Chris Steyaert

Reclaiming the space of entrepreneurship in society: Geographical, discursive and social dimensions

This paper seeks to explore and to reflect upon the implications of how to conceive entrepreneurship when considered as a societal rather than an economic phenomenon. To conceive and reclaim the space in which entrepreneurship is seen at work in society, we point at the geographical, discursive and social dimensions from where we develop three crucial and connected questions that can reconstruct the future research agendas of entrepreneurship studies and that can guide us towards a geopolitics of everyday entrepreneurship: what spaces/discourses/stakeholders have we privileged in the study of entrepreneurship and what other spaces/discourses/stakeholders could we consider?

‘Entrepreneuring’ as a conceptual attractor? A review of process theories in 20 years of entrepreneurship studies

Entrepreneuring has never achieved a breakthrough as the key concept that could elucidate the inherently process-oriented character of entrepreneurship, but it may be able to serve as the conceptual attractor to accommodate the increasing interest in process theories within a creative process view. This paper considers whether this is possible. In addition to equilibrium-based understandings of the entrepreneurial process, this paper tentatively reconstructs the creative process view by distinguishing between a range of relevant perspectives: from those on complexity and chaos theory, to the interpretive and phenomenological, social constructionist, pragmatic and practice-based, to the relational materialist. Taking entrepreneuring as an open-ended concept to use in theoretical experimentation, the review documents the potential for the concept to develop new meanings and to attach itself to a series of concepts such as recursivity, enactment, disclosure, narration, discourse, dramatization, dialogicality, effectuation, social practice, translation and assemblage. It is argued that the very act of theorizing about the concept of ‘entrepreneuring’ indicates a move from methodological individualism to a relational turn in entrepreneurship studies, one that inscribes entrepreneurship into a social ontology of becoming.

Narrative and Discursive Approaches in Entrepreneurship

‘In their edited book Narrative and Discursive Approaches in Entrepreneurship, Daniel Hjorth and Chris Steyaert provide a fascinating glimpse into a perspective on entrepreneurship that will be enlightening for many readers. Entrepreneurship authors typically talk about theory, methods, and data as if a straight forward linear process united them all, and making sense of entrepreneurship was simply a matter of knowing how to interpret one’s “findings”. By contrast, the authors in this volume propose narrative and discursive approaches in which the contributing authors emphasize rich description, reflexive conceptualization, and interpretations offered as part of the story itself. They draw upon an international set of cases, including Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Venezuela, and North America. The cases themselves make for fascinating reading, quite apart from what we learn about the difficulties of imposing a particular interpretation on a given story. For example, taxi drivers in Caracas, management consultants in Denmark, and women entrepreneurs in northern Norway all make for fascinating narratives from which to understand the entrepreneurial process. Unlike many edited books which have no “plot”, the editors have included opening and closing sections that link the chapters, offer alternative readings of them, and propose new and expansive ways of thinking about entrepreneurship.’ – Howard Aldrich, The Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA

Spacing Organization: non-representational theory and performing organizational space

This article connects to and extends the attempts to bring space back into critical organizational theory, which, we argue, has mainly been based on the socio-spatial perspective as pioneered by Henri Lefebvre. Taking issue with the various ways in which Lefebvre’s work can be interpreted, we develop an alternative route. Adopting a mode of non-representational theorizing as outlined in human geography, we propose the concept of ‘spacing’, which orients the understanding of organizational space towards its material, embodied, affective and minor configurations. In discussing the consequences of such a performative approach to space for the practice and craft of organizational scholarship, we argue that our conceptual opening entails a move from representational strategies of extracting representations of the (organizational) world from the world to embodied apprehensions of the everyday performing of organizational space. What can be termed the enactment of organizational geographies in slow motion is inspired and illustrated by the video ‘The Raft’ conceived by the artist Bill Viola.

The politics of narrating social entrepreneurship

Purpose - Responding to recent pleas both to critically analyze and to conceptually advance social entrepreneurship. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the political “unconscious” operates in the narration of social entrepreneurship and how it poses a limit to alternative forms of thinking and talking. Design/methodology/approach - To move the field beyond a predominantly monological way of narrating, various genres of narrating social entrepreneurship are identified, critically discussed and illustrated against the backdrop of development aid. Findings - The paper identifies and distinguishes between a grand narrative that incorporates a messianistic script of harmonious social change, counter-narratives that render visible the intertextual relations that interpellate the grand narration of social entrepreneurship and little narratives that probe novel territories by investigating the paradoxes and ambivalences of the social. Practical implications - The paper suggests a minor understanding and non-heroic practice of social entrepreneurship guided by the idea of “messianism without a messiah.” Originality/value - The paper suggests critical reflexivity as a way to analyze and multiply the circulating narrations of social entrepreneurship.

