Microentrepreneurship : a pragmatic research field

Until recently, entrepreneurship research has neglected the question of micro entrepreneurship. The typified micro-entrepreneur is an owner-manager, perceiving, knowing and acting, intimately embedded in his (her) own social context. According to William James, the pragmatist methodology appraises the processes relating "percepts" and "concepts". The key assumptions are individualism and subjectivism, pluralism, evolutionism, relativism and utilitarianism. Searching for feasible, satisfactory and useful decisions, at the both individual and social levels, the pragmatic approach has inspired a strategic grid, aimed to improve the search process at the heart of the turbulent and neglected world of micro entrepreneurship, every entrepreneur being assumed as idiosyncratic, faced with specific problems and situations of his own.

That grid helps to enlighten the relativism of choices, based on the philosophic assumption of contingency. It encompasses the plurality of events and problems, and assesses the link between the both logic(s) and practice(s) of action(s). The high a priori variety of singular events and types of micro-entrepren eurs will entail a growing cooperation between scholars of different fields, especially for teaching and learning policies. [Publisher's Text].