Understanding the multifunctional role of entrepreneurial coaching through a systematic review of the literature

Purpose The aim of this study is to systematise the entrepreneurial coaching (EC) literature by understanding how the phenomenon has been investigated along four dimensions inspired by Gartner’s (1985) conceptualisation of entrepreneurship: entrepreneurial process, context, target and outcomes. In so doing, this study will provide a frame of its multifunctional role and identify relevant gaps and suggestions for future research. Design/methodology/approach We conducted a systematic literature review to collect existing works on EC. We analysed 85 selected papers with a qualitative content analysis that allowed us to highlight relevant research themes for the entrepreneurial process, context, outcomes and target. Findings Our results demonstrate that EC has a multifunctional role in entrepreneurship that can be summarised in five different typologies, depending on the stage of the entrepreneurial process in which it is applied, the context, the target and the outcomes. Originality/value As one of the first attempts to systematise studies on EC, this work extends previous conceptualisation of EC by detailing different typologies of this intervention, thereby contributing to reduced fragmentation and conceptual ambiguity.