Open AccessIs entrepreneurship an emerging area of research? A computational response
Author(s) -
Roney Fraga Souza,
Rosângela Ballini,
José Maria Ferreira Jardim da Silveira,
Aurora A.C. Teixeira
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
revista de empreendedorismo e gestão de pequenas empresas
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2316-2058
DOI - 10.14211/ibjesb.e1742
Subject(s) - entrepreneurship , originality , hierarchy , relevance (law) , cluster (spacecraft) , citation , diversity (politics) , field (mathematics) , data science , feature (linguistics) , sociology , computer science , knowledge management , management science , political science , social science , mathematics , engineering , library science , qualitative research , linguistics , philosophy , anthropology , pure mathematics , law , programming language
Objective: We aim to answer four questions. First, with the increasing number of publications, is there a concentration in specific subjects, or on the contrary, a dispersion, amplifying the span of themes related to entrepreneurship? Second, is there a hierarchy of subjects, in the sense that some of them constitute the “core” of entrepreneurship? Third, are they connected with other established research areas? Finally, it is possible to identify papers that are influential, acting as hubs in the cluster’s formation? Method: We developed an original version of the computational procedure proposed by Shibata et al (2008), which allows us to understand the diversity of the different sub-areas of the topic investigated, reducing the need for specialist supervision. Originality / Relevance: We developed and applied a method to capture the formation and evolution of research areas in entrepreneurship literature, via direct citation networks, allowing us to understand the iteration between the different research sub-areas. Results: The dispersion is a feature of entrepreneurship as field research, with a hierarchy between research areas, indicating an emergent organization in the expansion processes. We concluded that research on entrepreneurship consists of specialization, that is, by application in niches.