Venture tales: Practical storytelling strategies underpinning entrepreneurial narratives

Narratives help entrepreneurs and potential venture supporters to make sense of new ventures and to frame entrepreneurial journeys. Despite current understanding of how narratives shape entrepreneurial outcomes, however, there is limited guidance about how entrepreneurs might craft their own narratives in practice. In this article, we identify six types of entrepreneurial narratives—(1) an identity narrative, (2) an opportunity narrative, (3) a projective narrative, (4) a failure narrative, (5) a pivot narrative, and (6) a resourcefulness narrative—and we detail practical storytelling strategies entrepreneurs can use to shape each of these narrative types. We then propose that entrepreneurs can combine, sequence, and revise these narratives as the entrepreneurial journey unfolds. Knowledge of how to strategically manage the full entrepreneurial narrative repertoire enables entrepreneurs to create meaning and value where there once was none and to capture that value over time as a venture grows.     

Intersectionality of Ethnic and Entrepreneurial Identities: A Study of Post‐War Polish Entrepreneurs in an English City

An understanding of ethnic and immigrant entrepreneurship is developed in this paper by exploring how ethnic and entrepreneurial identities intersect. Bourdieu's concept of habitus frames the analysis of narratives of five post‐war Polish entrepreneurs in Leicester. The narrative analysis illuminates the multilayered and nuanced nature of identities. The Polish origin of these entrepreneurs’ habitus was interpreted in light of individual and collective experiences gained growing up in the United Kingdom. While Polish identity was pertinent, it did not define the narrative of entrepreneurship. Our contribution is a theoretically informed, rich qualitative study of what ethnic identity means to individuals and how it intersects with entrepreneurial identity.     

Narrative attributions of entrepreneurial failure

We examine how organizational stakeholders use narratives in their psychological processing of venture failure. We identify a range of “narrative attributions”, alternative accounts of failure that actors draw on to process the failure and their role in it. Our analysis provides a view of entrepreneurial failure as a complex social construction, as entrepreneurs, hired executives, employees and the media construct failure in distinctively different ways. Narratives provide means for both cognitive and emotional processing of failure through grief recovery and self-justification.     

Entrepreneurial Leadership,Patriarchy, Gender,and Identity in the Arab World: Lebanon in Focus

In this paper, we apply insights from poststructuralist feminist theory to contribute to entrepreneurial leadership. By drawing on 21 individual narratives with Lebanese women entrepreneurs, we explore how they determine their status as entrepreneurial leaders and establish their entrepreneurial identities. Although the factors of gender, sociocultural values, and agency can be counteractive, it is agency that creates space for entrepreneurship for women and provides them a means to navigate structural inequalities. The entrepreneurs in this study engage in compliance, disregard, and defiance strategies to expand the boundaries of what is socially permissible for women and to strengthen their identities. This research contributes to studies on entrepreneurial leadership and aids in the development of theory by demonstrating how Arab women construct entrepreneurial leadership, agency, and identity at the juncture of patriarchy, sociocultural values, and gender ideologies.     

Understanding Consumption: Contributions from a Narrative Perspective

In this paper we outline the contribution of a narrative perspective for theory and method in consumer research. Narratives are considered to be a fundamental way by which we structure and therefore make sense of our lives. Accordingly, narratives have the potential to contribute to our understanding of how consumers structure and make sense of their consumption experiences. We also develop a narrative paradigm and demonstrate how an understanding of narrative can underpin the three paradigmatic questions of ontology, epistemology and methodology. We include throughout a discussion of the implications of our perspective for consumer research and marketing in general.     

Building entrepreneurial tie portfolios through strategic homophily: The role of narrative identity work in venture creation and early growth

In this article, we present the results of a case study of an entrepreneur who successfully founded and grew a venture underpinned by a portfolio of strongly homophilous, dyadic ties. Building on our case, we discuss how the entrepreneur strategically constructed these ties through a form of narrative identity work, explore the shared identity narratives that he used to do so, and highlight the heterogeneous nature of the resulting tie portfolio. We go on to explore the factors that motivated the entrepreneur to purposefully construct an entrepreneurial tie portfolio in this way. Building on our findings, we discuss the nature of narrative identity work and its role in creating homophilous ties, explore the connection between the resulting shared identity narratives and trust, and discuss the central role of values in strategic homophily.     

Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action

Recent research highlights that founders' early decisions and the environmental conditions at founding each imprint upon a new venture in ways that affect growth and survival. However, we know much less about how the entrepreneur is imprinted and how the outcome of this imprinting process influences the entrepreneur and the venture. Through semi-structured interviews and content analysis, our study examines entrepreneurs' formative experiences during sensitive periods of transition, which we refer to as sources of imprint. We illustrate how these sources of imprint impact entrepreneurial decision making and explain how they guide entrepreneurs' decisions as they progress through their entrepreneurial careers. In doing so, we improve our understanding of how entrepreneurs navigate the entrepreneurial process.     

Contingency as an entrepreneurial resource: How private obsession fulfills public need

Borrowing from Rorty (1989:37), this article portrays the entrepreneurial process as a mechanism through which “private obsession” fulfills “public need.” It begins with an argument that a deeper understanding of contingency can enhance management scholarship in general and entrepreneurship in particular. It continues with an examination of contingency and entrepreneurial opportunity and then uses six narratives to show how both personal and historical contingencies become resources in the entrepreneurial process. A depiction of possible alternative responses (counterfactuals) for each narrative illustrates how entrepreneurs tend to take a resourceful, rather than an adaptive or a heroic stance toward contingency. A discussion of American Pragmatism provides theoretical support for contingency's role in the entrepreneurial process. The paper concludes with a literature review and a look at how this view of entrepreneurial contingency illuminates the temporal context in management scholarship, among other implications for both research and practice.     

Entrepreneurial fear of failure: Scale development and validation

Fear of failure is an important part of the experience of entrepreneurship. Yet past research has mainly investigated fear of failure in entrepreneurship among non entrepreneurs or nascent entrepreneurs and has done so by asking for reactions to hypothetical future failure. This approach to operationalizing the construct limits our capacity for understanding how entrepreneurs actually experience fear of failure while practicing entrepreneurship. In this paper, we conceptualize entrepreneurial fear of failure as a negative affective reaction based in cognitive appraisals of the potential for failure in the uncertain and ambiguous context of entrepreneurship. We use multiple samples to develop and validate a multidimensional, formative measure to assess entrepreneurial fear of failure as a state that is both cognitive and affective in nature. In addition to evidence of the psychometric properties of the new scale across multiple studies, we present a nomological network analysis with respect to measures of theoretically derived psychological outcomes and perceived behavioral tendencies of entrepreneurial fear of failure. We then discuss the theoretical, methodological, and empirical implications of this new measure of entrepreneurial fear of failure with an eye towards use of this scale in future research.     

I can't get no sleep—The differential impact of entrepreneurial stressors on work-home interference and insomnia among experienced versus novice entrepreneurs

When founding and managing a new business, entrepreneurs are frequently confronted with stressors hampering their daily work. The present study examines how these entrepreneurial stressors affect two important interrelated indicators of entrepreneurs' recovery and well-being—that is, their ability to detach from work during non-work times (work-home interference) and their sleep (insomnia). We introduce prior entrepreneurial experience as an important moderator to these relationships, arguing that due to their different learning and coping experiences and their different interpretations of the entrepreneurial role, experienced versus novice entrepreneurs would react differently to entrepreneurial stressors. In an empirical study with 122 entrepreneurs, we found that among experienced entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial stressors primarily had a direct sleep-impairing effect. Among novice entrepreneurs, the same stressors primarily initiated an indirect effect by leading to increased work-home interference and consequently also increased insomnia. Overall, thus, our study shows that both novice and experienced entrepreneurs suffer from insomnia when encountering entrepreneurial stressors—however, the underlying mechanisms differ. Implications are discussed in terms of both theory and practice.     

