ABSTRACT
Philosophy of science issues are under-appreciated in entrepreneurship and small business (ESB) research. Occasional calls are made for researchers to provide a stronger philosophical footing for studies but few heed them. This chapter seeks to increase appreciation of ontological issues to show how a better understanding of them can contribute to ESB studies. Ontological presuppositions are therefore non-optional; failure to be explicit about them only leads to their unacknowledged reintroduction into data collection, analysis and explanation. The chapter suggests that the origins and development of critical realism through immanent critiques of the main philosophical alternatives – positivism, social constructionism and pragmatism. It discusses studies of entrepreneurial identity, a stream of research dominated by constructionist approaches that define identity in terms of narrative or discourse. Constructionist works in the entrepreneurial identity literature focus on self-narration, often performed by appropriating elements of wider discourses of enterprise to tell particular stories about themselves.
