Artisan entrepreneurship: a systematic literature review and research agenda

The purpose of this paper is to review and critique the extant body of literature on artisan entrepreneurship and to develop a research agenda for future studies based on the identified trends and themes.

A systematic literature review (SLR) was undertaken across 96 journals ranked by the Association of Business Schools. The initial search yielded 86 papers. Further scrutiny of these studies led to the development of exclusion criteria, resulting in a refined list of 32 articles which advance understanding of artisan entrepreneurship. Using an open coding approach, this SLR then identified seven core themes and 16 sub-themes which the extant literature examines.

This SLR finds that artisan entrepreneurship research contributes to understanding of entrepreneurial behaviour, context, motivation, development, resources, diversity and classification. It provides timely insights into coopetition practices, the reciprocal relationship between place and entrepreneurship and the coexistence of social and economic goals. It also reveals characteristics which facilitate venture development, discovers the mutability of various forms of capital, highlights the necessity of studying diverse experiences and identifies benefits and limits of typologies. Main elements of the resulting research agenda include calls for more quantitative research, further attention to context and more holistic treatment of a wider variety of stories.

This paper presents the first SLR of craft and artisan entrepreneurship research. It not only identifies, analyses and critiques the main streams in the literature, therefore providing an overview of the state of the field, but also highlights areas where this scholarship contributes to understanding of entrepreneurship and upon which future research can build. Artisan entrepreneurship is thus established as worthy of investigation in its own right and as an appropriate context in which to explore entrepreneurial processes. Furthermore, this SLR presents an agenda for future research to advance understanding of artisan entrepreneurship.