack, 2010; Terjesen & Elam, 2009), the particular understanding of a ‘cosmopolitan’ disposition for the field of entrepreneurship is new, yet it can have implications in transnational, international and diversity-based approaches to entrepreneurship as well as business venturing (Nicolopoulou, Kakabadse, Sakellariou, & Alcaraz, 2016).

Diversity-related factors usually concern age, nationality and gender and their effect in entrepreneurial actions, choices, motivations and behaviours of enterprises operating within a certain national context or community, or internationally, and merit further academic investigation (Carter, Ram, Trehan, & Jones, 2013; Collins, 2003): their dynamics can manifest in increased population diversity, or in superdiversity (Ram et al., 2011; Sepulveda, Syrett, & Lyon, 2011) or class, as a global elite currently appears to be dealing with recovered parts of the economy, and business growth (Nicolopoulou, Kakabadse, Sakellariou, & Alcaraz, 2014). Previous studies which have addressed the link between cosmopolitanism with entrepreneurship include Robertson and Wind (1983), who highlighted a positive relationship between cosmopolitanism and innovation, Tyfield and Urry (2009) who studied the example of China and identified how engagement with innovation focusing on forms of low-carbon technologies and sustainability has been an expression of cosmopolitanism, as well as Singapore (Yeoh, 2004), featuring as the twenty-first century ‘cosmopolis’ fueled by the strength of IT revolution, culture, arts and social innovation within an increasing ‘transnational’ space. Pecould (2004) used the established notion of an ‘ethnic enclave’ highlighting the focus of entrepreneurial activity from an ‘outside-in’ rather than ‘inside-out’ perspective to describe a cosmopolitan disposition in entrepreneurship, as the openness to the worldly ‘otherness’ in terms of looking for the business opportunity, can be seen as essentially a cosmopolitan feature. Volery (2007) distinguished opportunity identification as an ‘ethnically’ based strategy (based on the notion of ‘collective identity formation’), whilst also identifying the pursuit and exploitation of opportunity as a ‘metropolitan’ strategy (an expression of the ‘outward’ motion). Drori, Honig, and Wright (2009), highlighted the challenges of transnational entrepreneurs in accessing finance and maintain productive links both in the host context a well as the original country of origin. Cosmopolitanism has also been considered as a disposition in entrepreneurship by Nicolopoulou, Kakabadse, Nikolopoulos, Alcaraz and Sakellariou (2016); this work was focused on the development of entrepreneurship by transnational elites in Dubai, UAE, as an example of a cosmopolitan city, and highlighted the interaction between the context (city) and disposition of individual entrepreneurs – mostly transnational entrepreneurs or nationals ones with transnational activities. Specifically focusing on the cultural view of cosmopolitanism as developed by Vertovec and Cohen (2002, pp. 7–13), cosmopolitanism for entrepreneurship is identified in terms of a ‘disposition’ of intellectual openness in relation to the ‘other’, as well as ‘practice’ or ‘competence’ as this can be developed through the right training and exposure. Nicolopoulou et al. (2016) conclude that a cosmopolitan disposition (Woodward et al., 2008) is an asset for entrepreneurship. In an increasingly interconnected world where networks and transnational capital are increasingly important, understanding the cosmopolitan disposition and ways in which it can facilitate entrepreneurial development within and above specific contexts could be a significant insight in terms of related global challenges of diversity and inclusion as well as sustainable economic growth.

The case of orientalism and links to entrepreneurial context

According to Peter Chua (2008), a limited number of social researchers have reflected on and analysed orientalism as embedded in the widely used philosophies of Western theorists. Chua (2008) argues that only a few researchers have studied the question of identity and lived experiences as shaped by orientalist representations and their related cultural regulations. Chua (2008) points out to one argument that relates to the orientalist practices of ethnographers narrating everyday lives of people as the ‘other’ and the extent to which their representations could be misleading:

Edward Said opens his book Orientalism with a translated quote from Karl Marx stating “They cannot represent themselves; they must be represented”, which reflects how he perceives the term orientalism. “Orientalism” is a noun form of the adjective “oriental” which reflects something related to the Eastern countries, but in the context of Said, it mirrors the distorted image of the culture of the Eastern countries as Asia, North Africa as well as the Middle-East and its people. Said (2003, p. 2) defines “orientalism” as:

