Network-based Research in Entrepreneurship: A Decade in Review

Network-based Research in Entrepreneurship: A Decade in Review summarizes the empirical and theoretical articles employing diverse methods that have been published since 2003 in the burgeoning research domain focused on understanding the content, governance, and structure of network relations in the entrepreneurial context. There is a need to characterize the research conducted in the past decade in order to highlight cumulative or divergent findings, and to identify areas where further research is needed. Reflecting the various definitions of entrepreneurship that exist in the field, the authors have included papers in their review that focus on the development and consequences of networks in the new venture creation process or focus on small to medium-sized firms. Within the latter group, there has been a focus on high growth firms but recently a network perspective has also been applied to the study of family firms. While the scope of the field is broad, it is consistent with that of the Entrepreneurship Division of the Academy of Management and its selection of representative journals. Network-based Research in Entrepreneurship: A Decade in Review includes papers that have sought to address challenging questions that engage researchers, and in the process have contributed novel concepts and theory development. In addition, other relevant papers that are integrated into this review build more explicitly on topics and issues central to economic sociology, organization theory, strategic management, and organizational behavior. By covering a broad spectrum of published work that has emerged in this and related areas over the past ten years, the authors seek to consolidate theoretical and empirical developments and identify areas of future research.