Interestingness in entrepreneurship research: international isomorphism and/or contextual heterogeneity?

Over the last five decades entrepreneurship research has grown from a small isolated group of scholars, mainly from the USA, to a global scholarly community. The globalization has had significant consequences for research, not least when it comes to what scholars in different parts of the world perceive as interesting. Based on the partly contradictory arguments regarding an “international isomorphism” versus a “contextual heterogeneity” in entrepreneurship research, the aims of the present study are to (1) explore how entrepreneurship scholars in different geographic regions perceive interestingness and (2) discuss the consequences of the perception of interestingness for the future development of the field. The study is based on a unique database and web-based responses from 915 entrepreneurship scholars. In the study we find a strong “international isomorphism” among entrepreneurship scholars, i.e., entrepreneurship scholars around the world tend to perceive interestingness in a rather similar way. The “international isomorphism” can be explained by increased field- and academic-related institutionalization, and we provide some suggestions for how to balance the contradiction between contextual heterogeneity in reality and academic internationalization in entrepreneurship research.