Assessment of Research Methodologies in Entrepreneurship and Recommendations for Future Research: Through Review of the Leading Entrepreneurship Journals in Korea

Entrepreneurship studies have grown quantitatively and qualitatively. But it has not been proved to be effective for the government policy to promote start-up and to guide nascent entrepreneurs. This study analyzed the research methodologies of the relevant papers and identified what the problem was. The methodology analysis was executed for the 348 papers in the leading 3 journals of entrepreneurship research in Korea. In the analysis of the entrepreneurship research papers in Korea, more than 80% of them are quantitative empirical studies. Hopefully, exploratory studies or qualitative empirical studies should be carried out with a more bold weight, considering the inherent characteristics of entrepreneurship, that is, idiosyncratic, unique, discontinuous, and not the entrepreneurial story to be replicated. Any entrepreneurial event for entrepreneurship study should be treated individually on its irregular situations. This study confirmed the problem that quantitative empirical studies using advanced statistical analysis techniques are still prevalent due to the bravado to be followed and the biased assessment criteria of thesis reviewers. For the future research, some meaningful and desirable research methods were suggested through the arrangement of the arguments of entrepreneurship researchers who have discussed entrepreneurship research for many years.