In other words, Edward Said uses the word “orientalism” to refer to Western interpretations of the Eastern nations. Said’s inquiry was based on the Eastern nations relative to Europe, as he observed the interpretations of the East and the Middle East in European discourses. It is worth mentioning that Said explains orientalism as “the epistemological and ontological distinction between the West and the East” (2003, p. 3), with the outlook that the Middle East and Asia in art and literature are less civilised than the West. This, in return, indicates a tendency to interpret the role of the West as more experienced and powerful to apply their expertise to the oriental region, based on a transfer of knowledge from the affluent ‘Western’ context and its scholars.

This bears importance for entrepreneurship and the context in which it is developed. For example, according to global reports on entrepreneurial activity, as well as African etrepreneurs, is rising (Sanders, 2017, Wennekers & Thurik, 1999, (Herrington, Kew, Kew, & Monitor, 2010). Conversely, we can detect a negligence of the context in researching entrepreneurship in different parts across Africa. Entrepreneurship as a field is, in general, selective about the philosophical stances and paradigms used to position its discourse about other nations and their entrepreneurial behaviors. There are some popular dogmas through which we view entrepreneurship globally, which reflect ‘Western’ thoughts and ideas that entrepreneurship is a path to economic success, prosperity and social development (Peacock, 2016). Nonetheless, following Said’s premises, such approaches fundamentally echo an ideological agenda. Entrepreneurship scholars are starting to recognise that ideology and other taken for granted axioms have an influence on knowledge construction (Bygrave, 1989; Ogbor, 2000).

Burrell and Morgan’s (1979) work emphasised the role of philosophy in research and raised awareness about the impact of research paradigms on knowledge construction (Burrell & Morgan, 1979). Similar to Foucault (1984), Edward Said considers knowledge to be power and argues that, in academia, Europe has a hold over the power. For Said, such a power goes through an individual channel, whilst for Foucault it can be more systemic or institutional. ‘Imagined geographies’ is another concept coined by Edward Said (2003), which denotes that the perception of space is created through certain images, texts, discourses and ideologies. We believe that the texts, the literature and the reports we read shape our opinions and draw an “imagined” mental picture for what entrepreneurship is in the ‘oriental’ nations, which might not be necessarily real. Therefore, context-based studies are required to understand the entrepreneurial phenomenon, and its role in building cities, economic development and poverty reduction. Such considerations bear significance for an engagement of social sciences in resolving global challenges, as those could be targeted by international stakeholders and the funding councils.

Developing propositions for the field of entrepreneurship

In order to further support our framework of social science contributions in the field of entrepreneurship, we are proposing the development of three propositions, following the scheme of Guba and Lincoln (1994) in ‘Competing Paradigms in Qualitative Research’:

Proposition 1: Ontological implications of applying social science in the field of entrepreneurship

More recently, some entrepreneurship scholars are calling for a constructivist ontology (as well as epistemology) advocating that it “may shed new light on parts of the opportunity phenomenon that the discovery perspective is unable to illuminate” (Wood & McKinley, 2010). From an ontological point of view, engaging with social science in the field of entrepreneurship creates potentially new pathways towards definitions, practices and methods involved in its development. Considerations of identity, skills and culture as implied in the concept of cosmopolitanism and of the cosmopolitan disposition as a diversity factor for the development of transnational forms of entrepreneurship are one way in which such pathways could be shaped; on the other hand, understanding the ‘hegemonic’ frameworks (institutions, knowledge transfer, dominant narratives) within which entrepreneurship is practiced, whether in the East or the West, is another pathway towards a new ontology of entrepreneurship informed by the concept of orientalism.

