Assessing the ideological homogeneity in entrepreneurial finance research by highly cited publications

The study addresses whether entrepreneurial finance research exhibits Western ideological homogeneity. Prior work suggested Western dominance in productive and influential authors, institutions, and countries, and emphasized Western-rooted topics such as venture capital and crowdfunding. Given entrepreneurship’s importance to innovation, job creation, and sustainable development, an ideologically narrow literature may limit understanding of diverse financing practices shaped by culture, politics, and technology across regions. The purpose is to assess if Western ideology dominates the highly influential core of the field and whether the field shows low tolerance for non-Western ideologies, using the mindsponge mechanism and bibliometric techniques. Establishing this is important to inform research agendas and policy-relevant insights beyond Western contexts.

Theoretical background centers on defining ideology and identifying it across social groups. Adopting Van Dijk’s view, ideology is the foundation of social representations shared by a group, comprising socially shared, fundamental belief systems acquired over life. Geographical classification is a practical proxy for ideology due to links between culture and regional contexts. Western ideology is discussed through the lens of neoliberalism and universalism of markets, contrasting with Confucian-influenced Asian societies and socialist-oriented market economies (e.g., Vietnam, China). Huntington’s civilization thesis and broader notions of culture support the use of geography as an ideological proxy. The concept of ideological homogeneity entails two core characteristics: dominance of a single ideology and low tolerance for alternatives. Political science commonly measures ideological diversity via demographic/opinion variance; however, opinion-based methods are impractical in scientific publishing. Thus, the study operationalizes homogeneity in publishing by examining dominance (prevalence and influence of an ideology) and tolerance (extent of coexistence and collaboration with different ideologies in the influential core). The historical Western rise of venture capital and crowdfunding, driven by US/European socio-political and technological developments, may have shaped the field’s core ideologies, potentially marginalizing other financing modes embedded in different cultural, political, and technological contexts (e.g., Islamic finance methods, family/friend financing, microfinance).

Design: Evaluate Western ideological homogeneity in entrepreneurial finance via two dimensions among highly cited publications: (i) dominance of Western ideology and (ii) tolerance for non-Western ideologies. Analyses are performed at author, institution, and country levels. Framework: Mindsponge mechanism conceptualizes a discipline’s ‘nucleus’ as highly cited publications representing core values/ideologies filtered by citation dynamics. Dominance is gauged by the prevalence of ideologies in this nucleus. Dominance metric: Y-index using straight counting of prominent authorship positions. For each entity (author, institution, country), Y-index parameters are j = FP + RP and h = arctan(RP/FP), where FP = number of first-authored publications and RP = number of corresponding-authored publications. Higher j indicates larger influence; h indicates leadership (more FP) vs supervision (more RP). Straight counting emphasizes first and corresponding authors’ influence and avoids inflation from gift authorship. Tolerance metric: Co-authorship analysis to map collaboration networks and assess cross-ideological connections. Networks are constructed with nodes (authors/institutions/countries) and edges (collaborations). Layouts use the Louvain clustering algorithm and Kamada-Kawai layout; minimum co-authorship frequency threshold = 2. Data source and retrieval: Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection searched on March 2, 2020, Topic field, English-only. Entrepreneurial finance defined as the intersection of entrepreneurship and finance terms. Search query terms (intersection via AND):

• Entrepreneurship set: ("entrepreneur*" OR "startup*" OR "start-up*" OR "new enterprise*" OR "new firm*")
• Finance set: ("financ*" OR "debt*" OR "venture capital*" OR "trade credit*" OR "crowdfund*" OR "angel invest*" OR "private equit*" OR "IPO*") Initial retrieval: 10,529 records (1900–2019 coverage). Highly cited selection via threshold of >100 citations (widely used approach). Exclusions: TC < 100; anonymous authorship. Final dataset: 412 highly cited publications (1991–2017) comprising 333 articles, 40 reviews, 33 proceeding papers, 2 editorials, 2 books, 2 book chapters. Processing: Manual author name disambiguation; computational affiliation disambiguation. Extraction of first and corresponding author names/affiliations to compute Y-index in Excel. Co-authorship networks computed in R using the bibliometrix package. Additional parameters: author-level network includes 729 authors (70 single-authored); networks plotted with threshold frequency ≥2; similar settings applied at institution and country levels.

