From bibliometrics to entrepreneurship: A study of studies

Abstract

Bibliometric studies of entrepreneurship as a discipline have contributed fundamentally to the creation of a certain order in an apparently chaotic and contradictory literature, examining how the discipline has developed, giving a comprehensive vision of the structure of the field, observing its social networks, detecting trends, discovering knowledge gaps and helping to plan future research lines. The purpose of this article is to explore this special type of research. In terms of methodology, it uses an adaptation of the Systematic Literature Review, and a content analysis using text-mining software in order to look deeper into objectives, conclusions and limitations. Among the main findings, there is some evidence that indicates that the image presented to date about entrepreneurship has not considered the multidisciplinary nature of the field and could, therefore, be distorted. At the same time, a series of inherent problems have been detected, and it has become evident that there is a need to incorporate the latest advances in bibliometrics and to improve collaboration between experts from both fields in order to solve those mentioned issues and move towards future progress.