The emergence of entrepreneurial team as a research field – way forward

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to review and critique the existing literature on entrepreneurial teams (ET) by taking a multi-disciplinary viewpoint and provide a future research agenda based on the identified themes and trends.

Design/methodology/approach

A systematic literature review (SLR) was undertaken using “business source complete”. Further scrutiny and application of exclusion criteria led to a final sample consisting of 139 papers from 27 different journals belonging to not just entrepreneurship and strategic management but also other disciplines like OB, finance, sociology, psychology, etc. Using qualitative thematic analysis, the authors identified 11 major themes.

Findings

The paper reviews both the eleven themes and the linkages between the themes. Thereby identifying areas that have been understudied and those that have received comparatively more attention. The review revealed that the research stream possesses certain conceptual and methodological concerns apart from its cross-sectional and primarily bivariate nature. Five such main concerns have been identified and discussed in detail. Other elements of the resulting research agenda include calls for more clinical process-oriented research, further attention to context, shifting the level of analysis, and a need to integrate across disciplines.

Originality/value

This paper incorporates a broad insight of ET across academic disciplines to show how future contributions could benefit by incorporating research from other fields. In doing so, provides a starting point for more nuanced discussions around the interrelationships between the different conversations that are taking place in the ET literature.

Citation

Das, W., Das, S. and Chattopadhyay, M. (2021), "The emergence of entrepreneurial team as a research field – way forward", Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, Vol. 28 No. 6, pp. 831-855. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSBED-09-2020-0318