The entrepreneurial networks as an object of empirical narrative analysis

In: Moscow University Economics Bulletin, Heft 5, S. 3-21

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to analyze the possibilities and feasibility of using narrative analysis methods in studying the structure and dynamics of entrepreneurial networks. To achieve it, the author provides the description of an entrepreneurial network concept, explores the results of its exploration in the world science, which leads to the conclusion that the use of purely quantitative methods to study entrepreneurial networks does not allow us to reveal their essential features determined by a number of practically unmeasurable social factors. One of these results is the correlation between the two blocks in entrepreneurial business networks: personal entrepreneurial networks that arise before the start of an individual's business activity, and ordinary inter-firm interactions that begin to operate after the start of his business, usually in the form of the creation of his first firm. The first block is not affected by standard official statistics and requires different research methods. Based on this, the article discusses in detail the concept of narratives and methods for studying them in social sciences, with a special attention on narrative analysis in economics. Finally, the author characterizes the variants of such analysis, proposes and substantiates the logic and methodological features of its application to the study of entrepreneurial networks.