Denise Elaine Fletcher

Entrepreneurial processes and the social construction of opportunity

In contrast to structurally-determinist and cognitive/agency-oriented views of opportunity recognition, it is argued that opportunity formation is relationally and communally constituted — an insight that is not recognized in descriptive or linear process models of opportunity recognition. To arrive at this claim, use is made of social constructionist ideas. These ideas have been frequently applied in entrepreneurship studies but less attention has been given to the relational aspects of social constructionist thinking particularly with regard to opportunity formation processes. To aid this line of enquiry an analysis is undertaken of a sibling-autobiographical account of a high-profile business venture, Coffee Republic. This account has been crafted by the sibling partnership with a particular audience in mind (the would-be entrepreneur) with guidelines and principles on how ‘anyone can do it’. However, it is not utilized here as a good specimen of business venturing to be probed for particular (hidden) meanings. Instead, the account is evaluated in order to illustrate how individualistic statements about opportunity discovery can be reconceptualized as relationally and communally constituted – an emphasis which is important for widening our theoretical understanding of the activities that we label entrepreneurship.

International entrepreneurship and the small business

The topic of ‘international entrepreneurship’ is becoming increasingly popular with researchers concerned with examining how international and entrepreneurial activities intersect when people in organizations engage in pro-active brokering and risk-taking behaviour in cross-border contexts. Some caution is needed in over-generalizing the meaning and significance of international entrepreneurship – especially in relation to small businesses. Not all entrepreneurial risk-taking, brokering and opportunity-seeking activities lead to internationalization (as the statistics on small business international activities indicate). This might suggest then that the only truly internationally entrepreneurial firms are those that are ‘born global’. However, their entrepreneurial activities are more ‘spatial’, concerned with what can be constructed again in relation to global markets rather than in relation to the local/regional context in which the business is located. For small firms that internationalize a few years after start-up (late starters), processes of international entrepreneurship are different. For ‘later starters’, international entrepreneurship is distinctive in that it is characterized by extending and modifying entrepreneurial understandings and practices that have been socially constructed in relation to the local and regional context in which the small firm is located.

Entrepreneurship, Management Learning and Negotiated Narratives: ‘Making it Otherwise for Us—Otherwise for Them’:

A dialogic and drama-like narrative is presented. This has resulted from an unexpected circumstance in which a business idea is seen to emerge. This narrative provides a valuable resource for a ‘negotiated narrative’ style of entrepreneurship management learning and it is used to contribute to the theoretical understanding of entrepreneurship itself and to the production of a novel way of conceptualizing entrepreneurial processes generally. Emphasis is given to the emergent and relational processes through which learning occurs and through which entrepreneurial opportunities are realized. Entrepreneurship can thus be seen as a matter of entrepreneurial actors relationally ‘becoming otherwise’ through enabling customers or clients to ‘become otherwise’.

A network perspective of cultural organising and “professional management” in the small, family business

This paper discusses how a small business experiences professional management by examining the relationship between organisational networking and cultural organising in the workplace. A network perspective is presented in order to evaluate the ways in which workplace relations are enacted to cultural organising. A social constructionist perspective of organisational networking is proposed which emphasises how individuals attribute value and meaning to the interactions they have with co‐workers in the workplace. A work place ethnography is presented which discusses the recruitment of a “professional” manager and his attempts to introduce new working practices into the family business. The analysis highlights how organisational members shape cultural organising by invoking emotional categories to produce mutuality and a sense of belonging in the workplace. In continually re‐enacting workplace relationships in this way, it is found that individuals attempt to trade away variance, divergent views and new orga...

Voice, Silence and the Business of Construction: Loud and Quiet Voices in the Construction of Personal, Organizational and Social Realities

An ethnographically based narrative about the interactions and relationships of people involved with a small construction business is used to examine the interplay of voice and silence in organizations in a way which goes beyond some of the limitations of recent work on this topic. In place of the current literature’s emphasis on the motives behind individuals’ speaking up or staying quiet, a relational analysis is developed which gives full recognition to the emergent, day-to-day routine and contextual aspects of organization. The lives and relationships of a set of characters in a small building company are portrayed and their voices heard. There are loud voices, quiet voices and silences, all of which play a part in the way these people deal with the everyday realities of small communities, family life and organizational power.

