Hegemonic discourses on entrepreneurship as an ideological mechanism for the reproduction of capital

Abstract

Pointed to as a means of insertion into increasingly competitive labour markets, entrepreneurship has become an ideology of the ‘new capitalist spirit’ that needs to be questioned. Our prime objective here is to identify what orders of discourse are emerging from existing entrepreneurial discourse within Junior Enterprises in Brazil, assuming that, the interdiscursive relations regarding this subject do ideologically contribute to the construction of the contemporary capitalist enterprise as the only possible model for the generation of wealth in society. We carried out a qualitative survey that was epistemologically orientated by interpretivism, and methodologically orientated by critical discourse analysis. In addition, 60 interviews were carried out with students and professors, which allowed the identification of three orders of discourse: (1) a consensus regarding the centrality of companies in terms of thinking and acting of a given individual in the world; (2) the exemplarity of the neoliberal capitalist entrepreneurial model and (3) the absence of feasible alternatives for the contemporary capitalism model. The conclusions problematize the hegemonic discourses on entrepreneurship suggesting that high education has been less of a human emancipation tool and more of a capital reproduction mechanism.

A specter is haunting modernity—the specter of entrepreneurship. This has long been regarded as the cornerstone of economic growth (Audretsch and Keilbach, 2006), as well as income and employment creation (Parker, 2006). As Shane and Venkataraman (2000: 219) argue, ‘Entrepreneurship is a mechanism through which temporal and special inefficiencies in an economy are discovered and mitigated’, which reinforces the idea, according to studies, that we are living in an age of entrepreneurship (Murphy et al., 2006). Since undertaking is indispensable to innovation, increased productivity and improvements in business as a whole, we can assume that homo economicus provides room for homo entreprenaurus, in a scenario where an entrepreneurial capitalist model is announced (Schramm and Litan, 2008).

In terms of the enterprise, the debate revolves around entrepreneurship as a means of strategic insertion into an unpredictable, boisterous, and competitive global market (Lumpkin and Dess, 1996; Mintzberg, 1973), which means that the development of an entrepreneurial culture for individuals and organizations is fundamental. This process redefines the operation, and the discourse of an organization by emphasizing innovation and the search for and identification of opportunities (Eckhardt and Shane, 2003; Shane and Venkataraman, 2000; Short et al. 2010); creativity and the integration of the organization and its work processes (Ainsworth and Hardy, 2008); the elimination of internal communication barriers and a systematic reflection on the risks involved in decision-making (Bygrave and Hofer, 1991). However, entrepreneurship has hardly been investigated in any depth, and even less so from a critical standpoint (Garud et al., 2007; Khan et al., 2007; Ogbor, 2000). This is in part due to the great divergences that exist in relation to this subject.

From an individual perspective, there is a predominance of work that identifies the most relevant characteristics of entrepreneurs (Dew, 2009; Eckhardt and Shane, 2003; Fauchart and Gruber, 2011; Kets de Vries, 1977; Nicholson and Anderson, 2005; Shane and Venkataraman 2000), which are, in most cases, much the same: a) entrepreneurial values and culture acquired through exposure to an entrepreneurial model in the formative years; b) tenacity and ability to deal with ambiguities and uncertainties; c) acquisition of experience in business; d) differentiation; e) intuition; f) involvement; g) assumption of moderate risks; l) networking skills; m) creation of a personality system to relate to other employees; n) ability to control other people’s behaviour; and o) learning through the entrepreneur’s own standards. At the same time, we can find several studies that are concerned with the formation of entrepreneurial identity, as is the case of, for example, Ainsworth and Hardy (2008), Anderson and Warren (2011), Cohen and Musson (2000), Down and Reveley (2004), Downing (2005) and Sturdy and Wright (2008).

