Baker and Welter 2018 PDF

Foundations and Trends R in Entrepreneurship
Contextual Entrepreneurship: An
Interdisciplinary Perspective
Suggested Citation: Ted Baker and Friederike Welter (2018), “Contextual Entrepreneur-
ship: An Interdisciplinary Perspective”, Foundations and Trends R in Entrepreneurship:
Vol. 14, No. 4, pp 357–426. DOI: 10.1561/0300000078.
Ted Baker
Rutgers University, USA
Friederike Welter
Institut für Mittelstandsforschung (IfM) Bonn and
University of Siegen, Germany
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Boston — Delft
Contents
1 The Goldilocks Problem in Contextualizing Research:

Too Much, Too Little, Just Right? 358
2 Challenges and Promise 360

2.1 Context Unbounded? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360
2.2 Contextualizing Entrepreneurship Research – Self-Reflections
and Advice from the Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365
3 Progress in Contextualizing Entrepreneurship Research 367

3.1 Who and Why Contexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369
3.2 Where Contexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374
3.3 When Contexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376
3.4 Incipient Theory of Entrepreneurship Contexts . . . . . . . 379
4 Progress in Empirically Studying Contextual

Entrepreneurship 384
4.1 Challenges for Contextualized Research Approaches . . . . 385
4.2 How to Contextualize Research Approaches . . . . . . . . 389
4.3 How to Operationalize Contexts? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395
5 Outlook and Agenda for Future Research 397

5.1 Contextualizing as Problematizing the Taken-for-granted . 398
5.2 Toward a Critical Process Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
References 402
Contextual Entrepreneurship: An
Interdisciplinary Perspective
Ted Baker1 and Friederike Welter2
1 Rutgers University, USA; tbaker@business.rutgers.edu
2 IfM Bonn and University of Siegen, Germany; welter@uni-siegen.de
ABSTRACT
The need to contextualize research in entrepreneurship has
become an important theme during the last decade. In
this monograph we position the increasing prominence of
“contextual entrepreneurship” research as part of a broader
scholarly wave that has previously washed across other fields.
The challenges and promises we face as this wave carries us
forward are similar in many ways to the challenges faced by
researchers in other fields. Based on a review of the current
context debate among entrepreneurship scholars and a selec-
tive review of other disciplines, we outline and discuss issues
in theorizing, operationalising and empirically studying con-
texts in entrepreneurship research. Researchers have made
rapid and substantial – though uneven – progress in contextu-
alizing their work. Unsurprisingly, there is healthy disagree-
ment over what it means to contextualize research and how
it should be done, which we see as expressions of competing
implicit theories of context. We argue that no overarching
theory of what context is or what it means is likely to be
very successful. Instead, we suggest briefly that it may be
useful to adopt and develop what we label a “critical process
approach” to contextualizing entrepreneurship research.
Ted Baker and Friederike Welter (2018), “Contextual Entrepreneurship: An Inter-

disciplinary Perspective”, Foundations and Trends•
R
in Entrepreneurship: Vol. 14,
No. 4, pp 357–426. DOI: 10.1561/0300000078.
1
The Goldilocks Problem in Contextualizing
Research: Too Much, Too Little, Just Right?
To claim that something has been “taken out of context” is to suggest

that it is fallacious. Who would claim that our research is better when
it ignores or otherwise misrepresents the effects of context on the infer-
ences we put forth? Consistent with this logic, there has been growing
interest in contextualizing research, with authors across many disciplines
promoting the benefits of grounding our theoretical inferences more
thoroughly in the places and circumstances of our empirical observations
(e.g., Akman, 2000; Akman and Bazzanella, 2003; Bamberger, 2008;
Bates, 1976; Dilley, 1999a; Duranti and Goodwin, 1992; Johns, 2001;
2006; 2017; 2018; Scharfstein, 1988; Scharfstein, 1989; Schegloff, 1997;
Turner et al., 1994; Van Dijk, 2008; Wyer and Srull, 1986). Over the
last decade or so, this wave of interest has washed across the field of
entrepreneurship (e.g., Boettke and Coyne, 2009; Hjorth et al., 2008;
Ucbasaran et al., 2001; Welter, 2011; Welter and Gartner, 2016; Zahra,
2007; 2011; 2014).
In the current monograph, we expand on this interest in hopes of
generating some new insights about why and how we might go about
contextualizing entrepreneurship research. While we have few quarrels
with the prior work, here we attempt to frame the issues, the progress
358
359
that has been made and the substantial challenges that remain with a
view toward calling for future work that takes more of what we call a
critical process approach to contextualizing entrepreneurship research.
2
Challenges and Promise
In this section, we draw in a stylized manner on the recent intellectual

history of some fields that embraced issues of contextualization much
earlier than entrepreneurship and especially on commentaries by ob-
servers of these fields (e.g., Dilley, 1999b; Scharfstein, 1989). On this
basis, we make the argument that, taken to extremes, contextualiza-
tion can become a dead end or worse. We then examine some progress
that entrepreneurship researchers have made in bringing a contextualiz-
ing lens to their work and ask briefly whether our current theoretical
approaches are likely to prove adequate.
2.1 Context Unbounded?
Johns’s (2006, 2017) essays1 are among the most coherent and influential
statements of why and how context matters for organization studies
writ large. His work provides an initial impression of how theoretically
and empirically unbounded the quest for contextualization can become.
Drawing upon a number of earlier authors (e.g., Capelli and Sherer,
1
The first is a theoretical piece in the Academy of Management Review. The
second represents John’s reflections on the first paper after it won AMR’s “decade”
award as the most important paper the journal published in 2006.
360
2.1. Context Unbounded? 361
1991; Mowday and Sutton, 1993; Rousseau and Fried, 2001), he defines
context as “situational opportunities and constraints that affect the
occurrence and meaning of organizational behavior as well as functional
relationships between variables . . . ” (Johns, 2006, p. 386). He immedi-
ately complicates matters by arguing that the effects of any element of
context are themselves depending on context, noting for example that
elements of context may be offsetting in their effects and that depending
on overall “system” states, small changes in context can have small or
very large effects.
In his distinction between “discrete” and “omnibus” contexts (also
see Welter, 2011) Johns (2006) shows that context can include both
particular variables that we include in our models, but also everything
that might matter but that is not included in our models. In one
sense, then, “omnibus context” depicts the entire universe of “omitted
variables” (Johns, 2006, p. 388) that characterizes any modeling strategy.
Exacerbating this, he points to the problem of sampling-induced range
restriction on key variables, suggesting that when curvilinear effects
exist, a low level of a variable effectively represents a different context
than a high value of that variable. If our data do not contain the
full range of values on a variable that exerts curvilinear effects, the
study is therefore contextually constrained. Johns also shows that while
context is typically used to point to characteristics at a higher level of
analysis than the focus of a given study (e.g., how an industry affects an
organization within it) but it can also point to characteristics at a lower
level (e.g., how employee demographics affect organizations). Strikingly,
Johns provides several examples of context-driven “sign reversals,” in
which the effect of some variable – for example the effect of tuition
reimbursement programs on turnover, switches from positive to negative
depending on the presence of associated promotion activities.
Understanding and accounting adequately for context is made still
more daunting by its multi-dimensionality. Invoking Allport’s (1937)
“list of 17,953 trait names to describe people” (Johns, 2006, p. 391)
argues that these have been usefully consolidated to the “big five.”
He points to the extreme multidimensionality of context – noting for
example that as early as 1963, Sells provided a “list of 236 elements
that might describe a total stimulus situation” and notes that no
362 Challenges and Promise
consolidation of contextual dimensions as useful as the “big five” has

yet to occur.2 Furthermore, because complex configurations – in which
“context effects can comprise both main effects and interactions between
context variables and substantive variables of interest” – prevail, even
a simple recitation of the permutations and combinations that might
be expected to matter could quickly become overwhelming. Of course,
everything is not connected to everything else. But even the question
of which elements do not matter to some configuration – the empirical
question of “loose coupling” is mind boggling in imagination.
For better or for worse, in our reading Johns’s list points to, but un-
derstates the magnitude of the challenge of contextualizing our research.
Recall that his definition of context is, “situational opportunities and
constraints that affect the occurrence and meaning of organizational
behavior as well as functional relationships between variables” (Johns,
2006, p. 386). Most of the discussion by organization scholars to this
point has focused, implicitly or explicitly, on functional relationship
between variables and how they affect the occurrence of behavior. In
a broad sense, however, much of the serious scholarly reflection on
context – perhaps especially by cultural anthropologists, linguists and
philosophers of science – has tousled with issues and differences of
meaning.
Johns (2017) draws specifically on recent work in entrepreneurship
to further complicate matters by showing how an objectively similar
environment can mean very different things to different people. He
draws on the example of Powell and Baker’s (2014) study of founders
in the textile and apparel industry, which demonstrated that differences
in the structure of individual founders’ identities shaped whether they
enacted the same objective adversity as a threat to accommodate, a chal-
lenge to counter or an opportunity to embrace. These differences in the
definition of the situation in turn drove their firms’ strategic responses
to the adversity they faced. This is in many ways similar to Baker and
Nelson’s (2005) description of entrepreneurial bricolage, which showed
2
A quick scan of psychologically oriented journals in organization studies suggests
that consolidation around the Big Five may be overstated. There are still many
studies of specific traits, many of which do not have a clear and obvious place within
the Big Five.
2.1. Context Unbounded? 363
how a refusal to enact the limitations imposed by dominant definitions

of resource environments drove differences in the meaning of what was
“at hand” and thereby how entrepreneurs were able to respond to the
resource constraints they faced. In both of these studies, differences in
how founders enacted the same objective environments led to large dif-
ferences in the meaning the context held for them and for their behavior.
More broadly, as Dilley (1999b, p. 1) points out “Ever since Mali-
nowski, anthropologists have chanted the mantra of ‘placing social and
cultural phenomena in context.”’ Anthropologists, as well as scholars
from a variety of liberal arts disciplines such as philosophy, history and
literary studies have debated and struggled over how to choose and
delimit their contextualization of both descriptions of and inferences
regarding the cultures and artefacts they study. These debates, which
are too rich and varied to summarize easily, have persisted through the
rise of structuralism, post-structuralism, post modernism and a variety
of other competing schools of thought and have resulted both in rich
insights and numerous dead-ends.
For example, a large body of relevant research centers on the manner
in which different languages may structure and shape how native-
born speakers perceive and understand the world, and the extent to
which the meanings and understandings that result are commensurable
(e.g., Bates, 1976; Duranti and Goodwin, 1992; Labov, 1970; Levinson,
2003). Considered more broadly, this is a key and persistent issue
for anthropologists and other social scientists: what are the limits of
understanding and “translating” one culture to make it understandable
for members of another.
These arguments extend as well to subgroups within particular cul-
tures. For example, some “standpoint” theorists suggest that members
of dominant and advantaged groups in any society are unlikely to be able
to understand the perspectives or lived experiences of disadvantaged
members. The disadvantaged members, however, are likely to be better
able to understand their own experiences, those of more privileged
members and in turn the society as a whole because their disadvantage
requires them to take into account both the position of the dominant
members and their own position (e.g., Collins, 1986; Harding, 2016;
Hartsock, 1983). While such perspectives focus on showing how one
“standpoint” can be epistemologically superior to others, generating

