ASSESSMENT OF THE INFLUENCE OF CHINESE SCHOLARS AND INSTITUTIONS IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP RESEARCH

Entrepreneurship research is an emerging field of study in China. This paper adopted the U.S. scholar Shane's research methods to assess 320 entrepreneurship articles published in China between 1998 and 2006. It provided an influence ranking of Chinese scholars and institutions in entrepreneurship research using four assessment methods on the basis of various factors, including the number of published articles, the number of co-authors writing the articles, and the class of the journals in which the articles were published. The results of the assessment described in this paper show that entrepreneurship research in China's academic community has started to produce results, and a number of relatively influential scholars and institutions dedicated to entrepreneurship research have emerged; as a result, fostering ecosystems have been formed in the field of entrepreneurship research. Nevertheless, the standard and influence of Chinese scholars and entrepreneurship research remain highly uneven, and many higher-learning institutions have yet to start entrepreneurship education and research. Moreover, entrepreneurship research tends to be narrow in perspective and limited in scope, and scholars and institutions rarely collaborate with one another in entrepreneurship research.