On the 50-Year Research Landscape of Entrepreneurial Finance: A Sign of Western Ideological Homogeneity?

Abstract

Financing issues play essential roles in the survival and development of entrepreneurial firms. The current study, employing the bibliometric analysis of 6,903 articles from 1970 to 2019, extracted from Web of Science database, aims to provide an overview of the discipline's landscape and major scientific domains to facilitate scientific development within the field. Entrepreneurial finance is a young and growing field with exponential growth in the number of publications (with 19.54% per year) and rising collaboration tendency among authors. Journal of Business Venturing is the most prestigious journal, while Sustainability is noteworthy for its rapid contribution to the field. We also note a sign of Western ideological homogeneity from the collaboration networks and lists of top authors, institutions, and countries. Besides, using keyword co-occurrence analysis, seven major research domains are identified: "venture capital", "crowdfunding", "SMEs finance", "social entrepreneurship finance", "financial risk", "microfinance", and "human-social-financial capital". Based on these findings, we raise the concern of lacking diversity in entrepreneurial finance research and provide several recommendations for future potential research directions.

Western ideological homogeneity in entrepreneurial finance research: Evidence from highly cited publications

“…Given the Western countries' dominance and weak tolerance of heterogeneity, we support the finding of Nguyen et al (2020) that the entrepreneurial finance literature is Western ideologically homogenous. This situation needs to be changed because ideological homogeneity will consequently hinder the development of the discipline.…”

“…However, it is not enough to assess the ideological dominance, because larger quantity does not necessarily represent more considerable influence. For instance, China ranks 4 th in scientific production but has a relatively low scientific impact in the entrepreneurial finance discipline (Nguyen, Nguyen, et al, 2020). Therefore, identifying the boundary between highly influential publications and popular publications is necessary to assess whether a scientific discipline is ideologically homogenous or not.…”

“…These viewpoints primarily focus on financing sources that associate with advanced technological development, such as venture capital, private equity, crowdfunding, and so forth (Cumming & Groh, 2018). This situation might be the result of Western ideological homogeneity (Nguyen, Nguyen, Pham, Nguyen, & Vuong, 2020). Nevertheless, the evidence for this argument is insufficient; therefore, the current study aims to examine whether the literature of entrepreneurial finance is ideologically homogenous.…”

“…For example, the venture capital industry in China only started to develop after the Chinese government established policies to encourage venture investments in 1998 (Batjargal & Liu, 2004). Since then, research about entrepreneurial finance in China has been mostly about venture capital (Nguyen, Nguyen, et al, 2020) but virtually neglected other China's culture-based and advantage-based financing methods, such as family financing and governmental subsidies, and so forth (Ahlstrom & Ding, 2014).…”

“…Thus, it is plausible to say that the overreliance on a financing method may not be financially sustainable for entrepreneurs, and the rule of diversification should not be violated, even in the scholarly aspect. In scientific research, Nguyen, Nguyen, et al (2020) indicate a sign of Western ideological homogeneity in the literature of entrepreneurial finance and call for firm evidence to support the claim. Thus, we aim to examine whether there is an existence of Western ideological homogeneity in the entrepreneurial discipline.…”