something close to objective truth, others suggest that there is no such
defensible standpoint for anyone to inhabit. Numerous authors have
pointed out how an emphasis on contextualizing research can lead easily
to extreme forms of relativism (Culler, 1983; Dilley, 1999b; Scharfstein,
1989) and an infinite regress in which any attempt to apply a con-
textualizing lens on existing theoretical or descriptive claims is itself
immediately subject to being undermined by its own failure to be fully
contextualized.
There is a certain irony to this story. It typically begins with the
optimistic and critical desire to take into consideration differences in
shared circumstances that characterize different groups of people and
to understand and respect cultural, subcultural, racialized, gendered,
religiously-based and other differences. When the “other” is concep-
tualized in terms of group membership of some sort, consideration of
how groups differ in circumstance and perspective can often generate
new insights. Indeed, this is what we are about to suggest is happening
in entrepreneurship research. When taken to an extreme, however, it
can lead to radical forms of individualism, in which consideration of
the massively complex multidimensionality of context and resulting
proliferation of unique standpoints renders each individual opaque and
ultimately unintelligible to every other (Scharfstein, 1989). Although
this work often takes the form of seemingly esoteric and obscure (to
many of us) academic debates among philosophically-minded scholars,
practical reflections of such thinking can be seen, for example in recent
struggles among some members of feminist movements to come fully
to terms with transgender women (Goldberg, 2014) and perhaps even
in tensions over claims about transgender versus transracial identities
(Brubaker, 2016). Similar tensions exist in current conversations about
the meaning and possibilities of university research and education in
places where people are trying to build post-colonial nations (Jagusah,
2001; Omoyele, 2017). Considered in more abstract philosophical terms
one scholarly epistemological dead end of extreme contextualization is
solipsism, the radically individualized perspective in which there is no
apparent way for anyone – researchers included – to know or understand
anything or anyone but themselves.
2.2 Contextualizing Entrepreneurship Research 365
2.2 Contextualizing Entrepreneurship Research – Self-Reflections

and Advice from the Field
Having descended rapidly (and without much nuance) down this rabbit
hole of radical contextualization, it may be refreshing to return to
the sunlit environment of contemporary entrepreneurship scholarship.
Here, the world is very different indeed. While we have just argued
that taken seriously, the challenges of contextualizing research can
quickly become overwhelming, in a practical sense, scholars have barely
explored what is possible in entrepreneurship research. For example,
Gorgievski and Stephan (2016) found only 8 of 142 papers studying
the psychology of entrepreneurship examined context. More generally, a
spate of recent papers and books on context in entrepreneurship can be
roughly characterized as exploring the contours of useful opportunities
for entrepreneurship researchers to attend more effectively to context.
It is clear that entrepreneurship researchers are not about to fall into
the abyss of infinite regress and solipsism.
The emergence of a focused and explicit discussion about context
in entrepreneurship research is relatively new. Early on, Ucbasaran
et al. (2001, p. 67) provided a trenchant critique of the tendency of
entrepreneurship researchers to treat “the social, economic and political
infrastructure for entrepreneurship as externalities”. They suggested
that the field needed additional studies that explored entrepreneurial
behavior across differing organizational contexts and under differing
external environmental conditions. Since this time, scholars have become
more self-conscious about the need to consider differences in context
as potentially both constitutive of and constituted by entrepreneurial
behavior and outcomes (Frese, 2009; Welter and Gartner, 2016).
Entrepreneurship scholars’ answer to the strategic question of how
we should go about contextualizing our work has generated a number of
general suggestions along with sensible lists and typologies of contexts to
be taken into consideration. For example, Zahra and Wright (2011, p. 75)
suggest that we attend to context in terms of four dimensions: spatial,
time, practice and change. Zahra et al. (2014) refine and extend the
initial typology to incorporate organizational, ownership and governance
dimensions.
Drawing on Whetten (1989), Welter (2011) points our attention

to questions of “where” and “when” as key points of departure for
understanding context in entrepreneurship (see Table 3.1 for selected
examples of research). She identifies four dimensions of where: business,
which has been the default context for most entrepreneurship research;
social which incorporates networks, households and families; spatial
which highlights, for example, urban versus rural places or communities;
and institutional. To these she adds two dimensions of when: temporal
and historical.
Welter (2011) also notes that each element of context can be prox-
imate or distal: for example regulatory features of the institutional
environment can operate at local, regional and national levels. And
these can be inconsistent. Consider, for example, the current state of
regulation of marijuana in the United States: it is legal for medical use in
many states and legal for recreational use in a few, but it is illegal every-
where under national statutes. Welter’s discussion also emphasizes that
contextual dimensions are interdependent and intertwined, implying
that configurations of elements matter. Of the where dimensions Welter
delineates, business and social dimensions are probably most common in
contemporary entrepreneurship research. Of the when dimensions, his-
tory is, in our opinion, still too frequently simply ignored. Temporality
of any sort is more often assumed than studied and still too frequently
pointed to as a “direction” for future research in cross-sectional studies
that call upon others to do longitudinal work. Perhaps ironically, the
calls for longitudinal studies often seem to come from senior scholars
who attempt to point the mantle of responsibility to junior faculty who
still need to worry about their tenure clocks. Apparently, scholars’ sense
of the importance of temporality may be out of alignment in more ways
than one! This brings us to our next section, where we review in more
detail the progress made in contextualizing entrepreneurship research
and in moving towards a theory of contexts.
3
Progress in Contextualizing Entrepreneurship
Research
Johns (2017) celebrates what he sees as the substantial progress that

has been made in attending to context in organization studies overall.
Entrepreneurship research has moved forward in parallel. For exam-
ple, studies have sought to disentangle the structural (Baker et al.,
2005; Baker and Powell, 2016), spatial (e.g., Korsgaard et al., 2015a;
Müller and Korsgaard, 2017) and temporal dimensions of contexts
(e.g., Lippmann and Aldrich, 2016b; Lippmann and Aldrich, 2016a),
and have also emphasized the importance of history in contextualizing
entrepreneurship (e.g., Wadhwani, 2010; Wadhwani, 2016).
Overall, studies that make a start towards theorizing context have
accumulated, albeit slowly, over the past few years. We are particu-
larly encouraged by studies that move beyond simple, linear, single
level regression models and attempt instead to grasp the non-recursive,
simultaneously top-down and bottom-up characteristics of the phenom-
ena they investigate. Even more so, researchers have increasingly left
the comfortable and familiar environs of technology-enabled, growth-
oriented ventures run by entrepreneurs with a sole focus on financial
returns and able to attract adequate resources to fuel their journeys.
We have more often left the figurative “Shark Tank” and “Dragon’s
367
368 Progress in Contextualizing Entrepreneurship Research
Den” behind, allowing us to encounter a fascinatingly broad range

of founders and contexts. To date, there are numerous studies from
different parts of the world that highlight the inventive and creative
agency of entrepreneurs dealing with what are often turbulent, hos-
tile and resource-constrained institutional contexts. Table 3.1 collects
selected examples of studies which have investigated strategies of in-
formal entrepreneurs; analyzed the interactions of entrepreneurs with
varied institutional contexts; looked at founder identities and examined
and expanded our understanding of entrepreneurial resourcefulness.
Research continues to demonstrate how consideration of socio-spatial
and institutional contexts can generate novel explanations for variations
in the behavior of entrepreneurs – including, for example, new insights
into the differences between women- and men-owned businesses (e.g.,
Baughn et al., 2006; Coleman, 2016; Elam and Terjesen, 2010; Gupta
et al., 2013; Welter and Smallbone, 2008, 2010).
Rough indicators of this progress in contextualizing entrepreneurship
also include several recently published anthologies that showcase the
current – empirical and theoretical – understanding and applications
of a contextualizing lens in entrepreneurship research. For example, in
the volume on “Entrepreneurship in Context”, edited by van Gelderen
and Masurel (2012), eight out of 17 chapters examine contextual influ-
ences on entrepreneurship, whilst five chapters look into agency themes.
Ramirez-Pasillas et al. (2017) classify the 22 chapters in their anthology
into three groups: seven chapters contextualize the “top-down driving
forces for entrepreneurial practices”, another eight chapters contextu-
alize bottom-up processes by analyzing how entrepreneurs influence
their contexts, and seven chapters apply a “hybrid” perspective, em-
phasizing the interactions between top-down and bottom-up dynamics.
Other edited volumes analyze entrepreneurship in specific spatial con-
texts (e.g., Mason et al., 2015; Van Ham et al., 2017) or focus on
the intersections between socio-cultural contexts and factors such as
gender in shaping entrepreneurship (Yousafzai et al., 2018). Such vol-
umes together depict an increasingly differentiated understanding of the
complexities of contextualizing entrepreneurship theories and empirical
research.
3.1. Who and Why Contexts 369
The sociologist Rachel Rosenfeld, reflecting on the state of much

gender research in the 1980s and 1990s, criticized the approach she
called, “add gender and stir.1 ” It is one thing to contextualize our
theories by adding this or that control variable, or adding even rich
descriptions of research sites. It is quite another to begin to develop the-
ory about contextual elements previously largely taken for granted and
to develop theory about them . . . that is: to theorize contexts. Drawing
on Whetten (1989), Welter (2011) distinguishes between contextual-
izing theory and theorizing context. In her interpretation, the former
is mainly the application of situational and temporal boundaries to
theories in entrepreneurship, which requires a great deal of useful com-
parative research. In contrast, the notion of theorizing contexts focuses
on asking broader and more challenging questions of our theories, for
example, by resisting the urge to blithely “control” away dynamics that
we do not fully understand. The drive to theorize contexts can help
us to discover new insights that are based not just on filling random
oversights and gaps in prior work, but also on addressing patterns and
voices that have been systematically downplayed. Theorizing context
requires the disciplined attempt to ask our theories to address broad-
ranging questions regarding who is involved in entrepreneurship as well
as where, when, how and why they come to be involved and with what
consequences to them and to others (Welter, 2011 and Table 3.1). In
the following subsection, we discuss recent work, some of which moves
beyond contextualizing theory toward theorizing context, organizing
our discussion in terms of who, where, when, how and why.
3.1 Who and Why Contexts
A central outcome of theorizing context is the lens it provides on