Overview: From 10,529 records, 412 highly cited publications (>100 citations) were identified (1991–2017): 333 articles, 40 reviews, 33 proceedings papers, 2 editorials, 2 books, 2 book chapters. Authorship includes 729 authors; 70 are single-authored. Dominance (Y-index):

• Author level: All 17 most influential authors (j ≥ 5) are affiliated with Europe/North America (Western). Top examples: Zahra, SA (Y = 17, h = 0.727); Cumming, D (13, 0.709). Most authors have h ≈ 0.7854 (balanced FP and RP). Shane, S has h > 0.7854 (more RP). Indicates Western dominance among leading authors.
• Institution level: Among 371 institutions, the top 20 (j ≥ 7) are all Western; 16 are in the USA, 3 in the UK (University of London, Imperial College London, University of Nottingham), and 1 in Italy (Polytechnic University of Milan). Top five: Harvard University, Stanford University, University of Pennsylvania, University of California, University of Chicago. Harvard shows slight leadership tilt (FP 18, RP 17); University of California and University of Chicago lean toward supervision (Y = 21, h = 0.833).
• Country level: Top 15 countries (j ≥ 7) show strong Western dominance with USA (Y = 511, h = 0.795; FP = 253, RP = 258), UK (85, 0.750; FP = 44, RP = 41), and Canada (39, 0.811) as outliers far beyond others. Non-Western countries appear with much lower j: China (10, 0.588), Israel (9, 0.675), Singapore (7, 0.644). Tolerance (co-authorship networks):
• Author level: 22 research groups identified (threshold ≥2 co-authorships). Largest connectors are Western scholars: Wright M (45 links), Shepherd DA (41), Zahra SA (40), Cumming DJ (33), Shane S (28). Clusters are predominantly Western; frequent Western–non-Western co-authorships are lacking, indicating low tolerance/limited cross-ideological exchange at the author level.
• Institution level: Eight research networks involving 27 Western institutions with ≥2 joint highly cited publications. Top connectors: Stanford University (70 links), Harvard University (58), University of Minnesota (48), Babson College (47), University of Chicago (47). US institutions mainly collaborate with European institutions; no frequent collaborations with non-Western universities detected. One frequent collaboration involves NBER and the World Bank (non-educational IO), not a non-Western university.
• Country level: Of 32 analyzed countries, 19 form three clusters. Non-Western countries represented are China, Korea, and Brazil, all within the US-centered cluster. The US has 570 collaboration links, far exceeding the UK (158 links). Cross-ideological (Western–non-Western) ties are sparse relative to the global spread of entrepreneurship. Synthesis: Across levels, Western dominance and low tolerance toward non-Western ideologies in the highly cited ‘nucleus’ provide strong evidence of Western ideological homogeneity in entrepreneurial finance.

Findings indicate that the highly influential core of entrepreneurial finance is dominated by Western (particularly US, UK, Canada) ideologies, with limited integration of non-Western perspectives. Co-authorship structures reinforce low tolerance for heterogeneity, as collaborations are concentrated within Western networks, and frequent Western–non-Western ties are scarce. This homogeneity can skew editorial and review processes (trust evaluators) toward prevailing ideologies, potentially suppressing unconventional or local-context insights, amplifying biases (e.g., nationality-related editorial bias, coercive citation), and reducing scientific robustness by creating blind spots. Questions remain about whether topic emphasis (e.g., venture capital, crowdfunding) drives homogeneity or whether non-Western viewpoints face higher rejection. Given that reviewer pools are predominantly Western in leading journals, increasing ideological diversity in editorial boards and reviewer bases is critical. Encouraging special issues on non-Western financing modes, and fostering collaborations between Western leading scholars and non-Western researchers, can enhance knowledge exchange and broaden the field’s core values. Diversifying research topics to include culture- and advantage-based contexts (e.g., family financing in Asia, state support in socialist economies) may improve the field’s applicability and resilience.

Using the mindsponge mechanism and bibliometric analyses (Y-index and co-authorship networks), the study provides strong evidence of Western ideological dominance and low tolerance for heterogeneity within the highly cited core of entrepreneurial finance. To mitigate shortfalls associated with ideological homogeneity and support sustainable field development, stakeholders (editors, reviewers, authors) should proactively diversify research topics and enhance cross-ideological collaborations. The mindsponge mechanism-bibliometrics synthesis offers a transferable approach to assess ideological diversity and its evolution in other scientific disciplines and over time.

• Language and database bias: The analysis uses WoS English-language publications, potentially underrepresenting significant national-language research (e.g., Japan) and favoring Western-published work.
• Focus on the ‘nucleus’: Only highly cited publications (>100 citations) are analyzed; emerging and diverse research in the ‘buffer zone’ (less cited work) may be overlooked.
• Scope of ideology and timeframe: Ideology is proxied by geography and assessed within a fixed timeframe; other ideological dimensions (e.g., political) and temporal evolution are not examined. Future research should apply the mindsponge mechanism across disciplines to study longitudinal shifts and broader ideological facets.