Entrepreneurship

The contributions the social sciences can make to a practical, as well as theoretical, understanding of entrepreneurship tend to get lost in the curricula of business schools, writes editor Swedberg. This happens, he says, even though many insights the social sciences have already generated "can be … more or less directly translated into do's and don't's for the entrepreneur-to-be." This reader presents works from leading thinkers in such fields as economics, sociology, history, anthropology, and psychology. It includes examination of past and present social science perspectives on the nature of the entrepreneurial enterprise, as well as attempts "to take the mystique out of entrepreneurship and transform innovative economic behaviour into a series of skills that can be taught in the business schools." The social sciences, writes Swedberg, "can provide new and fresh ideas about the theory and practice of entrepreneurship, by looking at innovative business behaviour in other times, in other societies, and in other cultures — and also by looking at entrepreneurship from novel angles and from the perspective of a much wider range of actors than is commonly done."