About the Book
Necessity entrepreneurship is broadly understood as the identifying and seizing of business opportunities to address basic needs such as food and shelter. This volume proposes new ways of seeing, theorizing, and researching necessity entrepreneurship.
Scholars from across the management field expand our collective understanding, presenting necessity entrepreneurship not just as an economic process but as a cluster of cognitive, communal, and institutional processes aimed at coping with various dimensions of necessity. Challenging and revising foundational assumptions underlying prior necessity entrepreneurship research, chapters unpack necessity entrepreneurs’ inhabited cognitive processes, highlighting community-level insights on necessity entrepreneurship beyond the individual-level perspective that still dominates many necessity entrepreneurship studies.
This volume showcases novel theoretical framework and methodological approaches, ranging from quantitative measurement through artificial intelligence-based methods of visualization to qualitative-interpretative accounts, preparing the next stage of necessity entrepreneurship studies.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: From an orthodox to an emerging revisionist view of necessity entrepreneurship; Sophie Bacq, Katrin M. Smolka, Angelique F. Slade Shantz, and Pursey P.M.A.R. Heugens
Section A. Towards a New Heterodoxy in Necessity Entrepreneurship Research
Chapter 1. Towards a shared agenda for necessity entrepreneurship research: Definitions, theories, and perspectives; Katrin M. Smolka, Pursey P.M.A.R. Heugens, Sophie Bacq, and Angelique F. Slade Shantz
Section B. Necessity Entrepreneurs’ Inhabited Cognitive Processes
Chapter 2. Stopping the slide and rising above the tide: Entrepreneurial education to move out of necessity into opportunity; Saras D. Sarasvathy and Maelle A. Perez
Chapter 3. Towards a strengths-based view of necessity entrepreneurship; Ketan M. Goswami
Section C. Poverty and Informality Perspectives on Necessity Entrepreneurship
Chapter 4. Necessity entrepreneurship as a misnomer: Lessons learned from working with poverty entrepreneurs; Michael H. Morris and Susana C. Santos
Chapter 5. Constellations in the galaxy: Ethnic enclave membership and venture behavior among necessity entrepreneurs in a South African township informal economy; Mohammed Bendaanane, Siddharth Vedula, Robert Nason, and Andrew Charman
Section D. Institutional Views on Necessity Entrepreneurship
Chapter 6. Health provider or debt collector? The unintended consequences of integrating income-generating activities with community health interventions in Kenya; Kenneth Ngari Ogendo, Emily Block, Andrea Caldwell Marquez, and Bertha Ochieng
Chapter 7. Navigating intersectional inequalities: Resource assemblage for firm profits; Kylie Heales, Charlene Zietsma, and Luciano Barin Cruz
Section E. Methods around Necessity Entrepreneurship
Chapter 8. Measuring necessity entrepreneurship: Challenges and implications; Chad D. Coffman, Sanwar A. Sunny, and Griffin W. Cottle
Chapter 9. Quantitative methods in the field of necessity entrepreneurship; Laura Rosendahl Huber and Caroline Witte
Chapter 10. From the ground up: Unpacking the visual representation of necessity entrepreneurship; Bernadetta A. Ginting-Szczesny
Chapter 11. Moving beyond ‘jump in, jump out’ interviewing: Using more complex qualitative methodologies to build deeper theory in the Global South; Patrick Shulist
About the Author :
Sophie Bacq is Professor of Social Entrepreneurship and Coca-Cola Foundation Chair in Sustainable Development at IMD, Switzerland.
Katrin M. Smolka is Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, UK.
Angelique F. Slade Shantz is Associate Professor of Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Management, University of Alberta, Canada.
Pursey P.M.A.R. Heugens is Professor of Organization Theory at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, The Netherlands.
Review :
Necessity Entrepreneurship: Getting Beyond the Binary, edited by Sophie Bacq, Katrin Smolka, Angelique Slade Shantz and Pursey Heugens, offers profound insights into necessity entrepreneurship, a widespread and growing phenomenon around the globe. This comprehensive volume is invaluable for scholars, practioners and policy-makers eager to delve into the intricacies of necessity-driven entrepreneurial activities. The editors of the volume and authors of the chapters represent a compelling blend of experts in necessity entrepreneurship and/or related areas. The aim of the volume is to challenge orthodox perspectives dichotomizing necessity and opportunity entrepreneurship to provide a revisionist view that captures the wide variety in the creation of organizations out of need. The volume is unique in that it not only provides new and compelling conceptual frameworks from a variety of perspectives, including institutional, communal and cognitive notions, but also new holistic ways of viewing necessity combined with innovative methods which will aid scholars researching this critical topic. For anyone invested in necessity entrepreneurship, this book is an essential read, providing not just knowledge, but the inspiration to explore new paradigms within the field.
Necessity entrepreneurship is a widespread phenomenon. Yet, in spite of its empirical importance, researchers – just like the broader public – have shown much stronger interest in “glamorous” types of entrepreneurial activity such as venture capital-backed startups. The present RSO volume seeks to counter this stark imbalance by putting the spotlight squarely on necessity entrepreneurs – from a phenomenological, a theoretical as well as a methodological perspective. I am convinced that the intriguing set of articles published in this volume will inspire many scholars to take up research on necessity entrepreneurship!
This volume offers a much-needed expansion of our understanding of necessity entrepreneurship by bringing multiple new lenses to bear. The insights offered move us beyond the dichotomy of person- or situation-centered explanations to weave a richer story that accounts for cognition, culture, and institutional factors. In addition to diverse array of empirical contexts, the volume also offers thoughtful critique and recommendations for how scholars can engage with stronger methods and better measurements in the study of necessity entrepreneurship. Edited by noted scholars Bacq, Smolka, Slade Shantz, and Heugens, this volume offers scholars a new set of theoretical and methodological tools to advance our shared understanding of a complex and growing global phenomenon.
An excellent book, that offers a much-needed novel perspective on necessity entrepreneurship. The editors put together a great group of international scholars, who provide fascinating evidence on how to theorize, study, narrate and visualize necessity entrepreneurship. For me, a must-read for all those interested in pushing the boundaries of the entrepreneurship research field.
