A QUADRIPOLAR EPISTEMIC PROPOSITION OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP CONSTRUCT

Abstract

This article presents, based on the Bruyne, Herman and Schoutheete’s proposition (1977) on the “four poles of the methodological practice: epistemological, morphological, theoretical, and technical”, how entrepreneurship is being construed in Business Administration studies. We carried out a bibliometric analysis from articles published in events linked to ANPAD – National Association of graduate studies and research in business administration. Then we made a content analysis on selected articles in order to identify how the theme is approached considering each of the poles. There was an excess of researches favoring the technical pole comparing to the others, which is probably contributing with the emptying of ANPAD’s area itself. Our main contributions are given in the technical pole, related to data collection, and there are countless case studies. In reality it is where most empirical researches on entrepreneurship and related topics converge to. Allied to this discrepancy is the fact that most of researches are also the result of exploratory and descriptive studies. We must remember that the exploratory and descriptive studies are at the level that Bruyne et al. (1977) call the “ground zero” of theorization.