entrepreneurial agency. Whilst most (earlier) studies on contextual
entrepreneurship did not pay (much) attention to the agency of en-
trepreneurs in adapting to or even changing their contexts, recently,
there has been growing focus on how entrepreneurs interact with and
1
Doctoral Seminar on Sociology of Gender, University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill, 1995, author’s course notes.
enact contexts (e.g., Baker and Welter, 2017; Pret and Carter, 2017;
Shaw et al., 2017; Spedale and Watson, 2013; Watson, 2013).
An important version of using a contextual lens to examine agency
involves studies that analyze entrepreneurship as a driver of social change
(see Table 3.1). Research has looked at, for example, how communities
engage in entrepreneurship and change their socio-spatial contexts
(e.g., Gaddefors and Cronsell, 2009; Johannisson and Nilsson, 1989;
Peredo and Chrisman, 2017; Steyaert and Hjorth, 2006; Welter et
al., 2008). Community entrepreneurship is not limited to narrowly
delimited socio-spatial contexts. For example, Johnstone and Lionais
(2004) identify the local embeddedness of community entrepreneurs
as well as their willingness and ability to interact with the “outside”
world as enablers of social change. Korsgaard et al. (2015a) suggest
the same enablers for individual entrepreneurs. They illustrate how
rural entrepreneurs combined their access to local resources, which were
a result of their close spatial embeddedness, with seeking non-local
resources when required. Entrepreneurs can also contribute to changing
place identities and reputations. For example, McKeever et al. (2015)
show how entrepreneurs, by drawing on their social bonds and their
affinity to community, do context in creating, renewing and reifying
a positive identity of their place. Where entrepreneurs are not (fully)
embedded locally, they are quicker to re-locate outside of their place,
creating bridges between contexts (Korsgaard et al., 2015a).
In a classic paper applying an ethnomethodological lens, West and
Zimmerman (1987) show gender to be something that people accomplish
through everyday interactions, labeling this, “Doing Gender.” When we
theorize gender in entrepreneurship, this allows us to see how doing
gender is not simply some “limitation” of being a woman or a man – a
zero versus a one on some dummy variable – but is instead an ongo-
ing accomplishment. What is an ongoing accomplishment, whether of
one woman alone or women embedded in enabling communities, can
be altered by the people involved. For example, place-based context
frequently challenges some women to break out of norms that constrain
their entrepreneurial behavior (Gunnerud, 1997, p. 265). Welter and
Smallbone (2010) illustrate the norm-breaking behavior of women en-
trepreneurs in a post-Soviet context, where they openly defy societal
Table 3.1: Contextualizing entrepreneurship research and theory
3.1. Who and Why Contexts

Contextualizing
Context dimensions entrepreneurship Examples of research studies Useful concepts
Who Individual / Doing context: How do strategies of informal entrepreneurs (e.g., De Castro et Institutional en-
team, commu- individuals, communities, al., 2014; Han et al., 2015; Webb et al., 2014; Welter trepreneurship,
nity, business businesses interact with and Xheneti, 2015; Williams and Nadin, 2013; Williams entrepreneuring,
where and when contexts? and Shahid, 2014); interactions of entrepreneurs with var- identity
How do they adapt and/or ied institutional contexts (e.g., Fisher et al., 2017; Mair
change where contexts? and Marti, 2009; Manolova and Yan, 2002; McCarthy and
Why do individuals, com- Puffer, 2016; Puffer et al., 2010; Smallbone and Welter,
munities and businesses 2001; Sutter et al., 2013; Tracey and Phillips, 2011; Wel-
interact with contexts? ter and Smallbone, 2011); founder identity (e.g., Powell and
Baker, 2014, 2017) and entrepreneurial resourcefulness (e.g.,
Corbett and Katz, 2013; Misra and Kumar, 2000; Powell,
2011; Welter et al., 2018)
Where Business: sector, How where contexts are Most entrepreneurship studies. For example, recent special Relational geogra-
market constructed? Why does the issue in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice on sector, phy, embeddedness,
where context impact on en- cf. introductory article by De Massis et al. (2017) linguistic studies,
trepreneurship? cognitive science
Social: networks, Networks (Anderson et al., 2010; Jack et al., 2008); house-
households, fami- holds (Alsos et al., 2014; Carter et al., 2017; Carter and
lies Ram, 2003); families (Bettinelli et al., 2014; Welter et al.,
2014)
Spatial: commu- Rural places (Korsgaard et al., 2015a; Korsgaard et al.,
nities, neighbour- 2015b; Müller and Korsgaard, 2017); communities (Gad-
hoods, industrial defors and Cronsell, 2009; Gaddefors and Anderson, 2017;
districts, clusters, Johannisson, 1990; Johannisson and Nilsson, 1989; Peredo
country and Chrisman, 2006); neighborhoods and cities (Mason et
al., 2015; Van Ham et al., 2017)
Institutional: cul- Boettke and Coyne (2009); De Castro et al. (2014); Hen-
ture, regulatory rekson and Sanandaji (2011); Smallbone and Welter (2001);
and normative in- Welter and Smallbone (2011); Welter and Xheneti (2015);
stitutions Welter et al. (2018); Williams and Vorley (2015)
When Time How when contexts are con- Aldrich (2009); Bird and Page West (1998); Fischer et al. Time geography, his-
structed? Why does the (1998); Gielnik et al. (2014); Lippmann and Aldrich (2016a) tory studies
when context impact on en-
trepreneurship?
History Berghoff (2006); Berghoff and Möller (1994); Colli (2012);
Hjorth and Dawson (2016); Ocasio et al. (2016); Wadhwani
(2016)
371
Source: Authors, based on the typologies of Welter (2011) and Whetten (1989).
norms ascribing traditional gender roles to, for example, their choice
of industry. Some of these women also turn gender stereotypes into a
forum for creative play, opposing and re-interpreting the predominant
male image of entrepreneurship as shown by Bruno (1997, pp. 63–4).
We find it useful to apply the lens of “doing context” (Baker and Welter,
2017) to highlight the ways in which context is not something that just
“is” for entrepreneurs but instead is something they enact and construct,
often in idiosyncratic ways, typically through routine interactions.
The stream of literature on so-called “institutional entrepreneurship”
is explicit and sometimes even quite grand in its attempts to understand
forms of entrepreneurial agency that on occasion extend to institutional
change (e.g., Battilana et al., 2009; Leca and Naccache, 2006; Li et al.,
2006; Pacheco et al., 2010). Other scholars, however, have been critical
of this concept on the basis that it does not take context seriously
enough. Clegg (2010, p. 5) argues that the institutional entrepreneurship
literature is de-contextualized because “it ( . . . ) focuses overly on a
few champions of change and neglects the wider social fabric in which
they are embedded. Nelson Mandela may have been an institutional
entrepreneur in South Africa, but without the long struggle, armed
resistance, and civil disobedience campaigns of the ANC, he could not
have achieved much.” The concept of institutional entrepreneurship does
not fully capture the complexities of the interplay between context and
individuals (Aldrich, 2010), because it neglects the reflexivity of agents
and the messiness of institutional change, by portraying “heroes and
successes in a linear time line” (Weik, 2011, p. 472). Extending this, in
their cross-disciplinary review of institutional entrepreneurship research,
Welter and Smallbone (2015) suggested that researchers avoid the heroic-
sounding label of institutional entrepreneur in favor of broader study of
institutional change agents and the role that everyday entrepreneurs
may or may not play in shaping intentional institutional change.
Regardless of such criticism, case studies applying an institutional
entrepreneurship perspective also allow us to start theorizing why en-
trepreneurs do context. For example, Bjerregaard and Lauring (2012)
show that entrepreneurs have to manage institutional tensions, in this
case the tensions between the requirements of a modern market econ-
omy and a traditional, rural culture. In both cases they studied, en-
3.1. Who and Why Contexts 373
trepreneur’s extended families were both a resource and a hindrance to

entrepreneurship in a context in which witchcraft still informed individ-
ual actions in important way. One of the entrepreneurs they studied was
quite effective in “bridging institutional contradictions” (Bjerregaard
and Lauring, 2012, p. 31), by distancing himself from local traditions
and thus openly bringing in new values, while the other entrepreneur
draws heavily on traditional normative patterns to ensure legitimacy
for his entrepreneurial activities. “Doing context” here, as in many
other cases, is less a clean break with existing institutions than it is an
incremental process of bricolage (Lévi-Strauss, 1966), a “co-mingling
containing changed, reused and new templates” as suggested by Stål
(2011). Entrepreneurial agency in such cases is more a matter of en-
acting the environment one inhabits by bracketing some features and
highlighting others as the context to which one will respond (Powell
and Baker, 2014, 2017; Weick et al., 2005).
Contextual discontinuity and boundary crossing shape who does
context and why. Individuals whose daily life positions them as insiders
in some contexts and outsiders in other contexts often act as change
agents. For example, Mutch (2007) narrates the story of Sir Andrew
Barclay Walker, who pioneered directly managed pubs in England during
the late 19th century. Because of his Scottish background, Walker was
able to see beyond existing and taken-for-granted managerial practices
and organizational models such as the tied tenancy system still prevailing
at that time in England. This allowed him to introduce a novel and
innovative business model.
Other instances where contextual discontinuity enables entrepreneurs
to become change agents can be found in cross-border, diaspora or
transnational entrepreneurship, with entrepreneurs acting as boundary-
spanners across several diverse contexts (e.g., Terjesen and Elam, 2009;
Xheneti et al., 2012). Riddle and Brinkerhoff (2011) present the case
of Thamel.com, founded by a Nepali diaspora entrepreneur who intro-
duced a new business model (e-commerce) to Nepal and its diaspora,
and thus contributed to changing several regulatory and normative
institutions. Thamel.com also contributed to changes to the norms and
values of Nepali society, as, for example the interaction with lower caste
individuals. All this has, again, been a slow and incremental process,
supported by the legitimacy, credibility and reputation the entrepreneur

had earned in his host and home society.
Overall, contemporary work demonstrates a variety of ways in which
the non-recursive relationships between entrepreneurs and the contexts
in which they operate shape both who they are and why they behave
in the rich and often idiosyncratic ways that careful observation reveals.
Much of this work is reminiscent of classical sociological research on the
“marginal man” (Park, 1928), which examined identity construction pro-
cesses and conflicts among individuals and groups embedded in distinct
cultures. This presents a rich arena for future work on the dynamics of
founder identity (Fauchart and Gruber, 2011; Powell and Baker, 2017).
3.2 Where Contexts
Entrepreneurial behavior is strongly shaped by founders’ embedded-

