Entrepreneurial cognition and socially situated approach: a systematic and bibliometric analysis

Research on entrepreneurial cognition (EC) has evolved in recent years, and the aim of this contribution is to offer a clear, systematic, and bibliometric review of EC as a field of study from a more dynamic perspective, building on Socially Situated Cognition theory (SSC). Based on a data set that covers 18 years of research, from 1998 to 2016, the present study analyzes all of the 151 papers available in the Web of Science Core Collection and 15 editorials, book chapters, and books directly referring to entrepreneurial cognition. Building on our results, we divided EC studies into two stages, namely the “emerging” (1998–2007) and the “mature” (2008–2016). In addition, with this study we suggest three main topics that should be investigated in future researches: entrepreneurial action should be considered endogenous in the entrepreneurship process and the studies in the field of embodied and distributed cognition should be expanded.