Narratives of Enterprise: Crafting Entrepreneurial Self‐Identity in a Small Firm

Citation

Vallance, P. (2008), "Narratives of Enterprise: Crafting Entrepreneurial Self‐Identity in a Small Firm", Critical Perspectives on International Business, Vol. 4 No. 4, pp. 426-428. https://doi.org/10.1108/cpoib.2008.4.4.426.3

In Narratives of Enterprise, Simon Down explores the construction of entrepreneurial self‐identity, drawing on a detailed piece of qualitative research centred on a pair of owner‐managers of a small engineering firm. The clearly defined focus throughout is on how these research subjects use narratives to create and give coherence to their sense of self as entrepreneurs. The interdisciplinary and ethnographic focus on how these narrative resources are based in the ordinary, everyday working lives of entrepreneurs ensures that this well‐written book will be of appeal to many readers of Critical Perspectives on International Business.

The first two chapters outline the areas in which the study aims to make a contribution, by positioning it within existing academic debates concerning enterprise and self‐identity. Down's main concern is to align the study with “arguments for a more processual, interpretive and qualitative understanding of entrepreneurial behaviour” (p. 15), against the “normative economic and psychological perspectives” that have been the theoretical and methodological orthodoxy in this field (p. 14). Hence, in the introduction chapter he defines the main purpose of the book in terms of “describing, clarifying and creating a vocabulary” (p. 3) for a narrative‐based understanding of these processes of entrepreneurial self‐identity formation. Down notes the near absence of previous studies that focus on self‐identity in an entrepreneurial context (p. 4), so no prolonged engagement with existing literature in this field is included in the book. Instead the main theoretical discussion (Chapter 2) takes the form of a survey of key ideas from prominent writers on narrative and self‐identity in sociology, psychology, and organisational studies, which maps out the ground on which the conceptual vocabulary is developed in the subsequent chapters. I felt that the link between this discussion and the empirical focus of the study was not always immediately clear in this chapter, especially in a section that touches upon wider debates regarding structure‐agency and the role of language in social analysis. However, a few important points emerge strongly from it that are carried over into the empirical chapters; most notably concerning the use of “public narratives” (e.g. common discourses on the role of entrepreneurs) as social resources in the construction of individual self‐identity (p. 24).

The core of the book unfolds across four empirical chapters, each of which Down has based on a different narrative theme that he found present in conversations with his research subjects (named Paul and John). This structure allows the research account itself to be written in a narrative style, with the chapter themes effectively linked together through the common elements of the empirical case. So Chapter 3, on the theme of relationships, establishes the main details of the research setting by describing how Paul and John's mutual sense of self as entrepreneurs had been born out of their history of working together previously in a larger company, and further defined through the more ambiguous nature of their relationships with two employees in their current small firm. Chapter 4 again connects the process of identity formation to Paul and John's earlier experiences, with its theme of the generational narratives through which they position themselves as part of a younger, more entrepreneurial generation against senior managers in their parent company. Chapter 5 focuses on the ways in which their narratives are associated with, and performed through, different spaces; the office, site visits, and socialising at their homes and a local pub. Chapter 6 explores the constructive ways in which “clichés” are drawn on by Paul and John when talking about themselves as entrepreneurs: for instance, with those discourses that positively affirm their ambition, self‐sufficiency, and independence from the bureaucracy they associate with larger firms.

For me, this research account has two features that that are of particular distinction. First, the mode of overlapping thematic analysis, combined with the narrow focus of the research case, allows Down to go beyond merely showing that Paul and John's identities are constructed through narrative means, to also explore in some depth the form that these narratives take. This means that several recurrent elements and tensions within these narratives are highlighted: for instance, concerning the relationship between self‐identity and social identity, mentioned above, and the “oppositional” nature of some of these narratives when Paul and John's identities rely on differentiation from certain groups or practices. Second, is the detailed use of the empirical material to elucidate the thematic analysis in each chapter. Appropriately given the emphasis placed on language as constitutive of identity in the book, these chapters include extensive use of excerpts from the multiple interviews the author conducted with his research subjects throughout the fieldwork, which helps to convey a sense of the spoken narratives that the account is concerned with.

The conclusion chapter begins with a short epilogue in which Down describes returning to visit the fieldwork site two and a half years after the main research period had ended, to find that following a merger Paul and John were no longer entrepreneurs, running their own venture, but had become employees with different roles in a larger organisation. This leads Down to emphasise the “transient, elastic and dynamic” (p. 108) nature of self‐identity narratives in his conclusions, and acknowledge the necessarily partial and situated nature of his research findings, due to them being part of his own exercise of constructing an ordered academic narrative (p. 116). This last point hints at methodological issues around his role in shaping the research, which had been present in the first‐person description of events from the fieldwork that is used in parts of the research account. These are directly addressed in a methodological appendix of decent length (11 pages), in which Down explains that the project came about through a pre‐existing friendship with Paul and John. The appendix is particularly revealing on his experience of doing ethnographic research with these kinds of field relations, as well as covering the methods used and process of writing up. This level of methodological reflection means that the book will also be of value to those in business and management fields or the social sciences with an interest in qualitative research practice and especially ethnography.