Entrepreneurial Identity and Identity Work

Claire M. Leitch, Richard Harrison

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367220143
• eBook ISBN: 9781351756952
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Identities can potentially serve as powerful elements that both drive, and are shaped by, entrepreneurial actions. Entrepreneurial identity is a complex construct with multidisciplinary roots, and therefore there is scope to more fully enrich our theoretical understanding of identity and identity formation, at both individual and organizational levels, and their relationship to entrepreneurial processes, practices and activities.

This book highlights two key features of contemporary research on entrepreneurial identity. First, to see it as a dynamic rather than a (relatively) fixed and unchanging feature, shaped by different life episodes. It is increasingly fluid, multilevel and multidimensional, comprising multiple subidentities rather than a univocal (and unchanging) self. As such, it has a profound effect not only on the way we feel, think and behave, but also on what we aim to achieve. Accordingly, it is vital that its dynamics are better understood, particularly in determining how actors behave in an entrepreneurial context. The book's second focus is on identity work as the process through which entrepreneurial identities are formed and shaped, and the contributors demonstrate how the dynamics of identity formation relate to entrepreneurial outcomes in a range of individual and organizational contexts. This book was originally published as a special issue of Entrepreneurship & Regional Development.

Identity, identity formation and identity work in entrepreneurship: conceptual developments and empirical applications

Claire M. Leitch^a and Richard T. Harrison^b

^aDepartment of Leadership and Management, Lancaster University Management School, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK; ^bCentre for Strategic Leadership and Centre for Entrepreneurship Research, University of Edinburgh Business School, Edinburgh, UK

ABSTRACT

This paper reviews the current status of research into entrepreneurial identity. Identities – individual and organizational – can potentially serve as powerful elements that both drive and are shaped by entrepreneurial actions. Identity is, of course, a complex construct with multidisciplinary roots and consequentially a range of conceptual meanings and theoretical roles associated with it. Building on a framework for identifying schools of thought in the social sciences, we highlight the need for more critical studies of entrepreneurial identity that recognize, first, that entrepreneurial identity is a dynamic and fluid rather than (relatively) fixed and unchanging feature, and second, that research attention should shift from the analysis of identity per se (the identity-as-entity position) to the identity work processes through which entrepreneurial identities are shaped and formed (the identity-as-process position). Following a summary of the key contributions of the five papers included in this Special Issue, we conclude with some pointers for future research.

Introduction

Even though the construct of identity has gained common currency in contemporary social science, it is only relatively recently that it has come to the attention of scholars working in entrepreneurship: ‘knowledge of the role of founder identity in entrepreneurial processes and outcomes is in its very early stages’ (Fauchart and Gruber 2011, 954; Navis and Glynn 2011). In the entrepreneurial domain, it is recognized that the actions and behaviours of a founder or founding team on the creation and subsequent development of a firm are profound. This is because entrepreneurial activities are infused with meaning as a result of the expression of an individual’s identity. As a number of commentators have suggested, identities are the primary sources of motivation for human behaviour. Along with entrepreneurial roles, which ‘are a set of socially held behavioural expectations attached to the positions external to an individual’ (Murnieks and Mosakowski 2007, 2), identities can potentially serve as powerful elements that drive entrepreneurial actions.

In entrepreneurship as in other domains, identity is a complex construct, which as a result of its multidisciplinary roots, has a range of conceptual meanings and theoretical roles associated with it. It can be viewed as our representation of the internalization and incorporation of socially held behavioural expectations. As such, it can have an important impact not only on the way we feel, think and behave (present), but also on what we aim to achieve (future). Further, identity provides us with a frame of reference with which to interpret social situations and potential behaviours and actions in all domains, as it appears to signify who we are in relation to, and how we differ from, others.

Falck, Heblich, and Ludemann (2009) suggest that an individual’s sense of identity is influenced by considerations of social desirability. As entrepreneurs do not construct their identities alone, identity can be regarded as a fundamental bridging concept between the individual and the social (Watson 2009; Ybema et al. 2009). Essentially, it creates a medium through which the entrepreneurial self and the social interact, as the norms and prescriptions, which arise from social interaction impact upon individual behaviour (Laakkonen 2012). As firm creation is both an individual or team and an inherently social activity, and organizations are social constructions, there is value for entrepreneurship scholars in using the bridging construct of identity. This can be applied to exploring and explaining entrepreneurs’ attempts to understand who they are and are not and what they do and do not, in addition to what they should and should not do at all stages in the entrepreneurial process, from entrepreneurial intention through the creation and development of new ventures to the process of entrepreneurial exit.