As for managerial focus, most studies address entrepreneurial abilities and competencies, as well as their relation to the organizational space. There are studies on institutional entrepreneurship (Mutch, 2007; Pacheco et al., 2010; Perkmann and Spicer, 2007), entrepreneurs as organizational products (Audia and Rider, 2005a; Sorenson and Audia, 2000), social entrepreneurship (Dacin et al., 2010; Parkinson and Howorth, 2007) and social entrepreneurs (Dempsey and Sanders, 2010; Sundin, 2011), collective and sustainable entrepreneurship (Keogh and Polonsky, 1998), as well as intra-entrepreneurship (Whittle; Mueller, 2008). Various theoretical currents have emerged, which view entrepreneurship as: a) technological foment, which creates, develops, and manages emergent companies; b) management (dissemination of entrepreneurial management practices) and c) a strategy for integrated and sustainable local development through small and medium-sized businesses.

In this way, as suggested by Hitt et al. (2010), entrepreneurship has become an important strategic variable, creating value for individuals, organizations and society as a whole. Over time, research has shifted from the analysis of the figure of the entrepreneur to the business he creates, while dealing with more strategic themes, such as the establishment and performance of new enterprises (Santos and Eisenhardt, 2009); enterprises, innovation and universities (Li and Liu, 2011; Rasmussen, 2011); the initial strategy and the barriers to a business setup, and the role of the venture capitalist (Cressy, 2006) or the corporate venture capitalist (Dushnitsky, 2006); and the analysis of growth strategies and enterprise performance (Gregoire et al., 2001). Innovation remains highlighted through definitions that privilege opportunities for investment, products and businesses (Bygrave and Hofer, 1991; Krueger and Brazeal, 1994) or the establishment of new enterprises (Gartner, 1989).

In this sense, as Shane and Venkataraman (2000: 217) state, ‘entrepreneurship has become a broad label under which a hodgepodge of research is housed’. Jones and Spicer (2005: 235) argue that a lot of ‘scientific and pseudo-scientific research has been put into the search for the entrepreneur’, but the entrepreneur ‘has not yielded to empirical analysis’. So, if observed through the eyes of such distinct concepts, entrepreneurship might then be viewed as an empty label, ‘a word that can mean everything and nothing, that does not have an intrinsic meaning, does relate to any of the objects which are usually associated with it, and which refer to several aspects without ever effectively reaching any of them’ (Walker, 1989: 164). Such a condition is convenient for making processes familiar, since this concept may acquire different meanings depending solely on the form chosen for their appropriation. It isn’t by chance that a process of familiarization, universalization and de-contextualization of entrepreneurial ideas has been identified, which privileges approaches with positive consequences of entrepreneurship regarding individuals, organizations and nations (Audia; Rider, 2005b; Katz, 2003; Murphy et al.,; 2006; Sorenson and Audia, 2000).

As Ogbor (2000) points out, little has been discussed regarding the power relations inherent in entrepreneurial discourse, such as the alleged convergence of individual and entrepreneurial interests in work-place relations, the kind of worker entrepreneurship favours, the historical professional context of most entrepreneurs, or their vocation and training. As Whittle and Mueller (2008: 446) argue, the questions, ‘how do employees come to desire an identity as an “entrepreneur”, and what practices are involved in making an idea “enterprising”’, are given little or no importance. Nor is there any debate in relation to the role of entrepreneurship ‘within the contemporary business world and capitalist societies in general (…) or indication of the interconnections of entrepreneurial activities with broader societal and cultural expectations of what entrepreneurs should look like or do’ (De Clercq; Voronov, 2009: 800). Thus, there is no research available to indicate who, exactly, might be interested in the dissemination of an entrepreneurial model that is a capitalist, Western, white, male heterosexual, of European or North American origin—regarded as correct and as a standard to be copied by everyone else (Bruni et al, 2004; Essers and Benschop, 2007; McLaren, 1997;).

