Introduction

Abstract

Unless entrepreneurship . . .begin[s] to embrace higher volumes of higher calibre qualitative research, the relevance and potency of the entrepreneurial canon will be severely compromised by a lack of the methodological variety that is so strongly displayed in other social sciences.Research in entrepreneurship has, in other words, to a large extent been descriptive in nature, and empirical research has predominantly been based on structured surveys (see also Bygrave, Chapter 1 in this volume).When a qualitative research approach was adopted and reached publication, often such studies were based on single or multiple case studies in which the primary sources of information were archival data and/or interview data, the latter being procured by means of a structured or semi-structured survey.More innovative qualitative research in entrepreneurship is more often disseminated via journals explicitly aimed at the qualitative paradigm and anthologies such as the New Movements of Entrepreneurship series, also published by Edward Elgar.Keeping in pace with a growing demand for expanding the repertoire of research designs, analytic techniques and more interpretative approaches to understanding the phenomenon of entrepreneurship (Bygrave 1989;Aldrich 1992;Davidsson and Wiklund 2001), it is important to provide an outlet for such approaches.Simultaneously, it is necessary to respond to the call for more stringency in research methods.This handbook can be perceived as a response to the trend and critique directed at the entrepreneurship field for producing (i) predominantly descriptive research and (ii) qualitative research of doubtful standard.We can only second that qualitative methods are 'demonstrably underrepresented in entrepreneurship research' (Hindle 2004: 577) at least when we are concerned with publications in peer-reviewed mainstream journals.The first reason for this pattern may be that the use of quantitative approaches has traditionally resulted in more publications compared with other methodologies (Huse and Landström 1997).Indeed, Chandler and Lyon (2001) found only 18 per cent of the contributions in their sample of 418 papers to be qualitative.A more recent review of 2234 articles by McDonald et al. (2004) also demonstrates the dominance of positivist approaches and research methods.A second reason for this situation is the pressure for publication for untenured faculty.This is particularly found among American scholars, whereas European academics have until recently been faced with less publication pressure.Therefore they have had the freedom to adopt a greater methodological diversity.Further, Europeans tend to be more tolerant of methodological diversity (Huse and Landström 1997).