Beyond this, there is an opportunity to consider the relationship between identity at the level of the individual entrepreneur, within the entrepreneurial team and at the level of the organization. If organizational identity is what is central, distinctive and enduring about an organization (Albert and Whetten 1985), then it serves as a cognitive frame for understanding reality, as a sense-making discourse about and within it as well as a set of shared assumptions and collective claims about it. Organizational identity is embedded in organizational culture and expresses cultural understandings through symbols and images (Hatch and Schultz 2002). As Gioia et al. (2013) have noted there is a major debate between the view that identity is stable over time (the enduring identity proposition) and that sees it as more changeable (the dynamic identity proposition). For entrepreneurship scholars, and in particular for those concerned with the processes of organizational emergence and development, the interaction between identity formation and change in the entrepreneur and identity formation and change in their organization becomes an important, but hitherto relatively unexplored, research avenue.

In seeking to build on this research, this special issue can be seen as a response to earlier calls for more attention to be paid to ‘how individuals construct their social world to entrepreneurial behavior’ (Reynolds 1991, 67), on the basis that ‘the social formation of the entrepreneurial self is still an underdeveloped topic of research’ (Down and Reveley 2004, 236). There is scope to more fully enrich our theoretical understanding of identity and identity formation, at both individual and organizational levels, and its relationship to entrepreneurial processes, practices and activities in two ways.

First, entrepreneurial identity is a dynamic and fluid rather than a (relatively) fixed and unchanging feature, shaped by different life episodes and the patterns of those (Lindgren and Wåhlin 2001). It is, in this view, a complex, increasingly fluid, multi-level and multidimensional construct comprising multiple sub-identities rather than a univocal (and unchanging) self, and as such has a profound effect not only on the way we feel, think and behave, but also on what we aim to achieve (van Knippenberg et al. 2004; Sen 2006). Accordingly, it is vital that its dynamics are better understood, particularly in determining how actors behave in an entrepreneurial context.

Second, attention is shifting from the analysis of identity per se to the process through which entrepreneurial identities are formed and shaped – only by understanding the dynamics of identity formation through identity work (Watson 2009), is it possible to relate identity to entrepreneurial outcomes. While much of the research to date has focused on understanding identity, it is increasingly being recognized that insufficient attention has been paid to the process of identity formation (Gioia et al. 2013) and how this is related to the processes of organizing, that is ‘the routine activities which characterize much of organizational life’ as well as ‘the objectives that organizations (at least notionally) pursue’ (Coupland and Brown 2012, 2).

Discourses of entrepreneurial identity

Much of the research on entrepreneurial identity has been empirical, employing a number of concepts (among them, role identity theory, social identity theory, structural identity theory, narrative and discourse analysis) to explore its role and impact. Scholars of entrepreneurial identity tend to comprehend the field and the nature of the phenomenon within the narrow bounds of their own research interests.

Echoing Gartner (2010), this research sits within the discipline structure of entrepreneurship as a field of study, which like any management discipline can be seen as a ‘particular historical and social mode of engagement that restricts what is thinkable, knowable and doable in its disciplinary domain’ (Johnson and Duberley 2000, 101–102). However, these domains are not discrete and, as is common more generally, identity research in entrepreneurship is characterized by importing theories from other disciplines (Harrison and Leitch 1996; Kenworthy and McMullan 2012). The fact that theory in entrepreneurship is exogenous, in the sense of being derived from theories and constructs developed elsewhere, rather than endogenously developed within the field, poses a major challenge.

The interdisciplinary transfer of theories, concepts and constructs is very often incomplete, in that it does not fully take into account their intellectual history, the current deliberations over their efficacy and developments in the evolution of thinking in the parent discipline. In other words, although valuable in enriching and providing a stimulus to the development of entrepreneurial identity research, the de facto reliance on a snapshot of debates elsewhere rather than substantive engagement in the ongoing conversation within them may limit the benefits we gain from this transfer (Losee 1995; Pohl and Hirsch Hadorn 2008). This implies both risk and opportunity (Gartner 2010). The risk is that researchers continue to draw on their preferred mix of research designs and theories while remaining unaware, even dismissive, of studies within other discourses. Consequently, the development of a deeper multifaceted understanding of the phenomenon is constrained. The opportunity, however, is that engaging with different discourses can help highlight the taken-for-granted assumptions in entrepreneurial identity research, and thus open up new avenues of research, stimulate new questions and help generate new insights (cf. Mabey and Morrell 2011).

For Davidsson (2013), the entrepreneurship field as a whole has been created to a significant extent by certain normative ideas, methods and approaches. Within this there is growing recognition that a European discourse of entrepreneurship can be differentiated (by degree, rather than in kind) from the dominant, North American one (Steyaert 2007). This discourse is increasingly characterized by

a willingness to step outside of the entrepreneurship field, itself, to embrace a variety of ideas, particularly from philosophy and the humanities and … a concern for the ‘other’, so as to challenge the unspoken and often unrecognized ‘taken-for-granted’ aspects of what entrepreneurship is and what it might be. (Gartner 2013, 6)

In this Special Issue, we have assembled a number of papers that demonstrate how traditions other than the normative one may be fruitfully employed to point new contexts for research within which new questions can be posed. This is achieved by stepping outside the narrow entrepreneurial research tradition to draw on wider contemporary debates in management and the social sciences that are relevant to the construction and analysis of entrepreneurial identity at individual and organizational levels. Thus, Gartner’s concern for the ‘other’, moving beyond the often the-taken-for-granted nature of entrepreneurship research is demonstrated.