ness in both social structural and institutional contexts (Granovetter,
1985; Polanyi, 1957). Sociologists and institutional economists delin-
eate numerous sorts of embeddedness that condition economic action.
For example, political embeddedness (Zukin and DiMaggio, 1990) and
formal respectively regulatory institutions (North, 1990; Scott, 2008)
mold the sources and means of economic action. Cultural embeddedness
and informal/normative institutions reflect collective understanding
and interpretations and shape economic behavior (Denzau and North,
1994). Social embeddedness comprehends the impact of interpersonal
networks and relations on economic actions (Granovetter, 1985, 2005),
whilst cognitive embeddedness reflects the “ways in which the structured
regularities of mental processes limit the exercise of economic reasoning”
(Zukin and DiMaggio, 1990, pp. 15–6; similar Denzau and North, 1994).
Entrepreneurship research has applied an admixture of embeddedness
constructs, using these as important ways to characterize differences
across the place in and through which entrepreneurship takes place (see
Table 3.1). Research has studied, for example, the institutional contexts
for women’s entrepreneurship (e.g., Langevang et al., 2015; Yousafzai
et al., 2015), the mixed embeddedness of ethnic firms (e.g., Kloosterman
et al., 1999; Ram et al., 2008) as well as family embeddedness (Basco,
2015; Poggesi et al., 2015).
3.2. Where Contexts 375
More recently entrepreneurship researchers have begun to emphasize

the construction of where contexts through, for example, individual
perceptions and cognitions (e.g., Brännback and Carsrud, 2016; Gartner,
2007), language and talk (e.g., Clarke and Cornelissen, 2014; Parkinson
et al., 2017) and social interactions (e.g., Fletcher and Selden, 2016; Mc-
Keever et al., 2015; Steyaert, 2016). Research that attends to the social
construction of contexts promises a more balanced view. Such balance is
established in some other, typically more technical disciplines, for exam-
ple, in informatics and computer science (Akman, 2000; Dourish, 2004),
in linguistics (Bates, 1976; Labov, 1970) and in cognitive science (Chun
and Jiang, 1998; Perkins and Salomon, 1989). Entrepreneurship studies
have drawn our attention to the impact on opportunity recognition and
exploitation of interactions between cognitions, social and institutional
contexts (Fletcher and Selden, 2016; Jack and Anderson, 2002; Koning,
2003). Such a perspective emphasizes the links between individual cogni-
tions, interpretations and entrepreneurial behavior (Gartner et al., 2003).
This theme has been picked up by conceptual studies that attempt to
characterize the complex relations between cognitions and contexts (e.g.,
Brännback and Carsrud, 2016; Chlosta and Welter, 2017; Elfving et al.,
2009, 2017). For example, Clarke and Cornelissen (2014, p. 387) bring
classic arguments from anthropology and linguistics (see Whorf, 1956)
to bear by noting that language shapes entrepreneurial cognitions and
vice versa: “Language is not just a code for communication or simply
an outward representation of thought, but is inseparably involved with
processes of thinking and reasoning ( . . . ).” Related work has looked
into sense giving and its influence on venture support (Cornelissen et al.,
2012).
Where contexts also are constructed through the emergence and
change of shared interpretations at local or supra-local levels. From
an institutionalist perspective, Kalantaridis (2007) suggests localized
interpretations of institutions as antecedents of differing entrepreneurial
behavior, all of which, in the long run, may contribute importantly to
institutional diversity at the macro level. Thornton and Flynn (2005)
suggest that the social and institutional boundaries of place, reflected
in cultural rules and shared local meanings, contribute to defining the
local neighborhoods and communities which are the primary domains

of many young ventures.
Human geography points to how places are made through language.
Tuan (1991) discusses how words alone, for example, the naming of
a place, can render formerly invisible objects visible. He furthermore
illustrates how the contexts of speech add to its function and impact on
behavior: “Thus, warm conversation between friends can make the place
itself seem warm; by contrast, malicious speech has the power to destroy
a place’s reputation and thereby its visibility.” Again, entrepreneurship
research is lagging behind. Although Gartner (1993) suggested early on
that “words lead to deeds” in setting up a business, entrepreneurship
research has only begun to discover the role of language in constructing
the places where entrepreneurship may take place.
For example, Hechavarría et al. (2017) examine gendered linguistic
structures and the persistent gender gap in early stage entrepreneurial
activity. They find that those countries that have a language with sex-
based systems and gender-differentiated pronouns experience a greater
gender gap in entrepreneurship. The authors surmise that gender stereo-
types appear to be reinforced by gendered linguistic structures, thus
discouraging women from taking up entrepreneurial activities. Parkin-
son and Howorth (2008) show that entrepreneurs may appropriate or
re-write the overarching discourse on social entrepreneurship when the
public rhetoric of (social) entrepreneurship differs from the lived experi-
ences of social entrepreneurs. Parkinson et al. (2017) also highlight the
role of language in constructing contexts. They focus on the practice of
talk at the community level and investigate how language influences the
imagery and reputation of entrepreneurship in specific places. Overall,
the substantial body of work in other fields, along with the nascent
body of research in entrepreneurship seems consistent with the assertion
that in many ways, places are constructed through the stories we tell
ourselves and one another.
3.3 When Contexts
Temporality is invoked – implicitly or explicitly – whenever researchers

develop process models and explanations. Our discussion of the agency
3.3. When Contexts 377
of entrepreneurs in shaping and reshaping contexts already hinted at

this. For example, the concept of “entrepreneuring” inherently considers
dynamics over time (Steyaert, 2007). The transdisciplinary perspec-
tive of time geography offers one intriguing means for theorizing the
temporal context of entrepreneurship. Pred (1984) characterizes place
as a process that is reproduced and constructed through time in a
manner that involves social, cultural institutions, and individual biogra-
phies and activities, creating an astonishing rich interweaving of time
and place. Reviewing the major works of time geography, Stam (2016,
p. 102) concludes that “With time geography the dialogic between the
entrepreneur and new value creation can be analyzed, within an ongoing
process and situated within a specific context.” To date, little work in
entrepreneurship has taken this direction.
Scholars readily acknowledge the importance of time both in dis-
tinctions such “nascent” versus “operational” ventures and through a
variety of attempts to posit stage models of entrepreneurial development.
Nonetheless, explicit consideration of time has been sparse and scattered
(see Table 3.1). Already in 1998, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice
published a special issue on “Time and Entrepreneurship”. Whilst some
of the papers applied a simple commonsense understanding of time as
linear and sequential (e.g., Cooper et al., 1998; Das and Teng, 1998;
Lévesque and Maccrimmon, 1998), others introduced radically different
conceptualization of the temporal contexts for entrepreneurship. For
example, Fischer et al. (1998) described a social constructionist per-
spective on time in high-growth ventures, or Slevin and Covin (1998)
modeled the relations between time, complexity and transitions, study-
ing high-growth new ventures and stable ventures. Surprisingly, the
interest in temporal contexts that seemed to be gathering steam in
the late 1990s seems to have dissipated until recently when researchers
(e.g., McMullen and Dimov, 2013; Morris et al., 2012) began insisting
that we move from conceptualizing entrepreneurship as act towards
understanding it as journey. Many entrepreneurship researchers still
appear to resist or to find difficult the conceptualization of temporal
contexts as socially constructed and non-linear.
Lippmann and Aldrich (2016b), in contrast, emphasize the differ-
ences between clock time and our individual and socially constructed
and shifting sense of time. Fletcher and Selden (2016, p. 86) conclude
that time and process are inherently linked to each other, and that indi-
viduals are able to “connect to the past, present and future dimensions
of an activity in the momentary present.” An appreciation for history
is also currently gaining some traction in entrepreneurship research.
Business and economic historians (e.g., Jones and Rose, 1993; Jones and
Wadhwani, 2006; Wadhwani, 2016) as well as entrepreneurship scholars
(e.g., Aldrich, 2009; Landström, 2015; Landström and Lohrke, 2010)
have started to systematically introduce historical considerations and
historical methods into entrepreneurship research. Wadhwani (2016,
p. 67) emphasizes that the “turning to the past” needs to recognize that
entrepreneurs use historical contextualization – i.e., they do historical
context – in ways that differ importantly from how researchers take
account of history.
Again, the entrepreneurship field is following in the wake of other
disciplines, including management and organization studies (for an
overview see Bucheli and Wadhwani, 2014; Godfrey et al., 2016; Ingram
et al., 2012; Kipping and Üsdiken, 2015). Scholars applying institutional
theories have had a longer tradition of considering historical aspects
as an influential factor on entrepreneurship. For example, studies have
demonstrated the importance of path-dependent entrepreneurial behav-
ior (i.e., behavior drawing on historically embedded norms and codes
of conduct) in unstable institutional contexts (e.g., Manolova and Yan,
2002; Welter and Smallbone, 2003; Welter and Smallbone, 2015), as
well as the role of path dependency in and for the development of family
firms (e.g., Lubinski, 2011). Research on entrepreneurship in emerging
economies has illustrated how entrepreneurs draw on historical meaning
in adapting to or defying institutions and changing them in their favor
(e.g., Bjerregaard and Lauring, 2012; Mair and Marti, 2009; McCarthy
and Puffer, 2016; Miller et al., 2009; Puffer et al., 2010; Sutter et al.,
2013; Tracey and Phillips, 2011; Welter and Smallbone, 2011).
Such studies point to the role of history for “doing contexts”. As Wad-
hwani (2016) suggests, historical contextualization of institutions and
individuals allow a close look at how contexts change over time because
of entrepreneurial behavior. He points to studies of industry emergence
and evolution and to the driving effect of entrepreneurship on growth
3.4 Incipient Theory of Entrepreneurship Contexts 379
and structural change such as creative destruction as potential research

topics. History, of course, invokes not just when, but who, why, where
and how, thus bringing us to the end of our attempt to illustrate recent
progress in contextualizing entrepreneurship by applying Welter’s (2011)
framework. Even in this quick review, it becomes apparent that the typol-
ogy is a useful heuristic for assessing the state of the art, but that the de-
velopment of a theory of entrepreneurship contexts has only just begun.
3.4 Limitations of the Incipient Theory of Entrepreneurship

