We conduct two literature reviews to explore what risk is in entrepreneurship and across business fields. The objective of these reviews is to shed light on the heterogeneity of the risk construct. In doing this, we are able to contribute to entrepreneurship research by informing scholars of a wider spectrum of risks in the literature, as well as the implications that adopting different views offers for future entrepreneurship research and practice. We find that the term “risk” is often used casually, without clear connections to category, level of analysis, and perspective. To address this, we propose a multidimensional conceptualization of risk. Moreover, our reviews suggest that entrepreneurship researchers are only scratching the surface with regard to the extant studies of risks and risk-related constructs. We highlight similarities and distinctions between entrepreneurship and other business research fields, which, in turn, help inform future research opportunities. Our future research program is aimed at both helping delineate risk in entrepreneurship conceptually and operationally while also illuminating exciting paths for expanding the study of risk across environmental level risks (sociopolitical and market risk categories) and firm and individual level risks (default, liquidity, operational, and pure risk categories).

中文翻译：

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究竟什么是风险？回顾跨商业领域的构建异质性及其对创业研究的启示


我们进行了两次文献综述，以探讨创业和跨商业领域的风险。这些综述的目的是阐明风险结构的异质性。在此过程中，我们能够通过告知学者文献中更广泛的风险，以及采用不同观点对未来创业研究和实践的影响，为创业研究做出贡献。我们发现 “风险” 一词经常被随意使用，与类别、分析水平和观点没有明确的联系。为了解决这个问题，我们提出了一个多维的风险概念化。此外，我们的评论表明，创业研究人员只是触及了现有风险和风险相关结构研究的皮毛。我们强调了创业与其他商业研究领域之间的相似之处和区别，这反过来又有助于为未来的研究机会提供信息。我们未来的研究计划旨在帮助从概念和操作上描述创业中的风险，同时也为扩大环境层面风险（社会政治和市场风险类别）以及公司和个人层面的风险（违约、流动性、运营和纯风险类别）的风险研究提供令人兴奋的途径。