Periodization of Corporate Entrepreneurship Research

Corporate entrepreneurship (CE) has evolved from a peripheral topic in organization studies into a distinct research field that integrates perspectives from strategic management, entrepreneurship, and organization theory. Despite five decades of research, the field remains terminologically fragmented and lacks a theoretically grounded periodization. This article addresses this gap. Drawing on Lakatos's methodology of scientific research programs and Whitley's concept of the intellectual organization of the sciences, it proposes a four-phase periodization: emergence and conceptual formation (1970s–early 1980s); terminological debates and operationalization (mid-1980s–1990s); strategic consolidation (2000s); and institutionalization and contextualization (2010s–present). Each phase is characterized by its hard core of assumptions, central research question, key studies, and the factors that prompted the transition to the next phase. The periodization explains not only the chronology but also the logic of successive research programs: why the field debated definitions for so long, why strategic entrepreneurship gained traction rapidly, and why the current phase focuses on context. The article advances three arguments: transitions between phases were not gradual but involved shifts in the field’s basic assumptions; the field systematically borrows theories from adjacent disciplines while rarely tests their applicability beyond their original contexts; and the central task of the current phase is not to broaden the geographic scope of research but to reconsider the theoretical constructs themselves, whose embedded assumptions were shaped primarily by the American institutional context and are not universally applicable. The article concludes by outlining directions for future research on corporate entrepreneurship in state-owned enterprises and extractive industries, taking institutional and industry-specific characteristics into account.