Sue Eccles

Attitudes of venture capital investors towards entrepreneurs with previous business failure

Business failure represents a significant outcome of entrepreneurial activity and yet remains an underdeveloped area of research. This article focuses on the attitudes of venture capitalist (VC) investors towards entrepreneurs with a previous failure experience. It illustrates that VCs recognize the complex, contextual nature of failure and do not necessarily perceive the entrepreneur to be the primary cause of the ventures demise. Consequently, the article differentiates between ‘business’, ‘entrepreneurial’ and ‘venture capitalist’ failure. The article demonstrates that VCs often adopt a tolerant, flexible and open-minded attitude to failure and are keen to understand the circumstances in which it occurred. The majority of the VCs in the study emphasize that their decision to invest in an entrepreneur is not negatively affected to any significant degree by a previous experience of failure. A number of influential factors are presented, such as a high quality concept, which can offset this aspect of the entrepreneurs track record. The article concludes that business failure is not automatically considered a ‘black mark’ by VCs. It is important for entrepreneurs involved in business failure to be aware of these positive and sympathetic attitudes when considering putting forward new proposals to the VC community.

Revenge, existential choice, and addictive consumption

Recent research has identified a small group of consumers who are addicted to the consumption experience. The results of this U.K. study suggest that, in addition to previously identified characteristics of the behavior, some consumers develop and maintain the addiction partly for reasons of revenge (on partner and/or family) or as an act of existential choice—both of which link into aspects of control and power.

Re-coding gender representations: Women, cleaning products, and advertising's “New Man”

Abstract Consumer interpretations of attempts to re-code gender representations in TV advertising for household cleaning products are explored using a protocol interpretive methodology. The ways in which women are able to resist the process of “hyperreality” and maintain distinctions between their everyday lived world and simulations are discussed in relation to the use of “schemer schema.”

Man management? Women and the use of debt to control personal relationships

A small group of consumers who are addicted to the consumption experience has been identified in recent research. Most such addictive consumers are women, and one of the major long‐term consequences of this behaviour is unmanageable credit‐card and other debts. As a result of in‐depth interviews with 50 self‐identified addictive consumers, this study suggests that in addition to previously identified characteristics of the behaviour, some consumers will develop and maintain the addiction, and the onset of major debt, for reasons of revenge on their partner. This in turn links into aspects of control and power within personal relationships.

LOVE AND VIDEOGAMES: NEGOTIATING RELATIONSHIPS WITH CULTURAL IDEALS AND CONSUMER PRACTICES

Purpose – In this chapter we consider how two apparently disconnected practices – one very human (loving relationships), another the apparently alienating outcome of consumer technology (videogame play) – may turn out to be linked in very intimate and perhaps surprising ways. In making this connection we hope to comment on how consumer practices may be understood in the context of dynamic human relationships and cultural ideals. Methodology – We conducted 36 phenomenological interviews with adult videogame players in order to elicit everyday experiences of videogame play in the context of the individuals lifeworld. This chapter deals with aspects of data that explore relationships with partners and children. Findings – We illustrate that consumer practices, ideals, and even couples are not stable things, but are subject to routine reconfiguration throughout life. We suggest the possibility of a triadic theory of human relationships that consists of the people themselves, their consumer practices, and ideas about what love means. Originality/value of paper – Previous questions about the value of videogame consumption have tended to ask about violence or the normalcy of how we might spend our time. In this chapter we have attempted to shift the focus to questions about human relationships and how they might be enacted with consumer technologies. By understanding the interactions between human actors, their consumer practices and their ideals we are able to comment on existing critiques and celebrations of the impact of consumer culture on human relationships.

Troubling ideas for widening participation: how higher education institutions in England engage with research in their access agreements

This article explores how higher education institutions in England engage with research in their access agreements. Through an analysis of access agreements from 2014-15 to 2016-17, a picture of how research is understood, undertaken and documented emerges. A lexical analysis of the texts was used to establish the different ways research is being referred to or funded as part of the access agreement process. The analysis shows a productive relationship between national policy and institutional activity. But there appears to be a lack of infrastructure at an institutional and sector level to join up sustained and rigorous research with widening participation activity and policy. This means that, even after ten years of access agreements, widening participation is not fully embedded into the academic practice of higher education. We argue that research undertaken as part of the access agreement process can provide much needed evidence of impact and situate activity within an institution-wide context. However, we also suggest that widening participation research has the potential to offer productive troubling ideas to dominant rhetoric and, in so doing, shape new ways of thinking about, and doing, widening participation within institutions and across the sector.

Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis: A means of exploring aspiration and resilience amongst Widening Participation students

As the Office for Fair Access and the Higher Education Funding Council for England priorities now extend across widened access to success, both the aspirations of young people from widening participation (WP) backgrounds and their existing or developing resilience as students are of concern to Higher Education institutions. In this paper, these positive psychology concepts of aspiration and resilience are used in two different studies each seeking to move away from the prevalent discourse of deficit. This paper thus offers the joint perspective of two researchers exploring the phenomena of a) aspiration in students from low participation neighbourhoods and b) resilience in students from low-income backgrounds. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) is utilised by both to offer a credible, insightful research approach which may enable educators, researchers and policy-makers to appreciate the nature and significance of WP students’ experiences in a previously unseen way, thus enabling effective interventions and methods of support. Through in-depth exploration of the cognitions and emotions of young people from WP backgrounds, the researchers discuss how listening to individual stories can provide rich data that may enhance future support for students. Important methodological challenges and the implications of applying IPA to both studies are debated; including use of language to convey meaning, the role of researcher reflexivity and the difficulties in achieving a truly interpretative account of the phenomenon. Whilst often a challenging methodology, IPA can provide rich, contextualised accounts which contribute to the limited extant qualitative literature on WP student aspiration and resilience.