Western ideological homogeneity in entrepreneurial finance research: Evidence from highly cited publications

Abstract: Entrepreneurs play crucial roles in global sustainable development, but limited financial resources constrain their performance and survival rate. Entrepreneurial finance discipline is, therefore, born to explore the connection between finance and entrepreneurship. Despite the global presence of entrepreneurship, the literature of entrepreneurial finance is suspected to be Western ideologically homogenous. Thus, the objective of this study is to examine the existence of Western ideological homogeneity in entrepreneurial finance literature. Employing the mindsponge mechanism and bibliometric analyses (Y-index and social structure), we analyze 412 highly cited publications extracted from Web of Science database and find Western ideological dominance as well as weak tolerance towards heterogeneity in the set of core ideologies of entrepreneurial finance. These results are consistent across author-, institution-, and country-levels, which reveals strong evidence for the existence of Western ideological homogeneity in the field. We recommend editors, reviewers, and authors to have proactive actions to diversify research topics and enhancing knowledge exchange to avoid the shortfalls of ideological homogeneity. Moreover, the synthesis of mindsponge mechanism and bibliometric analyses are suggested as a possible way to evaluate the state of ideological diversity in other scientific disciplines.