In focusing on the underlying discourses of research, that is ways of thinking about research positions which highlights their assumptions and relationships, the framework developed by Alvesson and Deetz (2000) in their approach to critical social science research is useful. Following them, we use two dimensions to classify the discourses of entrepreneurial identity research. First, ‘consensus-dissensus seeking’ focuses on the relation of research practices to dominant social discourses, contrasting perspectives on the basis of the extent to which they work within (consensus) or disrupt (dissensus) the dominant set of structurings of knowledge, social relations and identities. Second, ‘local/emergent-elite/a priori’ conceptions focus on the origin of concepts and problem statements as central to the process of undertaking research. Local/emergent conceptions are developed in relation with organizational members and transformed in the research process, while ‘elite/a priori’ conceptions are those brought to the research by the researcher and generally held static throughout the research process. This distinguishes between concepts developed with the organizational members being studied and those applied to them (Alvesson and Deetz 2000, 28).¹ Taken together, these define four ‘prototypical discursive features’ – normative, interpretive, critical and dialogic – which can be applied to locate exemplars of entrepreneurial identity research (Figure 1).

The mainstream discourse on entrepreneurial identity has suffered from taken-for-granted assumptions about the role of consensus and the appropriate sourcing of explanatory concepts, set largely within a normative discourse which, we would argue, is predicated on an ontology of being. Drawing on Alvesson and Deetz (2000) analytical framework, we argue that these presumptions in mainstream entrepreneurial identity discourse have silenced important and related discourses that occur in the research traditions from which identity theory draws. By identifying and giving voice to these discourses, research on entrepreneurial identity will be enriched by problematizing prior problems and claims in addition to the generation of a rich new set of research questions and approaches that suggest greater centrality to the process of identity creation than prior research has claimed or supported. In this, we emphasize the importance of developing research that adopts a local/ emergent perspective. While there is an extensive, largely European, interpretivist literature on entrepreneurial identity, this is mainly focused on the analysis of socially constructed identities-as-entities and of the process-as-entity of their development and change.

Figure 1. Social discourse, the origin of concepts and the mapping of entrepreneurial identity research exemplars.

Source: Framework adapted from Alvesson and Deetz (2000).

Within the normative discourse, concepts are considered to be broadly self-evident, their qualities are objectively defined and essentialist and expressed as predetermined traits, styles or personality. As such, identity is viewed as an external representation and the analytical frameworks employed concentrate on establishing the co-variance between it and other phenomena of entrepreneurial interest. This research is grounded in the principles and practices of modernity, in which attempts are made to investigate, measure, analyse, record and classify particular phenomena. In the interpretive discourse identity is considered to be socially and culturally construed, recognizing that identity is a social as well as a personal construct. However, while this work has been insightful, there is an underlying assumption, as with the normative discourse, that identity itself is an unproblematic construct. Identity research in entrepreneurship, whether in the normative or interpretive discourse, has tended to focus on either social identity theory (self-identification with some group or social category) or (role) identity theory (Powell and Baker 2014), with growing recognition of the ‘looking-glass’ relation between self-identity and a variety of social identities (Watson 2009; Anderson and Warren 2011). The further development of entrepreneurial identity research within the interpretive discourse will build on the explicit recognition that the key conceptions and understandings derive not from theory per se, but from the interaction with, and input from, the subjects under study. In this, identity is viewed not as an objectively defined phenomenon but as a fluid consequence arising from, contributing to and being shaped by social practices (Mabey and Morrell 2011, 110).

The critical discourse shares with the normative an emphasis on the objective existence of ultimate truths about the social world, but recognizes that identity as experienced by, and manifest in individuals and groups, such as entrepreneurs, is socially, politically and historically mediated via competing ideologies and power relations. Central to this discourse is an emphasis on emancipation from the unthinking acquiescence to, or adoption of, social dynamics, ideologies and identities. The dialogic discourse focuses on the constructed nature of people and reality, the fragmentation and potential disunity in any discourse and the subjectivity of identity as inherently fragile and temporary. In this, therefore, identit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Titel Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1 Identity, identity formation and identity work in entrepreneurship: conceptual developments and empirical applications
• 2 Identity capital: an exploration in the context of youth social entrepreneurship
• 3 Entrepreneurial passions and identities in different contexts: a comparison between high-tech and social entrepreneurs
• 4 Entrepreneurs’ social identity and the preference of causal and effectual behaviours in start-up processes
• 5 Developing optimal distinctiveness: organizational identity processes in new ventures engaged in business model innovation
• 6 Emergent identity formation and the co-operative: theory building in relation to alternative organizational forms
• Index