In this article we assume that any discourse, as long as it produces hegemonic world views that frame, shape and constitute the relations between various social actors (Grant et al., 2001; Hardy, 2001), will help one to better understand entrepreneurship, especially within the present context, in which productive deregulation redefines the relations between capital and work, and where the human dimension has been viewed as a component of economic, as well as ideological, production and reproduction (Boje et al., 2004; Leitch and Palmer, 2010). In this sense, we agree with Ogbor (2000: 608) when he says that ‘the conventional discourse on entrepreneurship reinforces and reifies a mode of knowledge production that serves as an instrument for power’. We have, therefore, analysed the educational context by observing that the consolidation of part of the entrepreneurship ideology resides in the higher education processes, more specifically, within the field of business administration.

In Brazil, entrepreneurship is a part of the curricula of several graduate courses, as suggested by the national curricular guidelines. These guidelines consider that profile of a future professional should develop, among other things, entrepreneurial skills. Aside from introducing the standard disciplines related to the theme, universities also seek to stimulate the setting up of Junior Enterprises, which are seen as ideal environments for developing practical entrepreneurial skills, since they colligate academic and market practices. Our central objective was to identify which orders of discourse emerge from the entrepreneurial discourse of these Brazilian Junior Enterprises, assuming that interdiscursive relations regarding this subject do in fact contribute ideologically to the raising of the contemporary capitalist enterprise as the only possible model for the generation of wealth in society.

This study aims to contribute to the debate regarding critical studies of entrepreneurship in the followings ways/ First, our findings identify the utilitarian character of the entrepreneurial discourse, and its intrinsic network of symbolic relations of domination and ideological power (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2007). In this way, we problematize the individual discursively categorized as the ideal capitalist economic subject, how he conducts himself and what the socio-economic context of his acts is. In doing so, it becomes possible to: (1) name the entrepreneur, and not only by confusing metaphors that seem too superficial, (2) understand the contours of this subject that change with the economic and historical context in which it operates, and (3) infer the ideological developments of this discursive entrepreneurship at the present time.

Secondly, with respect to the above-mentioned body of literature on critical studies, we provide a more critical account of entrepreneurship, trying to escape from the usual—and predominant—mainstream studies on the limits of its business, or on the kind of behaviour expected of its key players (Jones and Spicer, 2005; Ogbor, 2000). It should be noted that discussion regarding discourse, ideology and power relations is frequent in critical journals. Studies that have problematized how economic contradictions, inequalities, power relations and domination are produced and reproduced by discourses (organizational or otherwise) can be found linked to different subjects, such as enterprise and managers (Ainsworth and Hardy, 2008; Du Gay and Salaman, 1992; Du Gay et al., 1996) gender, social responsibility, ethics, strategy, among others (Grant et al., 2009).

However, with regard to the specific relationship between discourse, ideology and entrepreneurship, the number of studies available appears to be much more limited (Ogbor, 2000). This number is further reduced when this aspect is investigated within the confines of the academic field in general, or, more specifically, in the case of Junior Enterprises: there is almost no research on their activities, their important fundamentals or on their relationship with entrepreneurship from a more critical perspective. The prevailing argument is that the performance of young student entrepreneurs is always positive and essential for the development of their professional future.

A possible explanation for the occurrence of this ‘gap’ in studies/literature may lie in the explicit link between entrepreneurship, practical instrumental free markets and free enterprise, which may give researchers the idea that this is of minor importance, and doesn’t therefore deserve to be taken into consideration. Another way of explaining the existence of this gap is to realize that a model supported by a positivist science, such as the mainstream discourse of entrepreneurship, which stimulates the birth of and supports technical and industrial modern society, cannot really support a deep critical reflection or any kind of divergent reflection.

In this sense, the contribution of this research to the critical study of entrepreneurship has not only sought to uncover entrepreneurial ideological discourse and chose certain issues as recurring, as producing and reproducing a hegemonic sense of reality, but it is also part of a broader context to try to promote an improvement in the critical literature of organizational studies by restoring the theme itself as the subject of entrepreneurship research. Thus, we assign, within our research, a particular importance not to the positivist view of reality, but instead, to a more historical, critical and ethical view of the object of study.

