1. Social constructionist thinking: some implications for entrepreneurship research and education ElnazTarzamny Professor: Dr. Arabiun University of Tehran Entrepreneurship Faculty

2. Introduction All the evidence seems to indicate that we have come a long way in identifying many different forms, definitions and varieties of entrepreneurial practice. A significant challenge facing entrepreneurship inquiries is the need to maintain relevance and accessibility as a subject area at the same time as enhancing the scholarly standing and legitimacy of this field of study.

3. Introduction It is argued that what is needed in entrepreneurship are more integrative theoretical understandings of entrepreneurial practice that have the potential to bridge levels of analysis and connect issues of agency and structure. Social constructivist and Social constructionist ideas aid our understanding of entrepreneurial practices.

4. The problems of paradigm scrutiny and compartmentalism The Burrell and Morgan(1979) framework is about how particular organizational practices come to ‘occur’ in the social world. The authors propose 4 paradigms that embrace particular assumptions about social reality (radical structuralist, radical humanist, functionalist, interpretivist). In entrepreneurship research, this framework is taken forward to demonstrate how such a paradigmatic framework might be use to review and categorize research.

5. The problems of paradigm scrutiny and compartmentalism The weakness of such framework is that they force dualist views of the world and inquirers become focused on locating themselves in one paradigm or another. The investigator is drown to either-or understanding of how things are in the world.

6. What is needed For this reason, more integrative approaches are needed in the study of entrepreneurship not only in the sense of insights or concepts from various disciplines, but also by taking account of how entrepreneurial practices are constructed through an interaction between individual agency, industry/sector/firm structure and wider economic, social or cultural environment.

7. What is needed What is needed are methodologies that not only enable us to investigate different levels of analysis involving industry, firm and individuals, but also ways of theorizing that bridge issues of agency and structure.

8. Social constructionist ideas The intention is not to present these ideas as a solution to all the problems in entrepreneurship inquiry. The aim is to review these ideas and their application in entrepreneurship in order to show how they provide a means of responding to some of the tensions and problems.

9. Social constructionist ideas Social constructionist ideas are useful to entrepreneurship because they provide a means of theorizing that polarizing structure/agency emphases. These also offer some promise for theorizing how and why entrepreneurial activities occur in relation to the cultural, social and opportunity structural environment.

10. Social constructivist and constructionist ideas Different terms such as constructivist or constructionist are often used interchangeably. But these ideas have their roots in many intellectual traditions. And the strength of these is that they relate to several philosophical traditions.

11. Social constructivist ideas Social constructivist thinking is a set of key assumptions about social reality and the way in which we can come to know or construct understanding of reality. Social constructivist is more concerned with how individuals mentally construct their worlds with categories supplied by social relationship.

12. Social constructivist ideas A further key assumption is that such cognitive processing capacities can be accurately known or represented in the research process. Social constructivist ideas are pertinent when research questions are concerned with examining how and why entrepreneurial activities are constructed in the way they are.

13. Social constructivist ideas Fieldwork activities and analyses focus on individuals, their cognitive processing abilities, and social-psychological attributes. Given the research interests, the key interpretive task is to learn inwards towards the subject of research and examine personal subjectivity. Bouchikhi, applies constructivist ideas as a way of dealing with the duality created by individual and environmental explanation of entrepreneurship.