‘Life-making or risk taking’? Co-preneurship and family business start-ups

When discussing couples involved in small businesses, many commentaries portray romanticized ‘in love-in business’ accounts. Little is known, however, about the ways in which venture creation is constructed between co-habiting couples. Neither is it reported, except for negative conceptions of ‘lifestyle’ businesses, how co-habiting couples negotiate their life-making aspirations with risk-taking activities associated with business venturing. In this article, fieldwork material is drawn from 26 co-preneurial situations to develop a typology of co-preneurship using ownership and management structural dimensions. This typology is illustrated with different types of lifestyle businesses to demonstrate the economic assessments and ‘market work’ that give rise to family entrepreneurship. This focus is important for taking account of the increasing numbers of couples who combine their skills and labour with a spouse or co-habiting partner in order to develop (or re-position an existing) business venture.

Entrepreneurship and institutional change: A research agenda

This paper introduces a Special Issue on the theme of Entrepreneurship and Institutional Change. Drawing upon the accumulated literature and three original contributions it aims to explore the conditions and the processes through which entrepreneurship may influence institutional change. The paper argues that entrepreneurs are not only influenced by the prevailing institution(s) but they can also influence (both intentionally and unintentionally) institutional change. This challenges prevailing views about the ability and effectiveness of the state to drive change. The paper also outlines an agenda for future research into how entrepreneurship shapes emerging institutional arrangements.

Globalization and strategic change: some lessons from the UK small business sector

Internal driving forces to become global are shaped and inhibited by the owner-managers knowledge and competencies as well as the skills and human resources development needs of their workforce. External driving forces enabling globalization stem from the willingness and ability of owner-managers to participate in global networks, gather specific marketing information and have access to relevant channels of distribution. An entrepreneurial ability to raise funds from a variety of commercial and personal sources also enabled the achievement of globalization and the organizational change strategies that facilitated it. Those owner-managers exhibiting high levels of global market knowledge were more able and prepared to reallocate human and financial resources to achieve or supersede their globalization targets. Copyright

Learning to “think global and act local”: experiences from the small business sector

Examines how entrepreneurs learn from the experience of conducting international business and how they “draw upon” that knowledge when “thinking globally” and enacting international strategies. The findings draw attention to the values, visions and key learning issues that are continually being reproduced as entrepreneurs respond to international opportunities, find partners and build cross‐border networks. International entrepreneuring, it is argued, is about learning from different cross border exchanges and converting that experience into organisational practices that build strategic capability in international markets. Such a perspective also has important implications for the education and training of small business entrepreneurs and managers as they think about and enact their international strategies.

“Interpreneurship” Organisational (re)emergence and entrepreneurial development in a second‐generation family firm

Although there has been some attention to how notions of entrepreneurship and family intersect in the life of family businesses, analysis of these issues in relation to inter‐generational and organisational emergence in small family firms is underdeveloped. In order to redress this imbalance, it is important to undertake analysis of entrepreneurial issues alongside those of family, ownership, management and inter‐generational emergence. A fourth entrepreneurial axis is added to Gersicks developmental life cycle framework to facilitate this. This is then applied to aid interpretive analysis of two second generation owner‐managers and sons‐in‐law of the original founders of a small manufacturing company in the UK. Working with his younger brother‐in‐law, the two family members are responsible for taking a small steeplejack company into its third generation and a new electrical engineering market. As the younger brother‐in‐law takes on an entrepreneurial role within the company and endeavours to develop new opportunities, the chairman gives an account of the struggles involved in achieving a balance between ownership, management and family tensions. The notion of “interpreneurship” whereby family members are interacting and creating new possibilities for themselves, their lives, their organizations whilst drawing upon past events, happenings, experiences and conversations that have gone before, is also considered.