Contexts
In section 2 we assembled a series of arguments in support of the thesis

that in a very broad sense, “context is everything” and that extreme
versions of “contextualizing” or “contextualization” can rapidly lead
to an infinite regress in which it becomes very unclear what is figure
and what is background. As Steyaert (2016) notes, literary and cultural
studies have been a prime example of this, with context “an endlessly
contested concept, subject to often rancorous rehashing and occasional
bursts of sectarian sniper fire” (Felski, 2011, p. 573). In some social
science fields, for example, cultural anthropology, the struggle over
contextualization has been recognized as equivalent to some of the
problems of extreme relativism, allowing scholars little secure place to
stand, even temporarily. Scharfstein (1989, p. xi) describes “the issue of
context” as laying “an intellectual burden on us that we cannot evade
but that can become so heavy that it destroys the understanding it was
meant to further.” In our opinion, some of the excesses of postmodernism
also provide fair warning against such relentless attempts to deconstruct
scholars’ every claim and to value the deconstruction more than that
which it takes apart.
In Section 3 so far, we showed that entrepreneurship research has
experienced an outpouring of essays that examine and proselytize for
greater emphasis on context and a deluge of studies that take one
or more elements of context into consideration. Taken together, such
essays and studies represent the rudiments of an incipient theory of
entrepreneurship contexts. We chose to adopt the Welter (2011) frame-
work, because it appears to be the broadest and most influential to
date. At various points in our consideration of recent work using this

framework, it became apparent that it is difficult to classify aspects of
contexts into questions of who, why, how, where and when. For example,
who and why often seem largely inseparable, because questions of who
I am and who I want to be drive extremely heterogeneous founder moti-
vations (Powell and Baker, 2014): who and why are thereby inextricably
intertwined and attempts to rip them apart are likely to stall progress.
Even more broadly, work bringing deeper historical understanding, ex-
tending to a variety of ways of understanding temporality, requires
simultaneous consideration of who, why, how, where and when. Taken
as a whole, this work threatens to overwhelm the boundaries of the ty-
pology provided by Welter (building on Whetten, 1989) and to reinforce
the seemingly unbounded problem of context as described in Section 2.
To use a non-technical term, progress toward the development – still
largely implicit – of a theory of entrepreneurship contexts has been
somewhat willy-nilly.
To be sure, despite the whirlwind tour provided in Section 3, most
entrepreneurship research is currently a long way from the excesses of the
drive to contextualize. Implicitly, many of our theories and concepts still
assume that entrepreneurship is the same all over the world, regardless
of cultural, institutional, social and spatial contexts – in other words: we
have managed to create and we still maintain a highly de-contextualized
research field, which also influences not only our teaching, but also
the advice we give to entrepreneurs, those supporting them and policy-
makers. Hjorth et al. (2008, p. 81) observe that entrepreneurship research
has been characterized by a search for “‘general laws’ of entrepreneurship
which might transcend context, and in doing so has been tempted by
accounts of entrepreneurship that are removed from context and are thus
decontextualised.” This is true not only of scholarly work but of popular
and influential practitioner accounts as well. For example, Brännback
and Carsrud (2016) report that even Steve Blank, the inventor of the
“lean start-up model”, acknowledges the context-specificity of his model,
which stems from his experiences as serial technology entrepreneur
and investor in Silicon Valley. But we nonetheless repeatedly see it
viewed and taught as if it were an easily universalized normative model
for creating new organizations. From this perspective, we are quite
3.4 Incipient Theory of Entrepreneurship Contexts 381
sympathetic to Ucbasaran, Westhead, and Wright’s (2001, 68) aspiration

to contribute to “an integrated, theoretically driven and comprehensive
framework” for studying contexts in entrepreneurship.
Unfortunately, we believe that such a framework may be beyond our
grasp. The experience of other fields attempting to grapple seriously
with issue of context is that the infinite regress and the slippery slopes
of relativism are forever on the near horizon. Our perspective therefore
builds instead on Welter’s (2011, 177) characterization of the challenge:
“I suggest that a contextualized view on entrepreneurship asks for
an interdisciplinary perspective, as the solution cannot be to develop
an overarching theory of entrepreneurship in all contexts, but rather
working with disciplines like anthropology, sociology, and others, which
possess some of the tools and concepts entrepreneurship scholars need
to explore the variety, depths and richness of contexts.”
Our stance remains positivistic in the sense that our interest is in
developing theoretical explanations that reflect in useful ways social
realities that exist outside of our theoretical explanations of them. But
we are wary of all explanations that present themselves as “the truth”
or on some singular path to find it. And we are especially allergic to
“contingency” approaches to contextualization that operate – implicitly
or explicitly – under the assumption that the purpose of contextualizing
is to somehow either remove or “control for” context in a manner
that lets very simple universal truths emerge and be stated, or that
complexifies theories by adding contingencies. As Steyaert (2016, p. 33)
notes, “After all, the notion of context was invented to turn analysis
away from its universalistic ambitions and to overcome the problems of
contingency theory – with its quasi-endless series of contingent factors
that could interfere with the generalizability of causal relations.”
Most of us would prefer to develop theories that are accurate, simple,
and general. Unfortunately, we all face unavoidable tradeoffs in the si-
multaneous pursuit of these goals. Organization scholars are most likely
to have learned this lesson from Weick (1979), who credited the underly-
ing ideas to Thorngate, and his “postulate of commensurate complexity.”
Thorngate (1976) in turn developed these ideas in his commentary
on a dialectic between Gergen (1973)and Schlenker (1974). To greatly
simplify their arguments: Schlenker was arguing that our theories could
make a great many assertions that would be largely unconditionally

true, across most or all contexts. Gergen was arguing instead that we
could say very little that was unconditionally true. Thorngate (1976,
p. 405) responded with a kind of synthesis by observing,
“The more conditionals we add to a theory, the more spe-
cific and less parsimonious it becomes, approaching the limit
of a series of statements each of which describes a single
event . . . At this limit, description and explanation become
synonymous. If our explanations are to be more than “mere”
descriptions of historical events, then we must determine
how many conditionals (variables, parameters) our theo-
ries must have in order to give a general, accurate account
of social behavior. Will a three-parameter theory suffice?
A 27-parameter theory? When can we safely state that a
phenomenon occurs ‘in general’? When should we add a
conditional to describe how ‘it depends?”’
Dilley (1999a, p. 9) puts this more succinctly, arguing that we are
“caught between the Scylla of contextual relativism and the Charybdis
of ‘extreme sameness and objectivity’.” Early German philosophers and
social theorists drew similar contrasts between “nomothetic” explana-
tions that generalize across instances and “idiographic” explanations
that fully explore particular cases (Campbell, 1975; Dilthey, 1989; We-
ber, 1978; Windelband, 1893).
In such framings, contextualization creates complexity in the service
of accuracy and also in service of the generality of an entire, perhaps
quite complex, body of theory. A fully contextualized theory might be a
descriptively accurate rendering mirroring rather precisely the features of
some social world, capturing a full set of contingencies that might shape
the manner in which these features influence whatever outcomes we
were interested in explaining. For example, if some factor – for example,
the prevalence of malaria – were important in some contexts but not
at all in others, a fully contextualized theory would include constructs
that fully moderated the impact of this disease. Few entrepreneurship
scholars would carry arguments about contextualization to such lengths,
and not many have pushed strong versions of relativism but the debate
3.4. Incipient Theory of Entrepreneurship Contexts 383
nicely sets up the question: given that we can’t attend to the full
multiplicity and heterogeneity of context in our research or theories
(Welter, 2011), what sorts of context matter most? How do we usefully
avoid the potentially unbounded demands of contextualization and
instead harness the “contextual turn” in entrepreneurship research in a
useful way?
Overall, our assessment is that typologies such as those outlined by
Zahra and Wright (2011) and Zahra et al. (2014) and by Welter (2011)
have been useful guides to entrepreneurship research. They seem to have
helped move contemporary research somewhat away from the too naïve
search for general laws of entrepreneurship regardless of context (Hjorth
et al., 2008). Such typologies will continue to remain useful as general
checklists for the sorts of dimensions of our research that might benefit
from tilting the balance away from simplicity and towards accuracy and
perhaps generality. We are increasingly concerned however, that even
such checklists and typologies can rapidly become too complex. For
example, the “institutional” dimension is itself an extraordinarily rich
construct, as witnessed by the dominance and increasing complexity of
institutional approaches to organizational theory. The history dimension
can quickly become similarly overwhelming in its nuance and complexity;
any treatment of history is also highly susceptible to contestation. Much
the same can be said about the elements of any such typology of elements
or dimensions of context.
4
Progress in Empirically Studying Contextual
Entrepreneurship
In Section 3, we described progress in theoretical perspectives that focus

on language, perceptions and cognitions and enactment suggesting that
these emphasize the construction and co-creation of contexts, as well as
their fluidity. Whilst theoretically, entrepreneurship researchers have
started to embrace the heterogeneity, multiplicity and non-recursive
dynamics of contexts, our research approaches still typically fall short.
Which are the best methodological approaches to research contextual
entrepreneurship? How can we best capture the richness and diversity of
contexts and the interactions between entrepreneurs and contexts? What
about the role of the researcher in context research? How do we think
about and develop contextualized propositions and hypotheses? How do
we think about units of analysis and temporality? In much contemporary
research, contextualization is relegated to adding a (or many!) control
variable, or providing a short description of research context. In this
section, we briefly outline some of the challenges for contextualized
empirical research, and then we turn to a selective review of relevant
methodologies and research approaches from other disciplines as well
as some promising methods adopted by entrepreneurship researchers.
384
4.1. Challenges for Contextualized Research Approaches 385
4.1 Challenges for Contextualized Research Approaches
Contextualizing research is “in,” in the sense that it is fashionable to talk

about the need to do more of it, but how do we go from acknowledging
its importance to applying its lessons in our empirical work? Some of
the primary challenges in developing a contextualized research approach
are to capture the softer and socially constructed elements of contexts
reviewed in section 3, their multiplicity and multi-level nature and
the non-recursive links between contexts and entrepreneurship (Welter,
2011). We see four major challenges to be dealt with in developing
contextualized research approaches.
Towards a different understanding of context(s)

Social anthropology has highlighted context as an analytical device
“( . . . ) by means of which anthropologists are able to reveal hidden
meanings and deeper understandings, or to forward certain kinds of
interpretation and particular forms of explanation” Dilley (1999a, p. 3).
In entrepreneurship research, we often invoke a simpler understanding:
we ask what exogenous factors, such as industry, cultural, regional and
socio-economic factors impact on entrepreneurship. We mostly “control
for” these factors by adding proxies for them to our regressions. However,
conceptually, as we reviewed in section 3, the frontier of contextual en-
trepreneurship research has moved from such a circumscribed meaning
of context towards a richer understanding which allows us, at least the-
oretically, to understand context as fluid, temporally uneven, occurring
on many levels, and as a social construction which is influenced by lan-
guage, cognitions and the actions of entrepreneurs and the people with
whom they interact. Our usual methods and models are pretty good at
controlling for the effects of specific exogenous variables. However, the
richer theorization of context that entrepreneurship scholars continue
to develop is too seldom reflected adequately in our empirical work.
A multiplicity of contexts and levels

