Have we, as a discipline, lost track of our distinctive domain and subject matter? Judging from the articles published in our journals, the answer is not obviously "no." Indeed, many articles address and attempt to uncover the nature of phenomena that have little to do with entrepreneurship in practice or as a market function. Whereas the studies' subject matter is not therefore unrelated to entrepreneurship, quite a few of them target issues that are at best adjacent (or only indirectly related) to entrepreneurship. This is a curious development for a discipline that only a couple of decades ago was struggling to find its core and soul.
There is nothing wrong with breadth in scholarship or the pursuit of explanations that do not squarely fit within the core of one's discipline. In fact, it has long been claimed that the interesting questions lie in interdisciplinary research rather than within the traditional disciplinary silos. So broadening our quest for explanations may not be a bad thing. It could rather allow us to better understand business and the economy and as a result help improve our core theories.
Yet breadth has its limits; it is also possible to get spread too thin or to even lose track of the discipline's core as one pursues adjacent explanations or deeper conceptualizations. Or, as has also been the case, to wander into the territory of other, more established disciplines where we neither belong nor can contribute much. I'm thinking in particular about philosophy, but the same can be argued for other disciplines as well.
Philosophy is a discipline with ancient origins. Needless to say, it has addressed a lot of issues, plenty of aspects and nuances of those issues, settled disagreements and come up with solutions. (There are of course also issues that have not been settled.) Philosophers are trained not only in how to think properly but also in what has been thought through the centuries and millennia - the history of the discipline. It would be difficult to think entrepreneurship scholars (or anyone, really) could teach philosophers in their own discipline. Not impossible, but quite unlikely.
Yet this is what many recent journal articles attempt to do. We should naturally draw from and use tools and frameworks and theories and conclusions from philosophy, and apply them to better understand entrepreneurship. But contributions to the entrepreneurship literature increasingly attempt to figure out the nature of abstract concepts that are of varying relevance to entrepreneurship and, in the process, attempt to take the place of philosophy. To put it differently, some of these articles presume to produce an entrepreneurship ersatz to philosophy's conceptualizations and answers.
A case in point is the concept uncertainty, which certainly (pun intended) has become core to entrepreneurship theory. But it is relevant to entrepreneurs and our understanding of entrepreneurship in specific ways. It will unlikely improve our understanding of entrepreneurship to spend articles philosophizing on the concept of uncertainty itself, what it means, what is its nature, its boundaries, its implications on the world. This has already been addressed by philosophers in general terms and economists with respect to the economy. What can entrepreneurship scholars contribute by asking the same questions and formulate (the same) answers? (Other than publications to put on one's CV, of course.)
Philosophical treatments of uncertainty explore its ontological nature; entrepreneurship research should instead examine how uncertainty shapes entrepreneurial decision-making.
The fact is that philosophizing on uncertainty is not only an exercise with dubious value to entrepreneurship, but few entrepreneurship scholars are adequately trained to contribute meaningfully to such philosophical debates. It would better serve us as a discipline and the understanding that we generate to instead import the theories, frameworks, and concepts that already exist and have been well worked out in other disciplines. They are frankly in much better shape than what we can expect to produce ourselves. And it would be a much more effective use of our time and effort (and journal "space") to apply existing general theories to shed light on specific phenomena than to reinventing wheels.
All that has been written attempting to "figure out" uncertainty in the entrepreneurship journals is not bad, of course, but the point I am making is that some (much?) of it is - it has been done better elsewhere. And even that which is not bad is still wasted effort - because it has been done elsewhere.
The entrepreneurship discipline still lacks a hard core of theories, ideas, concepts, and frameworks - we even lack a generally accepted definition of entrepreneurship. So before we attempt to redo, correct, and replace what other disciplines have already produced, perhaps we should take care of our own house first. And revisit ideas and theories that may have been prematurely discarded.
Taking a step back and strengthening (by reinvestigating, reconceptualizing) the core is often a good idea. It is especially a good idea in a discipline that is as young and, still, immature and underdeveloped as ours. (Even more so, I might add, since we collectively have turned our backs on the long history of theorizing on entrepreneurship, going back at least to the 1730s and Richard Cantillon. But this is a separate issue.)
If we are honest with ourselves, our discipline largely lacks its own theories and framework. We have imported a lot from other disciplines - primarily management, economics, sociology, and psychology - but have not created that theoretical and conceptual hard core that makes a discipline. Our priority should be to fortify the theoretical foundations of entrepreneurship before venturing into other domains.