1042-2587-94-183$1.50 Copyright 1994 by Baylor University Finding the Entrepreneur in Entrepreneurship William B. Gartner Kelly G. Shaver Elizabeth Gatewood Jerome A. Katz e are very pleased to present six thought-provoking and "paradigm-expand- ing" papers for this special issue on "Finding the Entrepreneur in Entrepreneurship." As we stated in the Fall 1992 Special Issue Announcement, the purpose of this issue is "to encourage entrepreneurship researchers to re-conceptualize the nature of entrepre- neurship by focusing on the individual and social/psychological processes involved in entrepreneurial activity." When we announced this call for papers in the Fall 1992 issue of Entrepreneurship Theory' and Practice, it seemed, at least from our perspective, that over the last ten years the focus of attention in entrepreneurship research and theory had shifted away from the study of the entrepreneur (Shaver & Scott, 1991). The purpose of the Call for Papers, was, therefore, to attempt to bring into the scholarly dialogue on entrepreneurship a re-affirmation of the importance of entrepreneurs to the phenomenon of entrepreneurship without invoking old platitudes about entrepreneurial personalities or calling for a hunt for the mythical "hef'falump" (Kilby, 1971). The number of manuscripts sent in response to the Call for Papers was much larger than we had expected by the July 1, 1993 deadline we had received 21 manuscripts for review. The quality of all the papers submitted was very high. Therefore, the evaluation process was altogether more difficult and time consuming than we had anticipated. All the papers were blind reviewed by at least two of the four special issue editors. The selection of the six papers for this special issue was achieved using two primary criteria: (1) Does the manuscript fit the Call for Papers, that is, does the manuscript offer the reader new or controversial ideas about individual-level issues in entrepreneur- ship? (2) Does this manuscript present exemplary research, that is, does the research in this manuscript offer state-of-the-art theory and methodological rigor? A number of manuscripts met one or the other criterion, but not both. In other cases, it appeared that both criteria might be met, if the author(s) were given sufficient time to revise and resubmit. Given the relatively short time between the submission deadline (July 1993) and publication of the articles (July 1994), these manuscripts were not afforded this opportunity. We have asked many of the authors who submitted articles not selected for this special issue to send their manuscripts for review through the regular journal review process, and we expect that a number of those manuscripts will eventu- ally be published in subsequent issues of the journal. Spring, 1994

SOME COMMENTS ABOUT THE ENTREPRENEUR Taken as a whole, these six articles offer a diverse view of both theory and empirical research on the entrepreneur. We believe you will find these articles engaging and challenging. Some may, in fact, provoke some very strong reactions. If this occurs, we will have done our job at stimulating movement towards a re-conceptualization of the scholarly community's views on this topic. The following comments will not attempt to summarize the articles or rehash their ideas, theories, and findings. Instead, we will identify a few "meta-themes" that a reader might want to mull over. These statements are intended as observations that may encourage further dialogue and research. The ' 'entrepreneur'' in entrepreneurship is more likely to be plural, rather than singular. The locus of entrepreneurial activity often resides not in one person, but in many. If we limit our list of entrepreneurs to those individuals who might have some direct "strategic" influence on the development of a venture (for this discussion, we intend "venture" to mean any entrepreneurial activity, not just the activities involved in new firm formation), we should likely consider including: individuals that share equity ownership in the venture individuals that share debt ownership in the venture individ- uals that share decision-making roles in the venture individuals that serve in leadership and subordinate roles in the venture spouses, family, close friends, advisors and critical suppliers and buyers. This list is not intended as a way to suggest a sociological/ environmental (e.g., group) solution to a psychological individual-level problem. Rather, we hope scholars will recognize that the "entrepreneur" needs to be adequately described and specified (Carsrud, Gaglio. & Kernochan, 1993 Katz, Brockhaus, & Hilts, 1993). Scholars should be very clear about why some individuals were identified as the entrepreneurs to be studied in an entrepreneurial activity. For example, entrepre- neurs can be identified on the basis of "being" (e.g., in such positions as owner, founder, investor) and/or on the basis of "behaving" (e.g., undertaking certain behav- iors such as developing the venture's concept, acquiring resources, setting up business operations). By offering these criteria as examples, we are not arguing for one criterion or the other, or that a combination of both might be appropriate. Instead, we ask that researchers acknowledge that those individuals who might have a significant involve- ment in the venture be theoretically and empirically accounted and "controlled for." Entrepreneurial activity involves doing an6 "thinking." Gartner's (1988) discussion of research on entrepreneurs appeared to divide the study of these individuals into two camps: research on the traits and characteristics of entrepreneurs, and research on the behaviors of entrepreneurs. His article offered a radical dichotomization of the entre- preneur that should be viewed through a more complicated and fuller perspective of the psychology of the entrepreneur (Shaver & Scott, 1991). A critical component of indi- vidual behavior involves "thinking," a component of entrepreneurial behavior that Gartner's (1988) article clearly ignored. Without getting into a detailed review of the cognition and social cognition litera- tures that comprise aspects of the subject of "thinking," we would hazard to say that what entrepreneurs think about, and how they go about thinking about what they think about, is critical to understanding much of what occurs during an entrepreneur's activ- ities. An implication of this viewpoint for entrepreneurship research is that more effort should be applied to linking some of the theories and methods in psychology and organizational behavior to the study of entrepreneurs (Gartner, Bird, & Starr, 1992 MacMillan & Katz, 1992 Shaver & Scott, 1991). For example, it seems entirely appropriate, given previous theory and research from these disciplines, that entrepre- neurship researchers might design laboratory experiments to test how entrepreneurs 6 ENTREPRENEURSHIP THEORY and PRACTICE