The messiness and complexity of entrepreneurship derives from questions
of who is driving it? A community? A family? An individual? Different
386 Progress in Empirically Studying Contextual Entrepreneurship
social networks are invoked, spanning, friends, family, community, varied

stakeholders. These are embedded within and affect special, regulatory
and normative contexts at community, regional, national and broader
levels. These sorts of complexities raise fascinating and potentially
fecund questions about our approaches to empirical research. What are
the most useful units of analysis for driving the contextualization of our
work? How do our choices affect trade-offs between simplicity, accuracy
and generalizability? Which methods adequately capture multi-level
relations? Can we find novel and effective ways to combine qualitative,
interpretive and deductive approaches? These questions are just a
starting point for the methodological developments that we need to
link arm-in-arm with the path-breaking work being done to rethink
approaches to developing robust approaches to contextualizing our work.
In the iterative process between theoretical and methodological process,
it is time to ask: how do we go about creating the methodological
approaches that will be necessary to build a body of knowledge and
understanding that takes full advantage of the richness of the contexts
in which entrepreneurship happens.
Towards contextualizing research approaches
Theoretically, we have come to realize that contexts are fluid and

changing over time, and that entrepreneurs “do context” (Baker and
Welter, 2017) in that they co-create and enact their contexts, draw on
their cognitions and individual interpretations of contexts and contribute
to changes over time. But, much of our research still treats context as a
given and focuses on establishing causal links between one context, for
example, place, and entrepreneurship – perpetuating, at least implicitly,
a rather static and one-sided and sometimes simplistic understanding of
entrepreneurial actions as influenced by contexts. By recognizing that
our work can never be “fully contextualized” and abandoning the hope
of some fully blown theory of entrepreneurial context, we can instead
move towards treating our contextualizing efforts as a tool, an approach,
a way to deepen our understanding through challenging what we think
we know.
4.1. Challenges for Contextualized Research Approaches 387
For example, Welter (2011) describes a young female entrepreneur

in rural Uzbekistan, with training in traditional crafts, whose father’s
death forced her to become an entrepreneur. She opened up a home-
based business offering traditional costumes, allowing her to support
her family as its sole source of income. Seen with the eyes of a scholar
focused on the research on women entrepreneurs in a Western context
such as the U.S. or Europe, her work might be categorized as: Typical
female-owned venture in a low-growth industry with low barriers to
entry. This industry was chosen because she is young and a woman,
thus lacking (access to) financial capital and, probably, also to other
resources such as social capital and human capital.
Contextualized interpretations might read this in a variety of dif-
ferent ways that usefully challenge our presumptions and also lead us
to attend to empirical factors that might otherwise escape our notice
or appear trivial. For example: A young woman in post-Soviet rural
Uzbekistan (i.e., considering the socio-spatial and normative contexts
together with historical antecedents) was not allowed to operate outside
of her home before marriage. Her training in a traditional craft offered
her the possibility to work from home and simultaneously earn an in-
come. Evaluating the business development over time (i.e., considering
the temporal context) demonstrates that she by no means owned a
low-growth business, or at least not in the derogatory way we might
categorize someone as having “failed” to grow in other context. She
developed her venture into a family business. She persuaded both of
her younger sisters to train in adjacent traditional crafts so that they
could offer a complete product portfolio over time. She also set up a
school to teach other girls to sew, thus not only achieving a level of
personal emancipation for herself through entrepreneurship, but also
contributing to changing the normative and social contexts within her
village over time (Welter, 2011; Welter and Smallbone, 2008). This
example illustrates the value of applying a critical process approach
to contextualization in our empirical research: As soon as we see en-
trepreneurship “out of our familiar context”, if we are fortunate, new
interpretations and meanings may start to emerge which allow us to
question important taken-for-granted assumptions and judgments that
may underlie established theories and concepts.
Doing context as researchers
Contextualizing also implies that we start questioning our own role in

entrepreneurship research. As researchers, we need to not only know
about contexts, but “do contexts” – which requires us to rethink our
methodological approaches in studying contextualized entrepreneurship.
Zahra and Wright (2011) argued that contextualized research practices
would change our research approach, methods and operationalization.
Instead of “controlling for” context, it would become part of the story or
the story itself. The role of the researcher would change towards being
more engaged, which has consequences for the choice of methodological
approaches as well as analytical techniques. The scope of propositions
would be bounded but also enriched by context instead of trying to
capture entrepreneurship as a homogenous universal phenomenon. At
the very least, being open to contextualization requires also being open
to discovering new meanings and themes that our research designs
did not anticipate. A similar logic leads Chlosta (2016) to suggest
“contextual treatment” for our research methodology in order for us
to be able to empirically study and understand the role of contexts in
entrepreneurship and for entrepreneurship research.
Zahra and Wright (2011) propose engaged scholarship as one means
of establishing closer connections to the phenomenon we wish to study.
This would in turn influence our research approach and operational-
ization. Which elements of context become important in practice and
thereby become central elements of our models? Which elements shape
case selection in inductive work? Which remain as lightly theorized or
untheorized control variables? Such challenges require methods that
promote better visibility into the processes through which contexts are
constructed and enacted and into how entrepreneurs do context by
interacting with, interpreting and enacting their social, spatial and insti-
tutional contexts (Baker and Welter, 2017). We suggest that we need to
be aware of the duality between us and the objects of our research (Baker
et al., 2017): as researchers we are simultaneously influenced by our own
contexts and we “do contexts”. We decide on what counts as context –
we choose what will be rendered as primary elements of context and
we choose what will be considered less important elements or ignored.
4.2. How to Contextualize Research Approaches 389
4.2 How to Contextualize Research Approaches
What research approaches are adequate to contextualize entrepreneur-

ship? Brännback and Carsrud (2016, p. 21) emphasize that our “research
methods seem to have become a context in itself, irrespective of whether
those methods are the best fit with our research questions”, and irrespec-
tive of whether they are context-sensitive. Chlosta (2016, p. 118) argues
that contextualizing implies a different way of seeing and understanding
the world, that it means being bold and entrepreneurial when choosing
research approaches and “thinking in terms of interactions and changes
instead of linearity, causality and direct effects”.
There has been a longstanding debate in other fields as to which
research approaches and methods can help to capture context and to
best contextualize, developing long before the entrepreneurship field
became interested. Communication and media research, socio-linguistics,
information science and human-computer interaction studies have each
turned to ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, and other inter-
pretative and narrative methods (e.g., Bazzanella, 2002; Labov, 1970;
McHoul, 2008) which encourage researchers to simultaneously look at
talk, action and interaction, embodiment and artifacts within and across
contexts as well as to observe how individuals construct their contexts.
Table 4.1 presents examples from our selective review of other disci-
plines. Discursive research approaches such as discourse analysis, and
conversation analysis in combination with ethnomethodology to collect
contextualized data feature prominently. A main theme running through
the different studies refers to the active construction of contexts, through
language and non-verbal interactions. For example, de Kok (2008) shows
how a cultural context is not only out there, but actively constructed
by those familiar with the culture (in her case the Malawian respon-
dents), also in reaction to her as interviewer being an outsider to the
country and its culture. Other studies use approaches that point to the
interactions among those who do contexts (Broth, 2008; Broth and Mon-
dada, 2013; McHoul et al., 2008), the role and importance of non-verbal
language, interactions and movements and artifacts in doing context
(Dourish, 2004; Dupret and Ferrié, 2008); and the importance of not
only analyzing doing context, but also visualizing context (Bar, 2004).
Table 4.1: Contextualized research approaches – selected insights from other disciplines
390
Usefulness for
entrepreneurship
Source Approach Study Main theme research
Bar (2004) Neuroscience Conceptual / review Develops a model for Seeing context
contextual facilitation,
i.e., how we see objects
in context
Broth (2008) Conversation analysis, Live production of a Illustrates context as Doing context as col-
interaction analysis French interview televi- a dynamic and interac- laborative practice, non-
(i.e., movements and sion show tional phenomenon, ac- recursive links between
non-verbal gestures) complished by its partic- contexts and context-
ipants inhabitants
Broth and Mondada Conversation analysis of Video recordings of Illustrates the com- Doing context as
(2013) spatial movements guided tours plex facets of contexts embodiment, talk-in-
in both static and interaction
dynamic perspective Construction of where
(multimodality, space contexts
and mobility)
de Kok (2008) Conversation analy- Interviews about infertil- Draws attention to how Doing context, con-
sis, discourse analysis, ity in Malawi respondents build cul- structing where and
ethnomethodology tural context in situ when contexts through
(886, 901) language and as reaction
to outsiders
Dourish (2004) Ethnomethodology Analysis of how compu- Develops an interactive Role of artifacts (com-
tational settings can be and contextual model puters and technology)
made sensitive to con- of human-computer in- in creating and doing
texts teraction (HCI) contexts
Dupret and Ferrié Discourse analysis, con- Analysis of a parliamen- Illustrates the interac- Multiple contextual fea-
(2008) versation analysis, eth- tary debate in Syria, tions between speech tures and their close in-
nomethodology 2003, on family law (language), audiences, teractions
procedural rules Role of researcher and
their background knowl-
edge for interpreting
contexts
McHoul et al. (2008) Conversation analysis Conceptual / review Texts can only be un- Researcher doing con-
derstood within respec- text
tively with the knowl-
edge of their contexts
Progress in Empirically Studying Contextual Entrepreneurship
In the entrepreneurship field, we do see a useful increase in the use