Reflective Judgement: Understanding Entrepreneurship as Ethical Practice

Recently, the ethical rather than just the economic resonance of entrepreneurship has attracted attention with researchers highlighting entrepreneurship and ethics as interwoven processes of value creation and management. Recognising that traditional normative perspectives on ethics are limited in application in entrepreneurial contexts, this stream of research has theorised entrepreneurship and ethics as the pragmatic production of useful effects through the alignment of public–private values. In this article, we critique this view and use Kant’s concept of reflective judgement as discussed in his Critique of the Power of Judgement to theorise ethical entrepreneurial practice as the capacity to routinely break free from current conventions through the imaginative creation and use of self-legislating maxims. Through an analysis of the narratives of 12 entrepreneurs, we suggest there are three dimensions to reflective judgement in entrepreneurial contexts: (1) Social Performance; (2) Public Challenge and; (3) Personal Autonomy. Whilst the entrepreneurs were alive to the importance of commercial return, their narratives demonstrated further concern for, and commitment to, standards that they rationally and imaginatively felt as being appropriate. In our discussion, we integrate the findings into existing theoretical categories from entrepreneurship studies to better appreciate ethics within the context of value creation.     

Embedded entrepreneurship in the creative re-construction of place

This paper focuses on ways in which entrepreneurs engage with place and community. Drawing on the ideas of embeddedness and transferring value across spheres, we develop insight about how the relationship between entrepreneurs and communities influences entrepreneurial practices and outcomes. Employing an ethnographic perspective including participant observation, we explored the situated practices of entrepreneurs in two depleted communities in the Northwest of Ireland. We found that entrepreneurs not only drew on the community in running their business, but were also involved in a wide range of “other” activities that engaged, involved and worked with the community. This entrepreneurship produced a range of projects that addressed social and economic issues (unemployment, employability and emigration) and the depleted sense of place which was adversely affecting these communities. We show how social bonds and an affinity to community enable entrepreneurship to create, renew and reify a positive identity of place by combining understanding with entrepreneurial purpose.     

The effect of entrepreneurial rhetoric on microlending investment: An examination of the warm-glow effect

Microlending provides a valuable alternative to traditional financing for entrepreneurs in impoverished countries. Drawing from theory on political rhetoric and the concept of warm-glow giving, we examine characteristics of entrepreneurial narratives that are related to how quickly entrepreneurs receive funding. Using a sample of 6051 narratives from entrepreneurs in developing countries, we demonstrate that narratives higher in language indicating blame and present concern lead to more rapid funding, while narratives higher in accomplishment, tenacity, and variety lead to slower funding. Our findings suggest that the presentation of investment profiles should be carefully managed to maximize funding likelihood.     

Navigating the highs and lows of entrepreneurial identity threats to persist: The countervailing force of a relational identity with God

While an economic paradigm has been productive for entrepreneurship, religion has been proposed as an alternative rationality to advance research in our field. To extend a theological turn in entrepreneurship and identity research, our study inductively develops a conceptual model that explains how individuals navigate entrepreneurial identity threats based on the interaction between a relational identity with God (RIG) and an entrepreneurial identity to persist in entrepreneurial action. Our study suggests this can happen when entrepreneurs engage in inter-identity work mechanisms - affirming and humbling - to mitigate these identity threats. Specifically, a relational identity with God acts as a countervailing force to an entrepreneurial identity during times of identity threats to generate inter-identity meaning change, resulting in interidentity stability and entrepreneurial persistence. Through our study, we advance knowledge on the theological turn in entrepreneurship and identity by inductively developing theory on a new religious identity construct (RIG), elaborating theory of inter-identity work by shifting the focus from structural to content changes, and extending theory on entrepreneurial action, persistence, and well-being based on theological rather than economic considerations.     

Does Congruence with an Entrepreneur Social Identity Encourage Positive Emotion Under Environmental Dynamism?

