Mythicizing and reification in entrepreneurial discourse: Ideology-critique of entrepreneurial studies

This article discusses the effects of ideological control in conventional entrepreneurial discourses and praxis. Following postmodernist, deconstructionist and critical theory traditions, the ideas expressed about the phenomenon of entrepreneurship, and its contiguous notions and concepts, are deconstructed to reveal the dysfunctional effects of ideological control both in research and in praxis. It is shown that the concept of entrepreneurship is discriminatory, gender-biased, ethnocentrically determined and ideologically controlled, sustaining not only prevailing societal biases, but serving as a tapestry for unexamined and contradictory assumptions and knowledge about the reality of entrepreneurs.