پديدارشناسي در مطالعات كارآفريني

Phenomenology in Entrepreneurship studies

If there doesnʹt exist an appropriate relation between subject and method in entrepreneurship as a field of research it wouldnʹt be able to educate its audience. Perhaps this has caused fundamental issues in the field of entrepreneurship studies which remain unresolved. This paper tends to describe the importance of entrepreneurship with regard to interpretive paradigms such as phenomenology, qualitative research strategies used as a method for understanding entrepreneurship as a whole. In other words, since the entrepreneurship is an integrated process Iranian Journal of Management Sciences, Fall 2010, Vol.5,No. 19 of life experience and since life experience is too difficult to study, so many studies in this field have failed. To overcome this methodological problem this study intends to leave functionalism paradigm and instead use interpretive methods such as Phenomenology. Therefore, the first section introduces and describes the phenomenology approach as a research method. Then in the second section the focus is on methodological challenges in the field of entrepreneurship. In addition, the benefits of interpretive methods in the field are discussed. This paper is a response to the growing trend of entrepreneurship research that requires qualitative methods to generate descriptive and exploratory research in this academic domain. Key words: Entrepreneurship research, interpretive paradigm, phenomenological qualitative research strategy