Entrepreneurial identities and emotions can have profound effects on entrepreneurs. We examine how positive emotion (PE) among entrepreneurs may be influenced by the congruence they experience between their self‐concept and the entrepreneur social identity. Given that uncertainty in the business environment can exert powerful effects throughout the entrepreneurial process, we further test the moderating impact of environmental dynamism on the relationship between identity congruence and PE. Results from a study of 175 entrepreneurs indicate that entrepreneurs experiencing greater congruence have higher levels of PE, and that this relationship is stronger in more dynamic environments.     

Knowledge and internationalization of returnee entrepreneurial firms

This study aims to answer whether and how returnee entrepreneurs’ international experience and returnee entrepreneurial firms’ international market knowledge influence these firms’ internationalization. Anchored in a framework combining an entrepreneurial and knowledge-based view, we develop a model and four hypotheses on the relations between returnee entrepreneurs’ international experience, international market knowledge, international market commitment, and level of internationalization of the returnee entrepreneurial firm. Empirical evidence of the proposed model is derived from a recent sample of Chinese returnee SMEs in knowledge-intensive and high-technology industries. The main finding is that returnee entrepreneurs’ international experience nurtures international market knowledge of returnee entrepreneurial firms, which in turn has a positive effect on these firms’ international market commitment and level of internationalization. In terms of theory, the study extends our understanding of returnee entrepreneurial firms by uncovering the role of returnee entrepreneurs’ international experience and returnee firms’ international market knowledge during their initial and early international expansion.     

The nature of entrepreneurial experience,business failure and comparative optimism

Entrepreneurial (i.e. business ownership) experience may enable some entrepreneurs to temper their comparative optimism in subsequent ventures. The nature of entrepreneurial experience can shape how entrepreneurs adapt. Using data from a representative survey of 576 entrepreneurs in Great Britain, we find that experience with business failure was associated with entrepreneurs who are less likely to report comparative optimism. Portfolio entrepreneurs are less likely to report comparative optimism following failure; however, sequential (also known as serial) entrepreneurs who have experienced failure do not appear to adjust their comparative optimism. Conclusions and implications for entrepreneurs and stakeholders are discussed.     

Rags to riches? Entrepreneurs' social classes,resourceful time allocation,and venture performance

Social classes shape entrepreneurial pursuits in that entrepreneurs from lower social class groups face more resource deficiencies compared to those from higher social class groups. In this study, we theorize that being resourceful with a particular resource—time—helps ventures run by lower-class entrepreneurs achieve better performance. However, we further argue that the extent to which entrepreneurs use time resourcefully is affected by the cognitive schemas stamped on them by their social class backgrounds. Our empirical analysis of 8663 Chinese private entrepreneurs between 2006 and 2010 lends robust support to these arguments. By revealing both material and cognitive constraints stemming from entrepreneurs' social classes, our study contributes to research on social classes and entrepreneurial resourcefulness and has important implications for understanding the persistence of inequality in entrepreneurship.     

A personal adversity model of justifying the costs of entrepreneurial action: The case of oil thieves in the Niger DELTA

While entrepreneurship can generate economic and social benefits, it can also be a source of negative outcomes. We need to gain a deeper understanding of how individual entrepreneurs interpret their context and engage in entrepreneurial action that can generate substantial negative outcomes. In this paper we shed light on the entrepreneurial process at the micro-level by exploring how bunkerers—oil thieves—engage in, justify, and persist with entrepreneurial action that, while generating some benefits for the entrepreneurs and the local community, causes substantial destruction to the local environment, community, and the entrepreneurs' health. By inductively generating a personal adversity model of justifying entrepreneurial action that generates substantial negative outcomes (for the local community and environment), we provide new insights into (1) the link between aspects of entrepreneurship under adversity and substantial costs (and some benefits) experienced by local communities already facing adverse conditions, (2) how entrepreneurs' claim varying levels of agency in the same justification of the same action and its negative consequences, and (3) how entrepreneurs entangle the self and others to justify their actions and its costs.