Recently I was tasked with developing my own research in entrepreneurship agenda. As I reflect on the process now, I see how my research agenda emerged from substantive and methodological knowledge I acquired during my education, my keen interest in interdisciplinary approaches to entrepreneurship, and my post-positivism pragmatism worldview.
Me
As a researcher, my ontology and epistemology are greatly influenced by and embedded in my personal, educational, cultural and social contexts. Who I am as a person deeply influences how I generate and apply knowledge in everyday actions. My belief system is grounded in a post-positivism paradigm due to my prior quantitative research training I acquired during my business education. I also hold a pragmatist worldview that emerged during my PhD studies. The post-positivist worldview which seeks to being logical and empirical, enabled me to organize my inquiry as a series of logically related steps that I undertook during the process: passive (reading, documenting) and active (conversations, interviews) actions. The pragmatism worldview pushed me beyond my comfort zone to expand my epistemological toolbox by using phenomenological methodology as it seems to be the best data collection and analysis method to answer my research question.
Interdisciplinary approach
As my keen interest lies in interdisciplinary approaches to entrepreneurship, I decided to focus my research agenda on a unique psychological angle to entrepreneurship. A psychological approach emphasizes transitioning from purely economic understanding of entrepreneurship (business creation) to the behaviors of individual entrepreneurs, where intention, vision, motivation, skills, competences and work translate into converting ideas to ventures creation (Ostergaard & Costa,2018; Baum et al., 2077). To better understand the topic and frame my inquiry, I conducted a literature search and used iceberg analysis tool (figure 1).
These two actions helped me to create an entrepreneurial process framework as shown in figure 2. Findings from the literature review combined with visual representation helped me find the focus of my inquiry: the phenomenon of entrepreneurial motivation in entrepreneurial process.
Expanding my epistemological toolbox
Once I found the unique phenomenon as the focus of my research agenda, I started looking at different methodologies that would best discover the meaning of entrepreneurial motivation in the entrepreneurial process from entrepreneurs’ perspectives. While I feel comfortable using positivist epistemology that greatly contributes to knowledge production by scientific rigor, it only allows to understand a small part of the entrepreneurial phenomenon (Javdian et al., 2016; Berglund, 2007; Molina-Azorín, et al., 2012). Therefore, my research in entrepreneurship agenda called for greater methodological diversity to capture the richness and liveliness of the phenomenon (Javdian et al., 2016; Hlady, 2014). Through the literature review and conversations with my peers, I decided that phenomenological methods of qualitative research were best suited for the study of entrepreneurial motivation as the goal of the inquiry is to investigate and explore the essential descriptions of experiences of the participant entrepreneurs. Phenomenology, as a research methodology, focuses on describing human experiences i.e. how individuals experience certain phenomenon, make senses of it, and lived through it in everyday life (Moustakas, 1994; Berglund, 2007; Creswell & Poth, 2018).
As a novice researcher, closer examination into my worldviews and interests from the very beginning of the research agenda developing process, helped me figured out my focus and stay on track. The inquiry derived from my desire to contribute to the understanding of entrepreneurship phenomenon from multiple angles using extended epistemology.
Here is my research agenda.
References - Available upon request.
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