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Small Business Economics
Published in: Small Business Economics 2/2011

01-02-2011

Enacting entrepreneurship research in a pioneering, provocative and participative way: on the work of Bengt Johannisson

Authors: Chris Steyaert, Hans Landström

Published in: Small Business Economics | Issue 2/2011

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Abstract

Bengt Johannisson received the International Award for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Research in 2008. In this essay we present and evaluate his work over the last four decades in three of its dimensions: pioneering, provocative and participative. While his research interests and themes range widely, early on he resisted the individualization of entrepreneurship studies and instead emphasized that entrepreneurship is a social practice that must be contextualized, localized and situated. In so doing, he uses such concepts as networks, industrial districts, regions and local communities. Making interpretive studies possible in a European context, his conceptual and methodological approach documents how future studies of entrepreneurship can be enacted as a reflexive, participative practice where methods of research, intervention and debate become blurred.
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Footnotes
1
Since the mid-1990 s it has been jointly organized by Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, in Spain and Växjö University in Sweden.
 
2
One of them is Gnosjö, arguably the most famous industrial district in Sweden dominated by metal engineering and plastic firms.
 
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Metadata
Title
Enacting entrepreneurship research in a pioneering, provocative and participative way: on the work of Bengt Johannisson
Authors
Chris Steyaert
Hans Landström
Publication date
01-02-2011
Publisher
Springer US
Published in
Small Business Economics / Issue 2/2011
Print ISSN: 0921-898X
Electronic ISSN: 1573-0913
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-009-9213-7

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