Abstract
Before discussing the papers selected for this special issue, we thought that some readers might value a brief explanation of the paper selection process. While the articles that are presented in this special issue are the visible manifestation of the review process, “the seen,” there are many wonderful papers that we had the joy of reading that did not survive review, “the unseen.” As both writers and readers of scholarly publications, we thought it important to make this process of deciding what would become “seen” or “unseen” a bit more transparent.
Our mandate, as guest editors, was to craft a special issue that would reflect the themes of the conference within no more than four or five published articles. All principal authors of conference papers (academic and practitioner) were invited to submit their papers for consideration for this special issue. Thirty–five authors who had presented at the conference submitted papers. As guest editors, we applied an initial screening process to whittle the number of submissions down to ten papers that would be sent to outside reviewers. The initial screening process was based primarily on our sensibilities about each paper's impact as an exemplar of the conference themes, and our view of the paper's “closeness to publication.” Given the need for a quick turnaround in the revise and resubmit process (i.e., papers would need to be in final form by June 1, 2004, in order to be published in the Fall 2004 issue), papers that appeared to require fewer revisions were more likely to survive the initial cut. Therefore, some papers with very interesting ideas that required, from our point of view, significant nurturing through a “revise and resubmit” process, were rejected. We then followed Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice's standard refereeing procedure and obtained two blind reviews for each paper. The executive editor kindly selected and contacted the referees (whom we would like to thank for their speedy cooperation). Following the refereeing process, six papers were rejected. The remaining four went through at least one, and in some cases two, further revisions based on the referees’ and our comments. The acceptance rate of approximately 11% (4 out of 35 submitted papers) is in line with the journal's standards for papers submitted through the normal review process.
What is “unseen” about the papers that were not selected for this special issue compared with those typically submitted to Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice is a much higher prevalence of papers that used qualitative methodologies, as well as papers that articulated government policy recommendations concerning small firm birth rates. As others have pointed out (Aldrich, 2000; Gartner & Birley, 2002; Landstrom, Frank, & Veciana, 1997; Usdiken & Pasadeos, 1995) there is a more embedded “European” tradition that emphasizes qualitative methods, and papers at the Durham conference were more likely to reflect a methodological orientation that favored case studies. To be frank, we found that papers that were qualitatively oriented were less likely to “tell a story” coherently and succinctly within the page limits of a journal article. This was made very clear to us in the blind review process where reviewers were typically impatient with qualitative manuscripts that tended to, in their words, “ramble.” We would surmise that many authors versed in qualitative methods may be more likely to have experience using the monograph or book form for reporting their results, so that the page limitations of a journal article impose severe restrictions on their ability to describe data, analyze findings, and discuss results. As the journal article format appears to be the genre more likely to be read by a wider audience of academic readers, we suggest that the challenge for qualitative scholars will be, metaphorically, that of turning novels into short stories.
The second distinction hinges on national differences in viewing new venture creation as a phenomenon that could be affected by public policies and actions, or research which focuses more on new venture survival, per se, and the relative success and growth rates of emerging firms. It appears that a non–North American approach to studying entrepreneurship, as reflected in the Durham papers, has a stronger concern for the impact of government regulation, policy, and programs that might impact new venture formation, and an implicit assumption that nonmarket forces could be harnessed to encourage entrepreneurial activity.
Some Overarching Themes
The articles selected for this issue were not intended to survey the international literature on entrepreneurship and new venture creation. Instead, we sought papers that would identify several interesting topics that proved ripe for novel conceptual and empirical investigation. Nevertheless, the articles in this issue are also connected in several ways. We have identified four overarching themes.
One theme, taken up explicitly in all four articles, relates to government policies that impact on entrepreneurship. Johnson's article critically evaluates the common practice among European policy makers of targeting regional firm formation rates—which can be regarded as a measurable proxy for new venture creation. Johnson draws attention to several factors policy makers should take account of when following this agenda. The article by Noorderhaven et al., suggests that many countries’ tax benefit systems are biased in favor of wage employment relative to self–employment, and argue that removing this bias might increase dissatisfaction in wage employment and, therefore, push more individuals into entrepreneurship. As it happens, one salient aspect of tax benefit systems centers on the treatment of women and of those who care for children. In the article by Williams, it is seen that self–employed business owners who care for children run ventures whose longevity is significantly lower than the average. This result appears to hold for both males and females. Williams urges policy makers to design child care policies in conjunction with entrepreneurship policies, to enhance the efficacy of the latter. On a different tack, but still on the theme of informing policy, Audretsch and Keilbach ask policy makers to consider ways of enhancing “entrepreneurship capital,” a novel concept introduced in their article. One implication that can be drawn from the policy discussions in these articles is that policy makers may need to exercise greater care when framing entrepreneurship policies, as well as “nonentrepreneurship” policies that can also impact on entrepreneurship. Care should also be taken to coordinate both types of policies together.
