Mapping the Literature on Entrepreneurial Coaching: A Two-Layer Scientometric Analysis

Abstract

Purpose: Entrepreneurial coaching (EC) has emerged as a recognised support mechanism for venture creation. Yet its intellectual structure, thematic organisation, and conceptual positioning within the broader entrepreneurial support ecosystem remain insufficiently mapped.

Design/Methodology/Approach: This study adopts a two-layer scientometric design. Layer 1 examines the internal intellectual structure of EC through 31 peer-reviewed articles retrieved from Web of Science and Scopus (2009–2026). Layer 2 extends the analysis to 74 articles from broader entrepreneurial support literature. Performance analysis and science mapping, including co-citation analysis, keyword co-occurrence, thematic mapping, and Multiple Correspondence Analysis, were conducted using VOSviewer and Biblioshiny within the Bibliometrix R package.

Findings: Layer 1 reveals that EC is an emerging but progressively consolidating research domain with interdisciplinary foundations across social cognitive theory, entrepreneurship, and relational support traditions. Coaching and entrepreneurial support constitute the field's motor theme, while entrepreneurial coaching and entrepreneurial self-efficacy form a developing niche. A structural shift is identified from EC as a programmatic incubation tool to EC as a mechanism of entrepreneurial identity and capability development. Layer 2 reveals that EC occupies a conceptually distinct but structurally peripheral position within the ecosystem, forming its own cluster defined by self-efficacy, mentoring, and behaviour though absent from the ecosystem's motor themes. Multiple Correspondence Analysis confirms a fundamental conceptual separation between EC research discourse and the structural ecosystem vocabulary.

Originality/Value: This study contributes a two-layer scientometric mapping of EC, an analytical architecture that simultaneously maps the field's internal intellectual structure and its positioning within the broader entrepreneurial support ecosystem, an approach not previously applied to entrepreneurial coaching research.

Theoretical implications. EC's interdisciplinary embeddedness explains its persistent terminological fragmentation, while the progressive dominance of social cognitive theory signals an emerging phase of conceptual consolidation.

Practical implications: EC should be understood as a psychologically grounded complement to structural support mechanisms. Its value lying in the relational and behavioural dimensions that incubation and acceleration programmes do not address.