The ideology of entrepreneurship

In view of a succession of economic crises that began in the 1970s, a set of policies were developed and implemented at the beginning of the 1980s by the core nations, which had diagnosed the economic stagnation of that period as being caused by excessive regulation (the Washington Consensus), aimed at modifying the ‘future of the global economy, development policies, and specifically, the role of the State in the economy’ (Santos, 2007: 33). The three main institutional innovations of these policies were: restrictions to the regulation of the economy by governments, the emergence of new rights of international property for foreigners, inventors and creators, and the subordination of national governments to multilateral agencies. The model that was adopted was aimed at freeing the world’s economies by means of privatization, market and financial system liberalization, opening up of nations’ economies to global trade, policies for making labour flows more flexible and fiscal adjustment (Chomsky, 1998).

In this context, which Cohen and Musson (2005: 31) refer to as a period where ‘the old ideals of collectivism were replaced by an emphasis on individualism, wealth creation and freedom’—exemplar conduct became the entrepreneur’s conduct. Yet, the entrepreneur fails to find a rare profile: the individual who starts a given change (Schumpter, 1982; Sombart, 1946), for neoliberalism suggests that everyone can be an entrepreneur (Kruger and Brazeal, 1994). This mass phenomenon makes entrepreneurship the attitude of a people who seek the social and economic development of their country, as well as a new ethic in business.

This new work ethic presupposes a close connection between an individual and an enterprise (Du Gay and Salaman, 1992). As noticed by Ainsworth and Hardy (2008: 389), this approach is reinforced by a discourse of enterprise that has significant consequences for individuals and their relationship with work ‘through “the construction of new work identities” (…) that promote a particular view of what persons are and what they should be allowed to become. As individuals become more entrepreneurial, not just as small business owners, but also as members of larger organizations, organizational performance soars—or so it is hoped’. This can be verified by the approach to entrepreneurship in which the entrepreneur’s characteristics are transferred to the company where he works. As Lumpkin and Dess (1996) state, dimensions of such a model (autonomy, innovation, ability to take risks and act proactively, as well as aggressive competitiveness) do not refer to entrepreneurs themselves, but to the entrepreneurial orientation of organizations.

However, in spite of having acquired more visibility in recent decades, this exaltation of an entrepreneurial ‘spirit’ is not new (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2007). It is aligned with the conjectures of a neoliberal reshaping of contemporary political economics (Du Gay, 2000), in which capitalism produces a repertoire to explain reality regarding capitalist businessmen as models of behaviour to be disseminated throughout society (Armstrong, 2005; De Clercq and Voronov, 2009).

This perspective intensifies the dedication of modern human beings to how much money they make, therefore reducing it to the scope of personal interest and forcing the logic of capital into them ‘as if it were … the ultimate foundation of human life in society’ (Santos, 2007: 23). According to this, in order for a free-market society to produce wealth, it is necessary to have individuals who create and seize opportunities, as well as those who improve and establish businesses and its processes. As Du Gay (2000: 166) argues, it is possible to identify ‘a certain ‘ethic of self’ which stresses autonomy, responsibility and the freedom/obligation of individuals to actively make choices for themselves’. Almost anyone can be an entrepreneur: the founder of an organization, a manager of his own company, an innovative leader or anyone who takes a strategic initiative in an organization—the internal entrepreneur (Mintzberg et al., 1998).

Nowadays, the pursuit of profit is more than an obligation, and the individual, an economic capitalist subject par excellence, becomes an entrepreneur of his own life, which, according to Gaulejac (2005), turns him into capital that should become productive, through the incorporation and dissemination of ‘a spirit that offers motivating life perspectives while guaranteeing safety and moral reasons’ (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2007: 58). There may be certain identified ideological changes that have accompanied the transformation of capitalism to justify the necessary commitment, especially in a capitalist model that is very costly in human terms, to the functioning of the system as a whole.

