Back in 2016, Hans Landström and Jon Lindhe of Lund University, Sweden compiled a wonderful report on the history of the Academy of Management (AoM) Entrepreneurship (ENT) Division. Started in 1974 as an interest group, the division was formally created in 1986, after much debate and discussion.
Gartner and Bird were members of a network of young entrepreneurship scholars who defined themselves as the ‘Young Turks’ and were to play an important role in the development of the Entrepreneurship Interest Group for many years. They were the second generation of entrepreneurship scholars, walking in the footsteps of senior scholars like Sexton, Vesper and Timmons. They wanted their field of research to be taken seriously, and to achieve this they believed two things were necessary: more high quality entrepreneurship research had to be published, and the entrepreneurship Interest Group needed to be accepted by the AOM and turned into a full-fledged division.
The tireless efforts of many entrepreneurship scholars are reflected in the sustained increase in the ENT division’s membership. Notable is the substantial number of international scholars who have joined AoM’s entrepreneurship research journey.
Interestingly, one of the unique aspects of the AoM Entrepreneurship Division, as it grew and evolved during the 1990s, was anti-bureaucratic mindset and culture. The authors attribute this to the fact that many of the ENT group/division members came from an entrepreneurial background with a focus on invention and growth.
In 2021, Franz Lohrke, Historian Committee Chair at the Academy of Management seeks invites scholars to participate in an effort to update the ENT division history:
Five years have passed since Hans Landström and Jon Lindhe wrote the History of the Entrepreneurship Division. Both the field and the Division have continued to develop, and the Committee will work on version 2.0 this year as part of the Division’s 35th anniversary.
Of course, the main objective – and accomplishment – of the AoM Entrepreneurship Division is the “recognition of the field of entrepreneurship as an important area of research by most of the academia and the public”.