Conceptualization of "Entrepreneurial Action"

Action is the perquisite for entrepreneurial action; however, the scholarly field of entrepreneurship has focused on studying individuals and situations. As the inefficiencies of these traditions became evident, there has been an increasing attention to the entrepreneurial process and action but these studies either have not defined it or have defined it based on their own theoretical perspective. As having clear and comprehensive definition and construct clarity is the perquisite for making progress in theorizing and generalizing findings, the present study, using systematic literature review and thematic analysis, aims at investigating the definitions proposed for entrepreneurial action and offer a definition based on an integrative approach. This article intends to offer a conceptual definition of entrepreneurial action based on the literature and so is a fundamental research and from the research method point of view is a theme analysis-qualitative research. To identify articles in Scopus database, we consider some criteria that lead us to 256 article in international leading journals. After studying the abstracts, 27 articles were selected for content analysis. Elements and aspects of entrepreneurial action provided in these articles were coded and categorized in the following 7 major classes: preliminaries and causal conditions, context, logics and strategies of entrepreneurial action, behavioral and mental aspects and their outcomes. Based on these categories of concepts, a definition is provided for entrepreneurial action with integrating approach which includes the identified elements and categories.