As Harvey (1991) argues, two problematic areas need to be successfully negotiated and justified in order for a capitalist economic system to be feasible: a) those related to the anarchic qualities of market pricing and b) those arising from the need to control employment and the workforce. As far as the second area is concerned, some premises are shown to be fundamental, particularly the one of workforce discipline. According to this author, ‘the socialization of the worker under the conditions of capitalist production involves social control and broad physical and mental capacities. Education, training, persuasion, the mobilization of certain social feelings … and psychological biases … are clearly present in the formation of a dominant ideology cultivated by the mass media, religious and educational institutions … ’ (Harvey, 1991: 119).

Since the responsibility for an individual’s career is transferred to him, entrepreneurial training suggests that employability is equivalent to consenting to initiatives for the flexibilization of labour. As only professional matters refer to the individual scope, these are defined as the ability of individuals to compete (and win). This weakens the collective mentality and fosters a Darwinian logic of all against all, which can only benefit companies to the detriment of society (Du Gay, 2000).

It is worth noting that entrepreneurs have no ties to the consequences of neoliberal principles. At the same time, putting in to question the discourse of entrepreneurship as an ideal solution, as noted by Dempsey and Sanders (2010: 438), workers in their daily lives ‘are facing the negative impact of neoliberal market reforms, growing economic uncertainties, job losses, downsizing and rightsizing’. In addition, McChesney (1998) states that such policies stimulate the growth of economic and social inequality, with an increase of absolute poverty among nations, and an accelerated enrichment of the wealthy, a catastrophic global environment associated with an unstable global economy. Chomsky (1998) reinforces the above arguments, also highlighting problems in the areas of education and health, along with the increase of social inequality and the falling share of labour in income distribution. These negative aspects, Banerjee (2008) argues, even justify mentioning the existence of necrocapitalism.

At the professional level, it becomes acceptable and even normal for the contemporary professional be an independent economic unit inserted into a competitive framework. As noted by Du Gay et al. (1998: 267), ‘enterprise and entrepreneurialism occupy an absolutely crucial role in contemporary discourses (…) where the major principle of organizational restructuring is the attempt to introduce market mechanisms, market relationships and markets attitudes within the organization’. This turns entrepreneurship into an ideology of the ‘new spirit’ of current capitalism, in which a set of beliefs impels, justifies, and legitimizes the individuals’ commitment to the system (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2007). With the flexibilization of labour relations, the individual who is free to set up a new business has his importance reinforced by his acting through tenuous employment bonds, as an organization, collective and intra-entrepreneur that can be aided by the educational processes.

Entrepreneurship and Junior Enterprises

In Brazil, entrepreneurship is incorporated into the curricula of Universities through the National Curriculum Guidelines, the main vehicle of the Brazilian educational process. The importance of this movement can be perceived in the characteristics of Brazilian academic curricula (always centralized and national) that show both the socially desirable skills as well as the intended professional profile for the whole nation. However, this movement towards an entrepreneurial education is not something exclusive to Brazil. As shown by Thornton et al. (2011: 1) after the entrepreneurial turnaround of the 1990s, the ‘universities invested in building high-quality faculties to teach and research entrepreneurship, and governments increasingly viewed entrepreneurship as a solution to many social and economic problems’. As a result, in most cases, skills in education are understood discursively as a synonym for entrepreneurial education, as is the case, for example, of China (Li and Liu, 2011; Wu and Wu, 2008); Turkey (Gurol; Atsan, 2006) or Russia (Robinson et al., 2004).

Understanding the educational system as Foucault did (2007: 44), i.e. ‘the whole education system is a political way to maintain or modify the ownership of discourse, with the knowledge and powers that it brings with it’, specifically means, in the case of business schools, approaching the subject of entrepreneurship in two ways. One theoretical, through courses specifically or partially dealing with entrepreneurship, and a more applied practical variation, by means of the Junior Enterprises, which offer the opportunity to integrate academic and market practices.

