Entrepreneurship Theory And Practice

---
name: entrepreneurship-theory-and-practice
description: Use when targeting Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice (ETP) or deciding whether a theory-driven entrepreneurship manuscript fits this venue. Encodes the journal's fit, framing, method-and-evidence bar, house style, official-submission re-check, and desk-reject heuristics.
---

# Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice (entrepreneurship-theory-and-practice)

## Journal positioning

Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice (ETP), published by SAGE, is one of the two flagship entrepreneurship journals and is distinguished by its strong theory-development orientation across the full breadth of entrepreneurship research. Where its sibling JBV centers tightly on the venturing process, ETP welcomes conceptual and empirical work across diverse methods — quantitative, qualitative, and conceptual — united by a substantive contribution to entrepreneurship theory. The audience is entrepreneurship scholars, so a paper must advance how the field theorizes entrepreneurial phenomena, not merely describe them.

This skill is a **fit / venue-selection / re-framing** tool. It does not replace the journal's current official submission guidelines. Before submitting, re-check the live author instructions on the SAGE / ETP site and the submission system.

## When to trigger

- The author names ETP (or the entrepreneurship flagship tier) as the venue.
- A theory-forward entrepreneurship paper — conceptual, qualitative, or quantitative — needs a home that prizes theoretical contribution.
- An entrepreneurship study needs re-framing so the theoretical advance, not the description, leads.
- The author needs ETP's desk-reject risks and a credible `journal-of-business-venturing` / `academy-of-management-journal` / `strategic-management-journal` alternative list.

## Scope & topic fit

- The full breadth of entrepreneurship: opportunity, venture creation, entrepreneurial cognition and behavior, founding teams, growth, and exit.
- Family business, social and sustainable entrepreneurship, corporate venturing, entrepreneurial finance, and entrepreneurial ecosystems.
- Context and heterogeneity in entrepreneurship — gender, institutions, culture, and emerging economies — theorized rather than described.
- Conceptual and empirical work across methods, judged by theoretical contribution.

## Method & evidence bar

- Theory development is central: the paper must make a clear conceptual contribution to entrepreneurship — new theory, elaboration, or a meaningful test.
- Methodological pluralism with rigor — quantitative work needs sound design, identification or careful inference, and treatment of selection/survivorship in venture data; qualitative work needs transparent analysis and a strong data-to-theory path.
- Conceptual papers must be genuinely novel and rigorously argued, not literature summaries.
- Engagement with the relevant entrepreneurship-theory conversation is expected.

## Structure & house style

- The front end develops an entrepreneurship-theory problem and positions it in an ongoing scholarly debate.
- A strong ETP paper foregrounds the theoretical contribution in the discussion and bounds its conditions.
- Qualitative papers present transparent analytic narratives; quantitative papers subordinate technique to the theoretical argument; conceptual papers carry novel logic.
- House style rewards scholarly, theory-literate writing; ETP runs special issues that develop the field — re-check current calls.

## Official-submission checklist

- Before giving submission-ready advice, read `../../resources/source-basis.md` and `../../resources/official-source-map.md`; start from the official source anchors for this journal family, then cite the current journal-specific page you checked.
- Search the live site for "Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice submission guidelines / SAGE author guidelines" and follow the current version.
- Re-check word/length limits, abstract format, anonymization for double-blind review, reference style, and article-type rules (empirical, conceptual).
- Re-check current open-science, data-availability, and AI-use disclosure policies, and any open special-issue calls.
- If the live official instructions conflict with this skill, the official instructions win.

## Pre-submission self-check

- [ ] One sentence stating the contribution to entrepreneurship theory.
- [ ] The method (conceptual, qualitative, or quantitative) is rigorous and fit to the contribution.
- [ ] Venture-data hazards (selection, survivorship) and common-method concerns are addressed where relevant.
- [ ] Conceptual papers are novel and rigorously argued, not reviews; context is theorized, not just described.
- [ ] Article type, framing, references, and anonymization match the current ETP guide.

## Common desk-reject triggers

- A descriptive entrepreneurship study with no theoretical contribution.
- A conceptual paper that summarizes literature without a genuine theoretical advance.
- Venture data analyzed without addressing selection/survivorship; survey work with unaddressed common-method bias.
- A general strategy/OB paper set among entrepreneurs with no entrepreneurship-theory advance.

## Re-routing decision

- A paper centered tightly on the venturing process / opportunity with strong empirics → `journal-of-business-venturing`.
- Entrepreneurship with a firm-strategy/performance core → `strategic-management-journal`; theory-driven management empirics → `academy-of-management-journal`.
- Pure management theory beyond entrepreneurship → `academy-of-management-review`; entrepreneurship-stream review → `academy-of-management-annals`.
- Org theory of new organizations → `organization-science`; broad management empirics → `journal-of-management-en`; European theory-method → `journal-of-management-studies` or `organization-studies`; international entrepreneurship → `journal-of-international-business-studies`; innovation-driven venturing → `research-policy`.

## Output format

```text
[Fit] High / Medium / Low (one-line reason)
[Target] Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice
[Topic tags] <2–3 closest topics>
[Method/evidence] <is the entrepreneurship-theory contribution + rigor at ETP's bar?>
[Top risk] <the single most likely reason for rejection>
[Official items to re-check] <submission system / length / references / article type / special-issue calls>
[Re-route suggestion] <if not a fit, a better-matched venue>
```