Is Franchising Entrepreneurship? Yes, No, and Maybe So

Abstract

We report the results of a survey of key thought leaders within the entrepreneurship field centered on the relationship between franchising and entrepreneurship. Specifically, we asked members of the Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice editorial board whether they consider franchisors to be entrepreneurs, whether they consider franchisees to be entrepreneurs, whether they consider research on franchising to be entrepreneurship research, and how they view the quality of franchising research compared with the quality of entrepreneurship research in general. Their collective responses offer important implications for franchising research. One implication is that franchising research needs to become more theoretically robust. A second is that the concepts of opportunity recognition, risk, organizational size, stage of organizational development, and organizational autonomy need to be taken into account when studying franchising.