Philosophy of entrepreneurship as conceptual housekeeping

This paper calls for a philosophy of entrepreneurship as a basis for essential maintenance and regulation in our theories of entrepreneurship. It draws on key ideas from the work of Quine to highlight major philosophical questions for theory evaluation and development. These include the ontological commitments that our theories make in describing the world of entrepreneurship, the challenges of inferring what particular terms in the theories refer to, and how the positing of abstract entities enables further theoretical development. It presents a framework for theoretical contribution, which directs attention to connecting the linguistic communities of practice and scholarship and the interplay between intensional and extensional aspects of a theory.