The price of everything, and the value of nothing? Stories of contribution in entrepreneurship research

Drakopoulou Dodd, Sarah and Jones, Paul and McElwee, Gerard and Haddoud, Mohamed (2016) The price of everything, and the value of nothing? Stories of contribution in entrepreneurship research. Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, 23 (4). pp. 918-938. ISSN 1462-6004 (https://doi.org/10.1108/JSBED-03-2016-0049)

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Abstract

Leading entrepreneurship professors completed a semi structured research instrument to express their opinions on the value of their own research and the extent to which their work contributes to knowledge and practice. Four personal drivers stimulate research, comprising intellectual curiosity, inherent enjoyment, a desire to influence thought, and professional pressure. This cultural capital is shared with four main groups of stakeholders: the wider academic community; students; entrepreneurs / practitioners; and policy makers. The interactive nature of the generation of relevance was highlighted in our findings, such that cultural capital (objectified in research output) is converted into symbolic capital (highly valued contributions) through the processes of social capital interactions. Although we found similarities in some of the processes of cultural capital exchange, co-creation, and evaluation across groups, we also identified many group-specific practices. Value is experienced and ascribed to research contributions through a range of largely informal practices.

ORCID iDs

Drakopoulou Dodd, Sarah ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3140-8194, Jones, Paul, McElwee, Gerard and Haddoud, Mohamed;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)