Capitalism, Socialism, and Management and Organization Scholarship

Abstract

Bruton et al.'sPointarticle argues that management and organizational scholarship (MOS) pays insufficient attention to context, using entrepreneurship research as their main case. We agree with their call to put institutions and policies at the forefront of MOS scholarship but disagree with their proposed approach and see many weaknesses in their reasoning. But, in thisCounterpoint, we argue that thePointarticle (1) imputes a questionable ‘capitalist’ bias to entrepreneurship research, (2) relies on notions of socialism and capitalism that do not advance entrepreneurship as a discipline, (3) oversimplifies or neglects the variety of real-world institutional arrangements, (4) misses a large literature on institutions (in MOS and increasingly also in entrepreneurship research), and (5) fails to supply a positive agenda for entrepreneurship research. More generally, we question their interpretation and application of socialism – normally understood as a country- or society-level construct – to organizations and argue that organizational and institutional scholarship already addresses their phenomena of interest. OurCounterpointends with a proposal to advance MOS and entrepreneurship scholarship by focusing on the different forms and outcomes of organizations and entrepreneurship across countries and institutional environments.