Understanding entrepreneurship: Challenging dominant perspectives and theorizing entrepreneurship through new postpositivist epistemologies

Entrepreneurship is characterized by complex, dynamic and emergent processes, and the interplay between actors, processes, and contexts. Postpositivistic approaches offer the opportunity to examine subtleties of the phenomenon of entrepreneurship by placing emphasis on a range of its dimensions and the interplays between dimensions. Despite a growing body of postpositivistic research in response to such calls, the legitimacy of these approaches is still subject to debate on the grounds of rigor and relevance. This special issue challenges these prevailing but often hidden assumptions governing the conduct and publication of scholarly inquiry in the field of entrepreneurship and offers alternative perspectives for future research. © 2014 International Council for Small Business.