History of Entrepreneurship

Message from the Historian Committee: How to Get Involved (July 2020)

If you would like to serve the ENT Division and are interested in the history of entrepreneurship, I encourage you to join the Historian Committee. Thanks to the hard work of previous Committee chairs and members, we have a tremendous cache of materials that preserves our members’ many accomplishments since our Division was founded as an interest group in 1974. The Committee is tasked with continuing this work, updating existing and creating new content. There are three ways you can become involved.

First, if you haven’t already, I invite you to read the “History of the Entrepreneurship Division” (https://bit.ly/ENTDivisionHistory), which Hans Landström and Jon Lindhe wrote and shared with members at the 2016 Academy of Management (AOM) Annual Meeting. The manuscript details how the Division grew from humble beginnings to become the fourth largest and one of the most internationally diverse AOM divisions. The Committee is tasked with updating this comprehensive chronicle, about every five years. Thus, it’s about time to begin working on version 2.0.

Second, the Committee has repeatedly sponsored history-focused PDWs for the AOM Annual Meeting. If you’re interested in working on this type of PDW for AOM 2021 or other future meetings, you should consider joining the Committee.

Third, as I’ve noted previously, much of the Division’s history is recorded on paper, and, while we will continue to do this, the Committee has also started employing digital formats. For example, Committee members frequently take pictures of activities during AOM Annual and MidWinter Officer Meetings, which become part of the Division’s digital history on our Facebook (@ENTDivision), Instagram (entdivaom), and Twitter (@ENT_Div_AoM) sites. The Committee has also begun producing a podcast, This Month in Entrepreneurship (TMI Entrepreneurship), the first of which details how to nominate someone (or yourself) for a Division officer position during open nominations in February each year (https://bit.ly/ENTOfficerNom2020). We plan to produce more podcasts like this, as well as podcasts that record other developments in the field and Division. If you have interests/skills in producing this type of content, we could use your abilities on the Committee.

As you can see, the Historian Committee has a lot of work to do. Please contact me at FranzLohrke@auburn.edu, if you’d like to be involved in any of these different activities.

Thanks so much,
Franz Lohrke,
Historian Committee Chair

(Past messages)

Historian Committee Chair

Franz Lohrke

History of the Division

The History of the Entrepreneurship Division by Hans Landström and Jon Lindhe

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Pioneer Profiles

William B. Gartner

William B. Gartner is an American entrepreneurship scholar and Professor of Entrepreneurship and the Art of Innovation, at the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. He is also Professor of Entrepreneurship at the California Lutheran University in the US.

Gartner is considered a pioneer within his field, known for his belief in a behavioral approach and narrative methodology in entrepreneurship research. He was one of the first scholars within the field who advocated a shift from focusing on the individual traits of the entrepreneur, which was common during the 70s and 80s, to studying entrepreneurship as a behavioral process (Landström 2010).

Patricia P. McDougall-Covin

Patricia P. McDougall-Covin is an American scholar in the fields of Strategic Management, Entrepreneurship and International Business. She is Professor of Entrepreneurship and the Director of the Institute for International Business at Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. McDougall is considered a pioneering scholar of entrepreneurship and strategic management and she has made significant contributions to the knowledge of multinational enterprise (Kelly school of business, 2015).

Arnold C. Cooper

Arnold C. Cooper Professor Arnold Cooper (March 9, 1933 – December 6, 2012) was a management scholar and a pioneer in the field of entrepreneurship and strategic management. During his academic career, that spanned over 40 years, Arnold Cooper made several significant contributions to the overall knowledge in the field of entrepreneurship. He also played a significant part in organizing the research field and he helped the elevation of entrepreneurship research to a higher academic level (Landström, 2010).

Karl H. Vesper

Karl H. Vesper Karl Hampton Vesper (b. 1932) is an American scholar and Professor emeritus of Management, Mechanical Engineering and Marine Studies at the University of Washington(WA). Vesper is known as a pioneer in the field of entrepreneurship research and education. He has launched several entrepreneurship courses and programs, and he has been involved in organizing some of the first conferences on entrepreneurship in the US (Spears school of business 2015).