Proposition 2: Epistemological implications for the field of entrepreneurship and how social science can further inform those

What can we know and how we know it are key questions to epistemology. According to Bygrave (1989), entrepreneurship is a process of interactions which occurs and further develops over time. Thus, this process cannot be understood by an approach which simply depends on collecting data at one particular period of time. Besides, various authors support that knowledge on entrepreneurship is created through understanding “how individuals and collectives subjectively and inter-subjectively, construct their entrepreneurial actions as unfolding processes” (Lindgren & Packendorff, 2003; Fletcher, 2006; Drakopoulou Dodd & Anderson, 2007). Ahl (2006) acknowledged the need to develop further the entrepreneurship research “object” and shift from an individualist emphasis on studying entrepreneurs to include more factors such as context, culture and content. Linking to the point made in our previous section, Said’s stance resembles Foucault’s in that “knowing” and “power” are closely associated: knowledge belongs to those who have power and those who have power can impress their own form of knowledge on others. From an epistemological standpoint, cosmopolitanism as a social science–informed approach signifies the need to re-evaluate issues of agency and process within a specific context when enterprise development is considered.

Proposition 3: Methodological implications

According to Alvesson (2002, p. 60), “the point of social science is not to get it right but to challenge guiding assumptions, fixed meanings and relations, and to reopen the formative capacity of human beings to others and the world”. Social sciences emphasise that individual and social phenomena have to be studied “through the subjective minds of individuals, not by observable behaviour” (Lindgren & Packendorff, 2009, p. 30). Fletcher (2006), for example, made use of social constructionist premises when analysing the process of opportunity formation. She reasoned that the entrepreneurial process is collectively constituted and not fully considered in descriptive and linear process models of opportunity recognition. As mentioned by Lindgren and Packendorff (2009, p. 40), “established lines of thought as causality, generalisation, prediction and statistical significance can be seen as ideologically based in an ideal, only where reality can be described in an objective and true manner”.

The entrepreneurship field is largely dominated by functionalistic methodologies and positivistic views of reality (Grant & Perren, 2002). Researchers argue that entrepreneurship research focuses excessively on positivist views of enquiry (Bygrave, 2007) and that, commonly, research in this discipline adopts a positivist epistemology (Berglund, 2007). According to Dana and Dana (2005), an inquiry based on inductive qualitative methodologies, already a prevailing paradigm in sociological and anthropological research, could be a useful alternative. Those could include thick descriptions of agents and their interactions with context (Geertz, 1973). More recently, Gaddefors and Anderson (2017) mentioned that the current methodological individualism of the prevailing paradigms in the field (Verduijn, Dey, Tedmanson, & Essers, 2014) does not leave explanatory room for the role of social context. Similarly, according to Patton (1982):

Edward Said claims that all experiences and places can be described as a book. Subsequently, reality can be described and descriptions overcome authority as sources of reality. This narrative-based approach highlights an increased need to consider qualitative inquiry as a predominantly relevant paradigm when the influence of social science is considered for entrepreneurship. “No production of knowledge in the human sciences can ever ignore or disclaim its author’s involvement as a human subject in his own circumstances” (Said, 2003, p. 11). It has been established that researchers from the West have made the most contributions to the entrepreneurship field (Luor, Lu, Yu, & Chang, 2014). Thus, in order to understand discourses within which our knowledge of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial behaviour is constructed, the notion of context is important; for example, within the ‘oriental’ nations, we have to understand the issue of representation. Nonetheless, according to Said, it is dubious whether a true representation is possible at all (Said, 2003, p. 273). If all representations are rooted in the language and culture of the one who makes representations “then we must be prepared to accept the fact that a representation is eo ipso implicated, intertwined, embedded, interwoven with a great many other things besides the ‘truth’ which is itself a representation” (Said, 2003, p. 273).

