2024
Article
Annual Review of Sociology

The Sociology of Entrepreneurship Revisited

By: Tristan Botelho, Ranjay Gulati and Olav Sorensen

Format:Print
| Pages:24

Abstract

Over the last two decades, the sociology of entrepreneurship has exploded as an area of academic inquiry. Most of this research has been focused on understanding the environmental conditions that promote entrepreneurship and processes related to the initial formation of an organization. Despite this surge in activity, many important questions remain open. Only more recently have scholars begun to turn their attention to what happens to organizations, and the people connected to them, as they mature and move through the “lifecycle” of entrepreneurship. These open questions, moreover, connect to many classic themes in the literatures on careers, organizational sociology, stratification, and work and occupations. Using a framework that focuses on three phases of the entrepreneurial lifecycle—pre-entry, entry, and post-entry—we summarize sociological research on entrepreneurship and highlight opportunities for future research.