Rachel Doern

From barriers to barring: Why emotion matters for entrepreneurial development

We offer a critique of conventional approaches to entrepreneurial barriers and point to the neglect of social and emotional processes in their operation. Drawing from qualitative interviews with 25 entrepreneurs in Russia, we suggest that power rituals between entrepreneurs and state officials may impair entrepreneurial motivation. Our main contribution lies in conceptualizing barriers not simply as objective obstacles but as processes of barring, and in exploring how these might emerge. We elaborate a model of the social nature of barriers and the mediating role played by emotions. We discuss the implications of barring for entrepreneurial action more broadly.

The Role of Negative Emotions in the Social Processes of Entrepreneurship: Power Rituals and Shame‐Related Appeasement Behaviors

This paper examines the role of negative emotions in the social processes of entrepreneurship. Drawing on a study of Russian entrepreneurs, we develop a model of the emotional effects of social interactions between entrepreneurs and state officials. We found that negative emotions were elicited by these interactions and, in turn, fueled three forms of shame–related corrective appeasement behavior (reactive, anticipatory, and sporadic), which served to corrode entrepreneurial motivation and direct attention and energy away from business growth and development.

Entrepreneurship and crisis management: The experiences of small businesses during the London 2011 riots

This article examines the impact of a crisis on small firms. Taking a phenomenological research approach, qualitative interviews were conducted to capture the experiences of small businesses directly affected by looting, vandalism and/or arson in the London 2011 riots. This study adds to the literature on crisis management by highlighting the different types of losses encountered by small businesses following a crisis and the role individual owner–managers, businesses and the wider community play in enhancing or minimizing losses. A model is developed to capture those factors that influence which small businesses were vulnerable or resilient to the riots.

The role of friendship in the formation and development of entrepreneurial teams and ventures

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential influence of friendship on entrepreneurial teams (ETs) and on venture formation and development. The theoretical framework is built on the literature around friendship ties, the interaction of friendship ties and professional ties, and ETs. Design/methodology/approach – Taking an interpretative methodological approach, the authors carried out qualitative interviews with ten business founders in Paris, France. Findings – The authors identified different four profiles or types of ETs according to how friendship ties interact with professional ties among team members, which the authors designate as “fusion” and “separation”, and describe the orientation of this interaction, which the authors label as “affective” or “strategic”. These profiles affect the emergence of the idea and the choice of members in the formation of teams. They also shape the functioning of teams in terms of decision-making processes, recruitment and investment. Research lim...

Entrepreneurship and crises: business as usual?

The aim of this Special Issue is to examine more closely the relationship between entrepreneurial activity and crises. Crises tend to have severe consequences for businesses, generating ambiguity and decision-making time pressures (Pearson and Clair 1998; Weick 1988). Crises of relevance to entrepreneurial activity range from the personal to the social or natural and broadly include ‘disasters, business interruptions, catastrophes, emergency or contingency’ (Herbane 2010, 46), the impacts of which range from the individual to society in scope. It is argued that crises are becoming an integral part of business activity (Smallbone, North, and Kalantaridis 1999), and responses to a crisis can mean the difference between business survival and failure (Doern 2016). As a key journal in the field, Entrepreneurship & Regional Development has been a leader on academic publications that investigate how context shapes entrepreneurial behaviour, and has published some contributions of relevance to this Special Issue (e.g. Suire and Vicente 2014; Williams and Vorley 2014). Our Special Issue would build on this previous work by bringing together multi-disciplinary approaches and examinations of entrepreneurship, crises and resilience, across different levels of analysis. A growing number of studies in the field have begun to examine questions relating to crises and entrepreneurship in and around the role that entrepreneurial activity plays in crisis recovery (Galbraith and Stiles 2006; Williams and Vorley 2015), how small businesses respond to a crisis (Doern 2016; Lai, Saridakis, Blackburn and Johnstone 2016), barriers to business recovery following a crisis (Irvine and Anderson 2004; Runyan 2006) and characteristics of small firm survival during a crisis (Alesch et al. 2001; Dahlhamer and Tierney 1998; Tierney, Nigg, and Dahlhamer 1996). In the latter case, Corey and Deitch (2011: 170) argue that while ‘studies have attempted to determine features that predict the success of recovery for individual businesses post-disaster ... the results have been inconsistent regarding what matters most’. As such, further theoretical and empirical work is needed and our Special Issue would make a significant contribution to this effect. In this Special Issue, we will explore how in order to understand more about the relationship between entrepreneurial activity and crises demands an appreciation of themes at multiple levels of analysis. At the societal level, crises can have profound and unexpected effects on entrepreneurial behaviours; at the field level, some industries are likely to be more prone to crises that affect entrepreneurial activity; at the organizational level, the antecedents and consequences of crises can affect entrepreneurial ambition and orientation; and lastly, at the individual level, as businesses become an extension of entrepreneurs, there is