A Qualitative Methodology for Process Studies of Entrepreneurship: Creating local knowledge through stories

A brilliant, warm, Saturday afternoon in May. Vision had built itself a new house, a low construction with different wings, located in an industrial zone, not far from its former location. The building with brightly colored yellow windows was surrounded by a green lawn. A tent had been set up for the evening party to which all current and previous personnel and their families were invited. For this company, where around forty people came to work every day, a cozy family party had been chosen to celebrate the companys anniversary instead of an academic session. Normally a quiet workplace, on this day it was a bustle of activity. People were walking back and forth with bouquets and large plants. Colleagues introduced their families and children to each other; an ex-colleague was greeted with a shout of recognition and a hearty handshake. This is how people celebrate their own constructions and creativity. As I was going inside, I was passed by someone who as the person in charge of research and development at the university had

HRM and Performance: A Plea for Reflexivity in HRM Studies

In this Counterpoint, we build on Paauwes suggestions to take the field of HRM and Performance further. Rather than aiming for a synthesis or proposing a radical alternative, we argue that R(econstructive)-reflexivity is needed for theorizing HRM. In particular, we bring in insights from critical studies on the notion of HRM, on the notion of performance, and on the theoretical relationship between them as a way to open up new research avenues and lines of interpretation. For each of these three aspects, we indicate how studying the employment relationship can be reframed. In particular, we emphasize practice-oriented research as one possible research path for the field of HRM as it allows for an examination of HRM as a set of practices, embedded in a global economical, political and socio-cultural context. We end our counterpoint by reflecting on reflexivity, proposing three practices that can guide HRM scholars in becoming reflexive in the ways they study HRM.

Nine Verbs to Keep the Social Entrepreneurship Research Agenda ‘Dangerous’

Abstract This paper critiques and re-imagines current research approaches to the field of social entrepreneurship. Taking a theoretical view of research as ‘enactment’, this paper explores research as a constitutive act and explores a range of ways of relating with and constructing the subject of inquiry. Three models of enactive research are presented, each based on three verbs which denote the contours of a ‘dangerous’ research agenda for social entrepreneurship. These include: (a) ‘critiquing’ approaches to research through denaturalizing, critically performing and reflexivity; (b) ‘inheriting’ approaches through contextualizing, historicizing and connecting; and (c) ‘intervening’ approaches through participating, spatializing and minorizing.

Entrepreneurship as in(ter)vention: Reconsidering the conceptual politics of method in entrepreneurship studies

In this article, I look into Bengt Johannissons experiments with enactive research in the so-called Anamorphosis Project. This methodological experiment was based on the assumption that to understand entrepreneurship, researchers themselves must enact an entrepreneurial process and reflect upon it by engaging in auto-ethnography. By connecting aesthetics and politics, this experiment guides us in seeing methodologies as more than just tools – actually as in(ter)ventions or inventive forms of intervening vis-à-vis societal or community issues. By conceptualizing the performance of scholarship as involving practices of enacting and engaging, I suggest entrepreneurship scholars to take into account the ontological politics of method and to anticipate what can be called methodological experimentation. Drawing upon non-representational theory and actor-network theory, I flesh out the notion of in(ter)vention by emphasizing both its performative and participative dimension.

Strangely Familiar: The Uncanny and Unsiting Organizational Analysis

This paper focuses on the aesthetics of the uncanny to inquire into and perform affective sites of organizing that are imbued with feelings of uncertainty and uneasiness. We argue that the uncanny forms an ‘unconcept’ that allows us to think and apprehend ‘white spaces’ of organization not as new or other spaces but through a process of relating intensively with the conventional places, streets and squares that form the backdrop to everyday life. We also make use of the notion of ‘unsiting’ to show how organizational research is able to enhance our appreciation of the aesthetic dimension of organization in ways that expose and undermine that which has become familiar and taken-for-granted. Based on an artistic intervention by the theatre collective Rimini Protokoll, we encounter and analyse such processes of unsiting through the affective and spatial doublings at work in the organization of urban space. Theorizing the organizational uncanny opens up new sites/sights in organization by forging an interconnection of the recent affective, spatial and aesthetic ‘turns’ in organizational theory. To do this demands what we call scholarly performances that involve the witnessing and enacting of everyday sites of organizing.