Meta-analysis as a Tool for Developing Entrepreneurship Research and Theory

Compared to other disciplines, the field of entrepreneurship can still be described as young and being in a formative stage (Cooper, 1997). Entrepreneurship research is an area that is characterized by the presence of competing and overlapping concepts and theories, such as entrepreneurial orientation (Covin & Slevin, 1991), cognitive alertness (Gaglio & Katz, 2001; Kirzner, 1997), entrepreneurial management (Brown, Davidsson, & Wiklund, 2001), or opportunity discovery and exploitation (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000). There is still a continuing debate on what entrepreneurship is about and the existence of relationships are hotly debated (Davidsson, Low, & Wright, 2001), e.g., the relationship between personality and entrepreneurial behavior. As a consequence, the field of entrepreneurship struggles to develop practice recommendations, e.g., for entrepreneurs, that are based on well-defined concepts and sound empirical justification. In general, there are two ways of determining the status of a field: narrative reviews and meta-analysis. Narrative reviews use informal methods for the synthesis of empirical studies. The overall conclusions of narrative