Exploring the Practice-Research Nexus in Entrepreneurship Skills Development: A Critical Realist Study

Abstract

“Human society has not developed in accordance with a prearranged plan, but empirically, in the course of a long, complicated and contradictory struggle” (Trotsky, 1986, pp.24). This paper engages the power of transcendentalism by applying the social realist explanatory program as anchored on the critical realist philosophy. At the core of the claims is the main argument that what can easily become the mainstreamed ways of thinking-making-doing about the social world tend to stem from the de-ontologised positions and their self-referential explanations, which always derive from the default positions and the faulty consciousness about the idea of “being”. Methodology, the study thus questioned what could be the dialectical relationship of entrepreneurship skills development as the field of practice and of research. As such, this reflective practice project was anchored on the transcendental argument/question, “What is it that must have allowed for the management and leadership of entrepreneurship skills development projects to be managed in the way that were in the four cases of faculties and the coordinating unit at a selected university of technology in South Africa?”  By such a question, the paper argues for the matters of “space” and thus business and management functions, “beyond” the physical in terms of what can be argued as the de-ontologised positions and their self-referential explanations, which always derive from the default positions and the faulty consciousness about the idea of “being”. The “becoming”, as the new realms of possibilities, which must be anchored on deep change, which is stratified, causally efficacious, and emergent. The findings therefore is a proposed conceptual framework that draws on transcendentalism about the business and management practices, per the cited cases, but also the practical implications about engagement and transformation of higher education as most institutions are starting their first year of the institutional strategic plans towards vision 2030. As such, value addition about the paper is its scholarly contribution about the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, especially Goal 4 on Quality Enhancement and Goal 17 on International Partnerships. In that way, the value of scholarship about entrepreneurship skills development is potentially in terms of the theory-methodology-practical program chain.