An increasing number of empirical studies, methodological innovations and theoretical developments are now being published on the sociology of orientalism (Chua, 2008, p. 1179). Said puts emphasis on “texts” as they are embedded in our systems, “in short, they are in the world, and hence worldly” (Said, 1975, p. 35). For Said, texts have the same situatedness as speech (Machátová, 2007). Texts have connections to the context, physical setting, to the society and the culture. Based on this, several theoretical perspectives are applied to texts in methods or approaches that incorporate semiotics, cultural theory, and feminist theory. A deeper engagement with a narrative-based, textual approach can better inform nuances about culture; in terms of a cosmopolitan-focused understanding of entrepreneurship, such cultural nuances can be important as unique characteristics of an entrepreneurial disposition. As Elliot (2005) states, narratives show the connection between agency and the broader social context. Those would also satisfy the call for deeper cultural understanding of the context within which entrepreneurship takes place (Dana, 2000). A narrative method to understand contexts is prominent in the body of research in sociology (Elliot, 2005) as well as in psychology (Creswell, 2007). Narrative is discourse that offers a rich linear order which links events in an expressive manner, in so doing, offering understandings on societies’ experiences (Hinchman & Hinchman, 1997). It is worth mentioning that, recently, a narrative approach has been used in entrepreneurship research as seen in special issues (Venkataraman, Sarasvathy, Dew, & Forster, 2013) which provide dedicated forums and the intellectual space to develop such a conversation. Nonetheless, a recent study on data collection methods used over 29 years from 1985 to 2013 in entrepreneurship (McDonald, Ching Gan, Fraser, Oke, & Anderson, 2015) highlights to us the evidence: entrepreneurship research is dominated by the survey method (54%) in their 3,749 articles in the consensus sample. At 16%, case studies were the next most common, and interviews accounted for almost 15%, while other qualitative methods counted for only 7% of the studied articles. They concluded that there are no other data-gathering methods used in entrepreneurship research to any noteworthy extent (McDonald et al., 2015). It is important to inform our conversation through such findings.

Discussion and concluding remarks

In the present chapter, we have attempted to problematise and examine cosmopolitanism and orientalism as two social science–informed concepts in order to discuss disposition and context in the development of entrepreneurship; culture is a related concern, in that the division between East and West was a key differentiating factor in terms of related underlying assumptions and logic for the development of entrepreneurship. Additional concerns are: operating beyond or above a national context, the cultural implications involved in a cosmopolitan disposition and factors of diversity for developing entrepreneurship.

This has been a first attempt to delve into these complex social science–informed constructs and target the fleshing out of potential implications for the development of entrepreneurship, as a way to problematise and enrich the entrepreneurship field. We purport that such an interdisciplinary approach as implied in the engagement with the complex matrix of nuances involved within these two concepts has the potential to inspire multiple lines of inquiry, narrative and interpretation for the creation of pathways that can inform Societal Grand Challenges (George et al., 2016).

Said (2003) and Prasad (2003) pointed to the orientalist discourse in organisational research which categorises non-Western business practices as old-fashioned cultural practices which are a hurdle to organisational efficiency and effectiveness. Thomas and Mueller (2000) argue that entrepreneurship research was generated by ‘Western’ intellectuals, from the United States and Western Europe. Consequently, Thomas and Mueller (2000, p. 289), clarify that its transferability to contexts where the task and ‘psychic environments’ are different is debatable. For example, the experience of ‘Western’ nations regarding rural entrepreneurship tends to focus on increasing levels of prosperity, rather than alleviating absolute poverty as in rural cities in the Arab world. Correspondingly, postcolonial feminist perspectives highlight how Westernised images of “Otherness” impact the legitimacy and agency of Arab female entrepreneurs (Essers & Tedmanson, 2014). Scholarly work that uses theories and methodologies applied effectively in organisation and entrepreneurship fields suggest that the path to success has homogeneous values and consistently highlights the hegemonic position that the West knows better.

From a cosmopolitanism-informed perspective, it is the emphasis on the three foundational elements of the concept that are of importance for this conversation (Alcaraz et al., 2016, p. 315):

• (a) Cultural difference and embracing diversity
• (b) Moral concern and responsibility for the ‘distant other’
• (c) The quest to find mechanisms and institutions for global governance.

It is within the frame identified by those three elements that entrepreneurship in its different forms, including its more socially progressive aspects (social, sustainable, eco-social), can develop. Engagement with all of these perspectives can redefine the relationship between context and the entrepreneur as agent and can therefore shape new possibilities about the ways in which the development of enterprise can serve several additional agendas beyond purely the creation of wealth.

Further engagement with both concepts, their ramifications for theory and practice as well as other social science–informed concepts within a pluralistic, interdisciplinary framework can only be of benefit to the domain of entrepreneurship. Related empirical studies to explore these notions within different populations can create the necessary evidence base to support the practical resolution of the Societal Grand Challenges at local, regional and global scales.