The concept of the Junior Enterprise (hereafter referred to as JE) came about in 1967 in France, at Paris’ L’Ecole des Sciences Economiques et Superiore Commerciales, and its purpose was to offer students a higher education qualification. It was a combination of theory and practice and helped establish the European Confederation of Junior Enterprises (JADE), in 1990. In Brazil, the first such company was set up in the field of administration, during the 1980s, and since then, the phenomenon has spread to other fields, such as Computing, Engineering, Psychology and Tourism.

JEs are civil, non-for-profit organizations with educational goals, which are incorporated and managed by students at universities. They provide services to society under the supervision of professionals. They also promote activities, such as consulting projects, which help establish links between society, enterprises and universities, and they have a similar corporate structure, which features a general assembly, a board, an executive board, an advisory board and an audit committee.

These JEs have three essential characteristics: they are organizations with an autonomous management, responsible for their actions; the revenue obtained from their projects must be reinvested in the company and they must be necessarily non-partisan. It is their role to promote: a) the technical and academic development of their members; b) the economic and social development of the community through their activities; c) an entrepreneurial spirit in their members, d) contact between students and the labour market and e) the personal and professional development of their members.

As part of a movement called the Junior Enterprise Movement (JEM), created along the lines of the European model, the Brazilian JEs have a national representative organization, the Brazilian Confederation of Junior Enterprises, or Brazil Junior for short. Brazil Junior’s goals include representing the Junior Enterprises nationwide, and developing JEM as an agent of business education and new business creation. The organization promotes periodic meetings and defines a ‘minimum quality standard’ for the activities carried out by these enterprises, through a certification seal: the Brazil Junior Seal.

In addition to the obvious benefits of such genuine learning laboratories, support from the Brazilian Ministry of Education (MEC) also partially explains the high number of active JEs in Brazil (over 600) through the value it gives to the integration of theory and practice. This is proved by the fact that the Ministry regularly evaluates universities that support such organizations very positively. The average permanence of students in such organizations is of two years, during which, as they seek creative solutions, they also become qualified for business leadership more effectively than at conventional trainee courses.

Methodology

This article is based on a qualitative survey that was epistemologically oriented by interpretivism (Heracleous, 2004; Morgan, 2008) and methodologically orientated by critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1993, 2003). It is cross-sectional study with a longitudinal perspective, as we are interested in an entrepreneurship that is discursively constituted at the moment of data collection; the level of analysis is organizational and the units of analysis are the Junior Enterprises.

The current format of higher education in management in Brazil is linked to a trading process that transfers the logic of the market to other domains of society (Dempsey and Sanders, 2010), a process that has been accelerated during the current phase of capitalism and by the impact of ideological changes related to neoliberalism. Thus, it constitutes a technical education that is committed to company results but not to the society in which these companies are located. It was in this context that we decided to study the Junior Enterprise, a move that allowed us to question these practices which, in line with the political projects of the formal teaching of educational administration, articulate higher education and labour markets in a very specific way. We are thus left with a professional group that is largely devoid of any reflection about its own role in the system, that is immersed in a context that converts, naturally, individual and social goals into a development of business strategies, and determines how to use its economic bargaining chips, lowering the whole human complexity to an instrumental logic of capitalism (Contu, 2009).

At the organizational level, the emphasis is on the discourse. According to Maingueneau (2008c), the discourse is orientated (has a purpose in time), is a form of action, is interactive, is contextualized (defines its context and is capable of changing it), is assumed and does not acquire sense except within a universe of other discourses (interdiscourse). In agreement with this view, we assume in our research that one of the possible ways of identifying and capturing the ideas or representations regarding the entrepreneur and entrepreneurship might be through discourse, in general, and through the interdiscursivity between different discursive formations, more specifically.

In general, one can define discourse as a set of statements, concepts, theories and theses written and spoken, that together articulate a conception of something in particular. In other words, discourses are texts that create meaning and purpose and that include not only the spoken or written language but also cultural artifacts and visual representations (Hardy, 2001). These are words in motion that not only describe things as they are, but give meaning in order to build practical and specific experiences. In this way, as noted by Grant et al. (2009: 214), discourses ‘realize rules, identities, contexts, values, and procedures and these in turn (…) can be seen to determine social practices’.

