When can a farmer be an entrepreneur? Taking entrepreneurship back to the future

Rajendra P Adhikari, L Bonney, Morgan P. Miles

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

This paper argues that agricultural entrepreneurship is a relatively unexplored area of inquiry in the entrepreneurship research. One of the root causes for this inadequate research lies on the way the concepts of entrepreneur and entrepreneurship have been defined. Many widely used definitions imply 'creation of a new venture' as the basic condition to be on entrepreneur. Agriculture being the business of generational continuity, this connotation of entrepreneur unwittingly excludes established farm from its membership. The primary purpose of this paper is to examine various definitions of e11treproneur or entrepreneurship to highlight their positions in this debate and identify core features {image) of today's entrepreneur and agriculture. It then proposes a definition of the concept that deconstructs the present popular notion of an entrepreneur to accommodate innovative farmers in the natural set of entrepreneurs. Restricting entrepreneurs to a creator of a 'new venture' undermines the development potential of agriculture. By offering a brood definition of an entrepreneur, this paper contributes to the expansion of the general theory of entrepreneurship into the forming sector. This will promote agriculture as the next frontier of entrepreneurship research and generate evidence-based policy recipe for the development of agripreneurship.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)117-129
Number of pages13
JournalInternational Journal of Nepalese Academy of Management
Volume5
Issue number1
Publication statusPublished - 2017

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