Cultural Entrepreneurship: Theorizing the Dark Sides

Abstract

Scholars have examined the importance of culture in entrepreneurship since at least the 1970s. Lounsbury and Glynn (2001) gave these efforts new impetus by explicitly theorizing entrepreneurship as a cultural process. In the intervening 20 years, work in this area has proliferated. To date, however, this work has emphasized the positive aspects of cultural entrepreneurship almost exclusively. Not all episodes of cultural entrepreneurship are positive, though, and not all entrepreneurial stories have a happy ending. Acknowledging this, we develop a framework for investigating the dark sides of cultural entrepreneurship. We posit four pathways through which cultural entrepreneurship might lead to negative outcomes. Along one dimension, we distinguish false promises and harmful practices. The second dimension differentiates between negative outcomes and negative spillovers. We illustrate our arguments with real-world examples, and discuss how our framework signals new research opportunities related to corruption and wrongdoing, as well as the potential for cultural entrepreneurship research to focus on authenticity as well as legitimacy.

Citation

Gehman, J. and Wry, T. (2022), "Cultural Entrepreneurship: Theorizing the Dark Sides", Lockwood, C. and Soublière, J.-F. (Ed.) Advances in Cultural Entrepreneurship (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 80), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 97-110. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X20220000080007