of reflexive and practice-based, interpretative and phenomenologically
inspired approaches (Baker et al., 2017; Berglund, 2015; Chalmers and
Shaw, 2017; Gartner, 2007; Hjorth and Steyaert, 2004; for an overview
see: Neergaard and Leitch, 2015; Neergaard and Ulhøi, 2007). We also see
greater embrace of multi-level modelling approaches, which can be quite
explicit in taking context into account in novel ways. We are particularly
excited by approaches that embrace equifinality, reaching the outcomes
in which we are interested, especially work applying fuzzy set qualitative
comparative analysis (e.g., Muñoz and Dimov, 2015). Conceptually, we
believe that there are close ties between contextualization and the
sorts of causal complexity such approaches accommodate. Technological
advances also provide the basis for useful methodological innovations,
such as “experience sampling,” in which person-level data are collected
repeatedly in real time (Uy et al., 2010). Further use and development
of these and other promising approaches (Kraus et al., 2017; Muñoz and
Dimov, 2015) are not only enriching the empirical context literature, but
can also help further the ongoing theoretical discussion. For example,
the notion of equifinality is largely anathema to the norms of thinking
about and modeling patterns in our data, and ideas about multi-levels
of causality and their modelling become particularly interesting in the
face of emergent phenomena such as a new organization. When do the
founders and organization go from being one and the same to being
two separable levels?
Bengt Johannisson was a pioneer in using research approaches which
allowed a better understanding of the context in entrepreneurship and
especially the agency of entrepreneurs in relation to their contexts. His
focus on entrepreneuring and on interpretative and enactive research
methodologies (Fletcher, 2011; Steyaert and Landström, 2011) supports
the notion of entrepreneurs “doing contexts”: His work on entrepreneur-
ing adopts a process perspective on entrepreneurial actions and sees the
entrepreneurs as active constructors of the contexts in which they oper-
ate (Johannisson, 2011; Steyaert et al., 2011). Such research approaches
put processes and the dynamics of contextual entrepreneurship into
focus. For example, Gaddefors and Anderson (2017) use a longitudi-
nal study of a small rural town in Northern Sweden, where they have
conducted field work over ten years, in order to illustrate the complex
interactions between this particular context and entrepreneurship, using
this to make somewhat broader inferences. The authors conclude that
elements of context become an inseparable part of the entrepreneurial
process.
Discursive approaches allow a close look at the role of language in
legitimizing (entrepreneurial) actions and behavior, within particular
contexts as well as in the construction of contexts. Berglund (2015,
p. 476) suggests that by engaging with discursive resources individu-
als construct, re-construct and enact their storylines and narratives.
Through storytelling, for example, “(. . .) entrepreneurial actions and
events receive their meanings” (Berglund, 2007, p. 87). Research using
storytelling, narratives and discourse analysis contextualize by illus-
trating that and how different contexts are part of the story, also over
time (e.g., Fletcher, 2006; Fletcher and Watson, 2007a; Fletcher and
Watson, 2007b; Hjorth and Steyaert, 2004). For example, entrepreneur-
ship research drawing on discursive approaches has illuminated the
creation of entrepreneurial identities through narratives (Foss, 2004) as
well as legitimacy building in a new venture (O’Connor, 2004). Other
studies looked at the interactions between individuals and contexts.
Cohen and Musson (2000) explored how individuals working in a small
business were influenced by and reproduced the overarching public en-
terprise discourse, whilst Parkinson et al. (2017) use discourse analysis
to analyze the perceptions towards entrepreneurship within a ‘deprived’
community in the UK.
Smith and Anderson (2007) suggest that we also draw on semi-
otics in studying entrepreneurship. Their semiotic model allows us to
construct and see meanings from signs and expressions, be it visual,
print- or film/television based or textual. Related research has, for ex-
ample, looked at how famous entrepreneurs visualize and re-story their
entrepreneurial identities (Boje and Smith, 2010) or studied visual im-
agery, showing how images shape our understanding of what constitutes
women’s entrepreneurship (Smith, 2014) or entrepreneurship in general
(Smith, 2015). Some research analyzed media discourses of (women)
entrepreneurs, illustrating their embeddedness in institutional, historical
and social contexts (e.g., Achtenhagen and Welter, 2007; Achtenhagen
and Welter, 2011; Eikhof et al., 2013). Other studies combined discourse
and linguistic analysis, looking at, for example, metaphors and their role
in creating contextual meanings of entrepreneurship (e.g., De Koning
and Drakopoulou-Dodd, 2002; Dodd, 2002; Dodd et al., 2013; Hyrsky,
1999; Ljunggren and Alsos, 2001).1
Complementary to discursive research approaches, Berglund (2015,
p. 480) suggests phenomenological approaches that study the life-worlds
of entrepreneurs, because those illustrate in-depth how individuals “expe-
rience and enact certain phenomena or situations”. The author critiques
cognitive and discursive methodological approaches for the inherent risk
of downplaying the ambiguity and uncertainty of real-life entrepreneur-
ship, advocating instead for phenomenological approaches that allow us
to capture more of the richness of the lived experiences of entrepreneurs
(also see Drakopoulou-Dodd et al., 2016). Pret and Carter (2017) explic-
itly pursued an interpretative phenomenological approach, investigating
the lived experiences of 10 craft entrepreneurs that supported commu-
nity and social growth. Their study illustrates the interaction between
various contexts and their influence on entrepreneurial behavior: The
analysis shows why industry and community embeddedness can result in
entrepreneurs feeling responsible for collaborating and sharing resources
with competitors.
Also, case-based research implicitly draws on phenomenological ap-
proaches and the lived experiences of entrepreneurs, allowing us to cap-
ture the complex interactions between entrepreneurs and their multiple
contexts. For example, Baker and Nelson (2005) show how entrepreneurs
in resource-constrained environments made do with exploiting resources
other firms had ignored or rejected, thus demonstrating the social con-
struction of resource contexts. Müller and Korsgaard (2017), in their
study on rural entrepreneurs in Denmark, outline how entrepreneurs re-
late to their spatial contexts, continuously and creatively reinterpreting
and recombining resources. Some entrepreneurs were able to connect –
bridge – across spatial contexts, as a result creating new business op-
portunities for themselves and others. Studying individuals who are
1
For a how-to guide on how to apply these techniques see Drakopoulou-Dodd
and De Koning (2015).
engaged in informal cross-border activities in European borderlands,

Welter et al. (2018) identify the patterns and outcomes of individual
resourcefulness in unstable institutional contexts. Their study shows the
variations of how individuals interact with their contexts, in utilizing
the intangible resources found in spatial, socio-cultural and institutional
contexts. These and similar studies highlight the value of case-based
methods for exploring the agency of individuals in relation to their
contexts.
Other research has used ethnographic methods, again, albeit implic-
itly following the methodological debates from other disciplines (see
Table 4.1 above), but also pre-empting the recent call for more ethnogra-
phy in entrepreneurship studies.2 For example, Wigren (2003) explores
the famous “spirit of Gnosjö”, a famous industrial district in South-
ern Sweden, through ethnographic methods: She lived in the region,
immersing herself not only in the workings of the industrial district,
but participating in the daily life of the community. Her results illus-
trate how people’s interpretation may differ from their (entrepreneurial)
behavior, both depending on the respective contexts they are part of
as well as whether they live and work inside or outside the industrial
district. The author also provides deep insights into the good and bad
facets of contexts and entrepreneurship. Others apply auto ethnography
in studying entrepreneurship in its social contexts as, for example, En-
gstrom (2012) who uses a self-narrative where he critically writes and
simultaneously reflects on his story into entrepreneurship, concluding
that such a prosaic approach to entrepreneurship allows us to capture
its inherent sociality.
McKeever et al. (2015) draw on ethnomethodology, including partici-
pant observation, to look at the role of entrepreneurship in changing com-
munities. The authors explored the situated practices of entrepreneurs
in two depleted communities in Northwest Ireland. Their study demon-
strates the high level of contextual awareness of entrepreneurs, where
entrepreneurs not only used resources available in the community for
their business, but also gave back to their places by being involved
2
See the papers from a 2017 Princeton-Kauffman Conference on expanding
understanding of business creation by bringing more ethnography into the mix at
https://www.princetonkauffman2017.com/.
4.3. How to Operationalize Contexts? 395
in a wide range of community activities which addressed social and

economic concerns in that particular place. Similarly, Jack et al. (2010)
and Anderson et al. (2010) demonstrate the value of longitudinal re-
search approaches. Jack et al. (2010) map the emergence, change and
evolution of a network for new entrepreneurs over six years by combining
participant observation, interviews and survey data, whilst Anderson
et al. (2010) identify networking practices of entrepreneurs evolving
throughout the growth process.
Chalmers and Shaw (2017) suggest a research approach that com-
bines ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and insights from the
“practice turn” in organization studies, as context-sensitive method-
ology which, they argue, would provide new insights onto contextual
entrepreneurship. Their emphasis lies on the interpretation, and, inher-
ent in this, the individually different understanding and construction of
contexts. The authors make a strong case for researchers to be aware
of whose understanding of contexts they analyze (i.e., their own or the
entrepreneur’s understanding?) and to widen our knowledge of contexts
beyond our own pre-conceptions.
4.3 How to Operationalize Contexts?
Steyaert and Katz (2004, p. 193) aptly summarize the challenges the
operationalization of contexts of entrepreneurship faces, stating that:
“The true measure of entrepreneurship in a society as a whole needs to
sample across multiple sectors, domains and spaces.” With regard to
contextual entrepreneurship, we face an additional difficulty, namely
whether we can measure context – at all? Brännback and Carsrud (2016,
p. 20) emphasize that “It is awfully hard, if not impossible, to translate
a context into a set of easily measured variables.” And yet, this is exactly
what for a long time, most entrepreneurship research, in studying con-
texts, has done: include a single context variable which depicts contexts
as, for example, network, industry, region, culture or country. Studies
on the everyday or the collective nature of entrepreneurship emphasize
the diverse contexts in which entrepreneurship takes place (e.g., Johan-
nisson, 1990; Korsgaard and Anderson, 2011; Peredo and Chrisman,
2006; Rehn and Taalas, 2004). Not surprisingly, however, few research
studies – even now – acknowledge non-recursive relationships and try

to bridge different levels of context, not least because of methodological
challenges and the time and resource constraints that plague many,
especially junior researchers.
Researchers also seem to agree that it is not necessarily the individual
or the business which is the best unit of analysis to study contextual
entrepreneurship. But they do not seem to agree on which unit of
analysis are more or less useful. A wide array of units of analysis have
been suggested, ranging from the context at large (e.g., Gaddefors and
Anderson, 2017; Johannisson et al., 1994) to units of analysis which
incorporate some, but not all contextual elements such as the household
and/or wider family (e.g., Alsos et al., 2014; Anderson et al., 2005) or
socio-spatial contexts as reflected in communities (Hindle, 2010), rural
entrepreneurship (Korsgaard et al., 2015a) or entrepreneurial regions
(Gaddefors and Cronsell, 2009). To us, the quibble about the adequate
unit of analysis is less important – this should be determined by the
research question and research aims, as usual. What is much more
important for an adequate operationalization of context is to decide
how context is being treated. This includes whether it is viewed as
endogenous or as, which has been more typical, exogenous, or whether
elements of context are operationalized as having aspects of both.
5
Outlook and Agenda for Future Research
We view ourselves as part of a community trying to contribute to a

common body of work, using a common and evolving body of tools and
methods. We don’t think approaches that essentialize demographic or
cultural differences among researchers or differences between researchers
and those they try to study are compatible with this goal. When they
go so far as to undermine the sense that we can usefully build a common
body of knowledge using a common set of methods and tools, in our
assessment they become useless (and boring). At risk of being too
dismissive, if you claim that there can be no shared truth, we can reject
your claim on its own terms and get back to doing research. Gender,
race, social class, sexuality, language, nationality and class can and do
frequently “matter” to the empirical challenges of trying to do research.1
However, we view these as practical challenges and opportunities, which
different researchers will have more or less success in overcoming, rather
than as categorical barriers to common understanding.
1
For a very straightforward example, see Baker et al. (2017) on how researchers’
age and gender may shape what entrepreneurs say and do not say to them.
397
398 Outlook and Agenda for Future Research
5.1 Contextualizing as Problematizing the Taken-for-granted
Despite our confidence that entrepreneurship is now a legitimate field

