A Critical Reflection upon the Postmodernist Philosophical Positions and Issues Relevant to Entrepreneurship Research

This paper questions the appropriateness of a postmodernist philosophy to underpin entrepreneurship research. One of the most commonly used and accepted measures of entrepreneurship at an organisational level – entrepreneurial orientation is underpinned by a positivist philosophy. However some would argue that the very nature of entrepreneurial behaviour lends itself to a postmodernist approach. Literature on both postmodernism philosophy and entrepreneurship is critically reviewed to draw out their common points and relationships. The main findings are, firstly, postmodernism is a valid philosophy for underpinning entrepreneurship research because both postmodernist and entrepreneurship scholars pay considerable attention to innovation, organizational change, hidden process and components of organizations, and long-term value. Secondly, given there is no consensus on a single definition of entrepreneurship, researchers seem accepting of the idea of multiple realities –a fundamental principle of postmodernism philosophy. The authors argue that postmodernism entrepreneurship research has not been sufficiently addressed.