An academic perspective on the entrepreneurship policy agenda: themes, geographies and evolution
| Date | 12 December 2019 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JEPP-06-2019-0056 |
| Published date | 12 December 2019 |
| Pages | 65-93 |
| Author | Alberto Arenal,Claudio Feijoo,Ana Moreno,Cristina Armuña,Sergio Ramos |
| Subject Matter | Strategy,Entrepreneurship,Business climate/policy |
An academic perspective on the
entrepreneurship policy agenda:
themes, geographies and evolution
Alberto Arenal
Technical University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain and
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), Madrid, Spain
Claudio Feijoo
Technical University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain and
Tongji University, Shanghai, China
Ana Moreno
Technical University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Cristina Armuña
Technical University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain and
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), Madrid, Spain, and
Sergio Ramos
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), Madrid, Spain and
Technical University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Abstract
Purpose –Academic research into entrepreneurship policy is particularly interesting due to the increasing
relevance of the topic and since knowledge about the evolution of themes in this field is still rather limited.
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the key concepts, topics, trends and shifts that have shaped the
entrepreneurship policy research agenda during the period 1990–2016.
Design/methodology/approach –This paper uses text mining techniques, cluster analysis and
complementary bibliographic data to examine the evolution of a corpus of 1,048 academic papers focused on
entrepreneurship-related policies and published during the period 1990–2016 in ten relevant journals. In
particular, the paper follows a standard text mining workflow: first, as text is unstructured, content requires a
set of pre-processing tasks and then a stemming process. Then, the paper examines the most repeated
concepts within the corpus, considering the whole period 1990–2016 and also in five-year terms. Finally, the
paper conducts a k-means clustering to divide the collection of documents into coherent groups with similar
content. The analyses in the paper also include geographical particularities considering three regional
sub-corpora, distinguishing those articles authored in the European Union (EU), the USA and South and
Eastern Asia, respectively.
Findings –Results of the analysis show that inclusion, employment and regulation-related papers have
largely dominated the research in the field, evolving from an initial classical approach to the relationship
between entrepreneurship and employment to a wider, multidisciplinary perspective, including the relevance
of management, geographies and narrower topics such as agglomeration economics or internationalisation
instead of the previous generic sectorial approaches. The text mining analysis also reveals how
entrepreneurship policy research has gained increasing attention and has become both more open, with a
growing cooperation among researchers from different affiliations, and more sophisticated, with concepts and
themes that moved the research agenda forward, closer to the priorities of policy implementation.
Research limitations/implications –The paper identifies main trends and research gaps in the field of
entrepreneurship policy providing actionable knowledge by presenting the spectrum of both over-explored
and understudied research themes in the field. In practical terms the results of the text mining analysis can be
interpreted as a compass to navigate the entrepreneurship policy research agenda.
Journal of Entrepreneurship and
Public Policy
Vol. 9 No. 1, 2020
pp. 65-93
© Emerald PublishingLimited
2045-2101
DOI 10.1108/JEPP-06-2019-0056
Received 26 June 2019
Revised 31 October 2019
Accepted 31 October 2019
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2045-2101.htm
JEL Classification —L26
Availability of data: Documents analysed during the current study are available in the Open Science
Framework repository: https://osf.io/uwph3/?view_only=22d372dcf16e4c799d4726e 726069990
65
Themes,
geographies
and evolution
Practical implications –The paper presents the heterogeneity of topics under research in the field,
reinforcing the concept of entrepreneurship as a multidisciplinary and dynamic domain. Therefore, the
definition and adoption of a certain policy agenda in entrepreneurship should consider multiple aspects
(needs, objectives, stakeholders, expected outputs, etc.) to be comprehensive and aligned with its complexity.
In addition, the paper shows how text mining techniques could be used to map the research activity in a
particular field, contributing to the challenge of linking research and policy.
Originality/value –The exploratory nature of text mining allows us to obtain new knowledge and reveals
hidden patterns from large quantities of documents/text data, representing an opportunity to complement
other qualitative reviews. In this sense, the main value of this paper is not to advise on the future
configuration of entrepreneurship policy as a research topic, but to unwrap the past by unveiling how key
themes of the entrepreneurship policy research agenda have emerged, evolved and/or declined over time as a
foundation on which to build further developments.
Keywords Innovation, Policy, Entrepreneurship policy, Entrepreneurship research, Research methods
Paper type General review
Introduction
The emergence of entrepreneurship as a policy and research field is the logical consequence
of the increasing attention on entrepreneurship as a strategic driver of progress during
the last quarter of the twentieth century (Gilbert et al., 2004; Hart, 2003; Stevenson and
Lundström, 2002). In an economic context aimed at a renewed and innovation-based growth,
entrepreneurship began to be considered a key constituent (Acs et al., 2012; Audretsch et al.,
2008). Some authors have gone even further, noting that the twenty-first century has implied
a paradigm shift from the “managed economy”, based on large-scale and standardised
production into the “entrepreneurial economy”, in which knowledge and innovation are the
dominant elements (Audretsch and Thurik, 2004). In turn, public intervention has been
included in the field of entrepreneurship as a strategic priority, broadly focused on
addressing policies oriented towards supporting those who decide to start a business –
entrepreneurs –and promoting entrepreneurial culture over the whole society (Verheul et al.,
2002). Similarly, research on entrepreneurship policy has grown significantly during the last
three decades with remarkable contributions from both the academic (Lundström and
Stevenson, 2002; Wennekers and Thurik, 1999) and non-academic worlds (OECD, 2010).
Despite this interest, research on entrepreneurship policy is still at its early stages and
knowledge about the evolution of the field is still limited, to the extent that it has been tagged
by some authors as under-investigated (Mazzarol and Volery, 2015; Rosa, 2013). In fact, there is
no comprehensive analysis to identify the particular themes that configure the field. As an
emerging topic, a range of controversies have appeared, not only about how public policy
intervention should be configured (Lerner, 2013; Minniti, 2008), but also about which
policy rationale justifies it (Acs et al., 2016; Shane, 2009). Adding it all up, we can say, as
Lundstrom and Stevenson (2006) noted, that in general there is “limited knowledge on how
entrepreneurship policy is constructed”(p. 7) and preciselythis relative novelty has implied that
informed policy based on research is “quite complex in the field of entrepreneurship policy”(p.
17). The consequence is that it is difficult to frame which priorities have led the research agenda,
this being a major issue both for understanding the scientific structure of the field as a first step
to position further research, and for the use of the research results in practice.
Based on this premise, this paper aims at bridging the identified research gap when
mapping research on entrepreneurship policy by providing a retrospective view of the
emergence and configuration of the intellectual framework in the field, laying the ground
for both newcomers in the discipline and policymakers. In particular, this study uses text
mining to explore how entrepreneurship policy concepts and themes have been placed in
the research agenda of ten relevant related journals since 1990, seeking evidences on the
path to maturity as a specific research field. In addition, within the framework of the
overarchingcommontrendsintheresearchagenda, results from the analysis help to
understand the ge ographical configurati on of the field in the search for pa rticular interests
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