(Baker and Welter, 2015), we are still relatively young and subject to
(re)-discovering issues with which many other fields have previously
grappled and with which some continue to grapple. Contextualization
is one such issue. While it is central to the fields of social anthropology
and linguistics, it also plays an important role in the development of
many other disciplines, including neuroscience or indeed creative fields
such as fine arts photography. We have drawn in a very limited way
on a few of these fields in this monograph. We suggest, however, that
there is still a great deal that entrepreneurship researchers can and
should learn from a more thoroughgoing attempt to bring the lessons of
other disciplines to the context (pun acknowledged) of entrepreneurship
research.
At the most basic level, we see the process of contextualizing as a
means of “problematizing” existing work: any delineation of contexts
functions as a set of heuristics for decentering taken for granted facts and
assumptions and most particularly for challenging specific forms of intel-
lectual complacency.2 Importantly, however, we see this problematizing
not as a primarily destructive or radically relativizing process that seeks
to undermine confidence in our knowledge or understanding, but more
as part of the process of “constructing opportunities for contribution”
(Locke and Golden-Biddle, 1997). As Locke and Golden-Biddle (1997,
p. 1029) showed in their grounded theoretical study of (qualitative)
papers in Academy of Management Journal and Administrative Science
Quarterly:
“( . . . ) in order to establish contribution, organization stud-

ies manuscripts must re-present and organize existing knowl-
edge so as to configure a context for contribution that re-
flects the consensus of previous work. The presence of exist-
ing knowledge legitimizes a research area by underscoring
the intellectual resources devoted to it and, at the same
2
In many ways, by challenging accepted understandings, contextualization can
be a driving force of scientific progress.
5.1. Contextualizing as Problematizing the Taken-for-granted 399
time, provides a theoretical orientation for present investi-

gations . . . manuscripts must in a sense turn on themselves,
subverting or problematizing the very literatures that pro-
vide locations and raisons d’etre for the present efforts.”
In this sense, the sort of problematizing that contextualizing processes

can achieve is an important part of what entrepreneurship scholars do
every day when they convince reviewers and editors that their research
makes an interesting contribution. The same holds for Murray Davis’s
classic paper (1971, p. 309) in which he argues that “Interesting theories
are those which deny certain assumptions of their audiences, while
non-interesting theories are those which affirm certain assumptions of
their audiences.” Contextualizing processes are an important means for
achieving empirical denial of prevalent scholarly assumptions.
The connections are perhaps even more obvious in Alvesson and
Sandberg’s (2011, p. 252) arguments that “contextualism and
non-contextualism” (along with other bifurcations) become “impor-
tant methodological resources to open up and scrutinize assumptions
underlying established theories, including, to some extent, the favorite
theory of the problematizer” (Alvesson and Sandberg, 2011, p. 252).
Our main point here is that contextualization is part of a non-recursive
research process in which what we think we know is problematized in
ways that lets us seek better and more interesting answers.
Another, perhaps more subtle point is common to these papers.
Each treats seriously the notion that research is something that we
do and which we strive to do rather than just a disembodied set of
accumulated papers. That is, each of these three papers is talking about
what it takes to get reviewers and editors to think that your work is
interesting and that it makes a contribution worthy of being published
in some particular outlet.
From this perspective, as we argued in Section 4 “context” is pri-
marily determined by the researcher’s focus and attention. One element
of this context is therefore the literature the researcher invokes while
constructing their opportunity for contribution. Extending this, another
important element of context is determined by the researcher through
the choice of the object of study, which implies a unit of analysis and
400 Outlook and Agenda for Future Research
thereby renders much of the surrounding activity at lower and higher

units of analysis as implicit, as background, perhaps as “controls” in
quantitative work or as elements of case selection in qualitative work
(Yin, 2013). Researchers live in a world of prior scholarship upon which
they draw both for ideas and in order to position the results of their
work as having merit. They work for universities that are embedded
in socio-political realities that shape both who they are and how they
behave. Their personal biographies, scholarly, personal and political
commitments, their research communities and whatever is current in
their fields all contextualize their work. Overall, then we argue that the
process of problematizing prior work – which is at the core of a process
approach to contextualizing research – is in fact already core to the
overall project and project of entrepreneurship research.
5.2 Toward a Critical Process Approach
The opportunity to contextualize our work is apparently limitless and

in comparison, our capacities and resources for doing entrepreneur-
ship research are limited. Generic calls to “contextualize” our research
may therefore be counterproductive to the extent that the decision
to “contextualize” comes at the expense of other research goals. We
are particularly concerned that demands for contextualization could
become blunt tools in the hands of reviewers. Contextualization is not
a good in itself, but should be valued when a researcher – or a critic –
can point to a clear rationale for why investing in the contextualization
of some stream of research or findings is likely to add value in some
specific ways. In this sense, contextualization is one of many competing
goods in terms of the pursuit of empirical research.
Much of the research we have described above is “critical” mostly
in the sense that it – implicitly or explicitly – interrogates and denotes
boundaries and limitations of prior research. In some cases, however,
it is critical in a way that reveals something important about the
overall contextual landscapes on which we ground our studies and in
which entrepreneurship takes place. For example, the entire body of
research on women’s entrepreneurship over the last 30 years can be
taken as a critical revelatory corrective for a whole series of taken-for-
5.2. Toward a Critical Process Approach 401
granted assumptions it has faced. Unfortunately, at this point in the

emergence of entrepreneurship research, theory and practice, critical
lenses are tremendously underdeveloped, albeit emerging slowly (e.g.,
Tedmanson et al., 2012; Verduijn et al., 2014), and critical voices and
perspectives remain too much on the margins, quieted or silenced in our
mainstream discourse. For a variety of reasons, much entrepreneurship
research serves as a reflection of powerful legitimating interests and
perspectives (Baker and Welter, 2017; Welter et al., 2017) including
both too broad a sense (Baker and Powell, 2016) and too narrow a sense
(e.g., Al-Dajani et al., 2015; Al-Dajani and Marlow, 2015; Rindova et al.,
2009) of entrepreneurship as emancipation. We suggest that efforts
at contextualization may serve us best when they uncover and give
voice to perspectives that may otherwise remain unheard not because
they are uninteresting but because they are illegitimate or contrary to
interests in maintaining the status quo. Much of the entrepreneurship
that occurs at many times and in many places is infused by dynamics
of power, domination, oppression, inequality and violence and these are
too often ignored or taken for granted both in our research as well as by
most of the people we study, who are typically on the privileged side of
such dynamics. Given our conclusion that an adequate general theory
of entrepreneurship contexts is beyond our grasp – and probably not
even a useful goal – we speculate that a critical process approach to
theorizing contexts is likely to be the best we can do.
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Foundations and Trends R in Entrepreneurship

1 The Goldilocks Problem in Contextualizing Research:

2 Challenges and Promise 360

3 Progress in Contextualizing Entrepreneurship Research 367

4 Progress in Empirically Studying Contextual

5 Outlook and Agenda for Future Research 397

Ted Baker and Friederike Welter (2018), “Contextual Entrepreneurship: An Inter-

To claim that something has been “taken out of context” is to suggest

In this section, we draw in a stylized manner on the recent intellectual

2.1 Context Unbounded?

consolidation of contextual dimensions as useful as the “big five” has

how a refusal to enact the limitations imposed by dominant definitions

“standpoint” can be epistemologically superior to others, generating

2.2 Contextualizing Entrepreneurship Research – Self-Reflections

Drawing on Whetten (1989), Welter (2011) points our attention

Johns (2017) celebrates what he sees as the substantial progress that

Den” behind, allowing us to encounter a fascinatingly broad range

The sociologist Rachel Rosenfeld, reflecting on the state of much

3.1 Who and Why Contexts

A central outcome of theorizing context is the lens it provides on

3.1. Who and Why Contexts

trepreneur’s extended families were both a resource and a hindrance to

supported by the legitimacy, credibility and reputation the entrepreneur

3.2 Where Contexts

Entrepreneurial behavior is strongly shaped by founders’ embedded-

More recently entrepreneurship researchers have begun to emphasize

local neighborhoods and communities which are the primary domains

3.3 When Contexts

Temporality is invoked – implicitly or explicitly – whenever researchers

of entrepreneurs in shaping and reshaping contexts already hinted at

and structural change such as creative destruction as potential research

3.4 Limitations of the Incipient Theory of Entrepreneurship

In section 2 we assembled a series of arguments in support of the thesis

date. At various points in our consideration of recent work using this

sympathetic to Ucbasaran, Westhead, and Wright’s (2001, 68) aspiration

make a great many assertions that would be largely unconditionally

In Section 3, we described progress in theoretical perspectives that focus

4.1 Challenges for Contextualized Research Approaches

Contextualizing research is “in,” in the sense that it is fashionable to talk

Towards a different understanding of context(s)

A multiplicity of contexts and levels

social networks are invoked, spanning, friends, family, community, varied

Towards contextualizing research approaches

Theoretically, we have come to realize that contexts are fluid and

For example, Welter (2011) describes a young female entrepreneur

Doing context as researchers

Contextualizing also implies that we start questioning our own role in

4.2 How to Contextualize Research Approaches

What research approaches are adequate to contextualize entrepreneur-

In the entrepreneurship field, we do see a useful increase in the use

engaged in informal cross-border activities in European borderlands,

in a wide range of community activities which addressed social and

4.3 How to Operationalize Contexts?

studies – even now – acknowledge non-recursive relationships and try

We view ourselves as part of a community trying to contribute to a

5.1 Contextualizing as Problematizing the Taken-for-granted

Despite our confidence that entrepreneurship is now a legitimate field

“( . . . ) in order to establish contribution, organization stud-

time, provides a theoretical orientation for present investi-

In this sense, the sort of problematizing that contextualizing processes

thereby renders much of the surrounding activity at lower and higher

5.2 Toward a Critical Process Approach

The opportunity to contextualize our work is apparently limitless and