Entrepreneurship: Semantic varieties and problems of a taxonomy

Entrepreneurship has become an established expression in science and in public policy, but the term appears to be a label rather than a notion covering a domain which is unique and consensually shared. The history of economic theory proves to have changing conceptions and definitions of entrepreneurship and also, in a more narrow sense, discussion in contemporary policy shows oscillating semantics when talking about entrepreneurship. What seems to be easy and evident is far from actually being so. The paper will take this notion as a background and will endeavor to differentiate and to spell out a four-square-matrix dealing with different relationships between entrepreneurship and self-employment.  In one case, entrepreneurship and self-employment have a one-to-one fit and serve identically, while in other cases, entrepreneurship doesn’t correspond with the labor market category of self-employment or, vice versa, given self-employment, doesn’t go along empirically with entrepreneurship. The fourth square indicates the non-existence of both categories. Part-time or full-time working free-lancers, farmers, micro-entrepreneurs without employees, and “big” entrepreneurs employing a larger share of wage- or salary dependent employees are difficult to summarize in one single box. The paper tries to puzzle with interpretations of classic authors including Knight, Schumpeter, Hayek, Kirzner, Baumol and some more recent ones in order to arrive at a more substantial understanding of different intentions provided by different authors. The intention of the paper is to provide an introduction into different semantics and to highlight and to explain difficulties when talking about entrepreneurship in order to systematize competing and hazy interpretations, and to fight against myths, which are still held to be true.