Taking stock and looking ahead: a systematic literature review of effectuation research

Effectuation has become one of the core theoretical approaches in entrepreneurship research and attracted significant scholarly attention for over two decades. However, despite its influence and robust knowledge accumulation, the effectuation literature remains fragmented and hard to navigate, especially for researchers new to the field. This calls for interactively taking stock of the field’s current state and mapping future research directions. By utilizing a novel hybrid approach to researching effectuation literature, this article integrates augmented bibliometric analysis with a qualitative content analysis, thereby unveiling the intellectual structure of the field. Using data from 680 articles spanning 2001 to 2024, co-citation analysis of references reveals two influential publication groups: ‘pioneers’ and ‘expanders.’ Furthermore, we categorize contemporary effectuation literature into four subfields: antecedents, process, outcomes, and knowledge accumulation papers. This article contributes to the extant effectuation literature by exploring the field’s structure, categorizing its conceptual and methodological articulations and providing a roadmap for future effectuation research, enhancing the consolidation of effectuation research.