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

[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>