A second theme that unites two of the articles in this issue relates to how gender and children impact entrepreneurial choices and activities. In his analysis of the decision to continue in self–employment, Williams found that both child care responsibilities and the number of children in the household significantly decrease duration in self–employment for females. For males, only child care responsibilities have a generally significant impact. In a similar vein, Noorderhaven et al., show that countries with higher rates of female labor force participation tend to exhibit significantly lower self–employment rates on average.
Third, all the articles use similar types of data. These are cross–country or cross–regional data from Europe. Both Audretsch/Keilbach and Johnson analyze regional variations in new firm formation rates, in Germany and the United Kingdom respectively. In contrast, Noorderhaven et al., and Williams both identify cross–country variations in entrepreneurship between various European countries. Use of spatial data reflects a growing trend in entrepreneurship research of exploiting variations in regional or national rates of entrepreneurship in order to test out ideas. One advantage of this approach is its potential to achieve greater generality and scope than empirical investigations within a single industry, region, or country.
Fourth, all of the articles in this special issue operationalize entrepreneurship in one of two ways. Half of them (i.e., Audretsch/Keilbach and Johnson) associate entrepreneurship with new venture creation. In contrast, Noorderhaven et al. and Williams use self–employment as an empirical proxy for entrepreneurship. While self–employment is often regarded as more of a legal or tax–based classification of workers than a theory–based articulation of entrepreneurship (Parker, 2004), it is nevertheless a measure that remains widely used in some circles. The use of these different definitions in this special issue reflects the eclectic view of entrepreneurship taken by participants at the Durham conference.
Main Findings and Novelties
The main findings and novel contributions of the articles contained in this issue are informed by the four themes that we identified above. Thus, Williams addresses issues of gender, child care, and policy in an econometric analysis of duration in self–employment. To the best of the author's knowledge and of ours, this is the first empirical study of the impact of time spent with children (as opposed to the number of children) on entrepreneurial performance. Williams’ finding that child care activities are an important factor in determining business closures suggests that more research is needed on the specific tax benefit policies that might address and possibly alleviate this problem.
The same plea for detailed policy analysis emerges from Noorderhaven et al.'s findings. These authors obtain the novel result that greater dissatisfaction with life and the way democracy works makes it more likely that individuals will become self–employed. But their article stops short of identifying how policy makers might utilize this finding in order to promote entrepreneurship! Noorderhaven et al.'s article is essentially a preliminary empirical investigation that appeals for further research to draw out more fully the implications of the new avenues in entrepreneurship research that are being proposed.
The article by Audretsch and Keilbach introduces the novel concept of “entrepreneurship capital” that the authors define as “a regional milieu of agents that is conducive to the creation of new firms,” which “reflects a number of different legal, institutional, and social factors and forces.” Recognizing the difficulty of finding an empirical counterpart to this concept, Audretsch and Keilbach measure it in terms of new firm formation rates, and identify its empirical importance by estimating an aggregate production function in which it helps explain regional growth rates. This article connects to an emerging literature linking economic growth and entrepreneurship, as well as to a longer–established body of work exploring the determinants of entrepreneurial performance in terms of human, social, and physical capital. The Audretsch and Keilbach article could be an important point of departure for future researchers, who may choose to assess the usefulness of the concept. If it does turn out to be useful, future research might also seek to refine and develop the theoretical concept of “entrepreneurship capital,” and to explore whether alternative empirical definitions of entrepreneurship capital might be more fruitful than the use of new venture creation rates.
Of course, regional growth—and the potential role entrepreneurship can play in stimulating it—is a legitimate and interesting policy issue in its own right. Arguably, too few theorists or practitioners ask whether targeting new venture birth rates is a feasible or even a desirable objective. For example, if some regions have a traditional large–scale industrial structure that dominates local economies, and crowds out new ventures by absorbing large amounts of factor inputs, then setting a high “birth rate target” for such regions might be unrealistic. This is the problem that motivates Johnson's paper. Johnson makes the important point that one must carefully consider a region's industrial structure before judging its performance in terms of venture creation. He goes on to discuss and illustrate a decomposition technique that can quantify precisely the relative importance of region and industry structure underpinning new firm formation rates.
Conclusion
We end with one final note of introspection regarding the conference at Durham, and the process of selecting these four articles for the special issue. What is so difficult to convey to readers of scholarly articles, who might not be members of the academic community, is the necessary energy of the expression of ideas and the dialogue that occurs at academic conferences. It is difficult for us to imagine how the publication of these journal articles could occur without these first steps toward presenting and discussing this research among colleagues. The growth in the exchange of scholarship, internationally, is due, in part, to the increase in scholars meeting face to face. The articles in this special issue, therefore, reflect the indispensable need for scholars to travel to meet one another as the basis for improving international scholarship on entrepreneurship. These articles, then, reflect just a bit of the intellectual energy that was generated in Durham in September 2003. We would expect many of the papers presented at that conference to surface in other journals, as well.