With regard to how discourse is understood in this research work, we agree with Chouliaraki and Fairclough (2010) that discourse, and power, shape social relations through a process of articulation and re-articulation. Thus, discourse can be understood as not being a closed phenomenon, which may be produced, reproduced, resisted, negotiated and changed. According to Foucault (2007), it is precisely this active relation between discourse and society that ensures that the entire production of discourse is controlled, selected, organized and redistributed by procedures whose function it is to contain its powers and dangers, ‘one knows very well that one doesn’t have the right to say everything, that one can’t talk about everything in any circumstance, that anyone, after all, cannot talk about anything’(Foucault, 2007: 9).

Data collection was conducted through individual face-to-face interviews with students and tutors from six Junior Enterprises in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Data collection was conducted in two phases, the first between 2007–2008, and the second during the year of 2010. A total of 60 interviews were carried out with the average duration of 50 minutes each one. The interviews were based on open-ended questions and on a single guiding topic (Gaskell, 2000). The interview processes were concluded by examining the occurrence of saturation in the representations of the respondents (Bauer and Aarts, 2002), and were fully recorded and transcribed.

The methodological choice for the interviews could be justified in the light of the possibility that this data collection tool offers an understanding of the experiences, beliefs, values and behaviours in the specific social contexts of the respondents (Gaskell, 2000). It is in this sense that, according to Denzin and Lincoln (2006), qualitative research can be understood as a set of practices that give visibility to the world—and the researcher in the world—by means of an interpretative approach. Thus, during the interview process we sought to: (a) leave the respondents free and free to express themselves in their own way, (b) prepare questions that would not undermine free expression, and (c) insert additional questions or interests into the dialogue.

With regard to the data analysis, the textual inputs were processed through critical discourse analysis using Fairclough’s (1993, 2003) perspective and his tridimensional analysis scheme (Grant et al., 2001; Hardy, 2001). The operationalization of the research was carried out in three stages. Firstly, we identified the discursive objects that were later categorized into discursive formations defined a posteriori.

For Foucault (2000), a discursive formation is a system of relationships between objects, expressive types, concepts and subject choices. This system of relationships produces the person, and with him, what is given him to see, understand, do, fear and hope for. Thus, the person always talks about some place and, since he occupies a certain position within society that is accompanied by a certain materiality, his discourse creates the real and exercises influence on the constitution of social reality. Fairclough (1993: 52) exemplifies this point using the idea of militant, since ‘militant means different things in trade union discourse (here it could be a synonym for ‘activist’ and an antonym for ‘apathetic’) and in the conservative discourse of the right (in which it could be a synonym for ‘subversive’ and an antonym for ‘moderate’).

It is worth pointing out that discursive formation cannot be understood as something that is cohesive and uniform. On the contrary, we assume in our research that these are constituted by contradiction, heterogeneity and the fluidity of their borders, shaping and re-shaping themselves unendingly in their relations. Thus, one can firmly say that a discursive formation is crossed by various other discursive formations, which centralizes and prioritizes the question of the investigation into the articulation of the discursive formations in their relations with one another (inter-discursiveness) and within the orders of discourse (Maingueneau, 2008b).

In this way, these discursive formations contribute, not only to the reproduction of society (social identities and relations, knowledge systems and beliefs), but also to its transformation (Boje et al., 2004). Therefore, the very discursive practice and events are presented as a permanent struggle, while setting up a complex and variable scenario, where the structures only manifest a temporary, partial and contradictory fixity (Burrell, 1999).

In order to identify these discursive objects we had to carry out the following: (1) a textual analysis (which considered the items of vocabulary, grammar, cohesion and textual structure); (2) an analysis of the discursive practices (which considered the force of expressions; the coherence of the texts and the inter-discursiveness) and (3) an analysis of social practices (which considered the relationship between the many different social elements that make up the social selections and rules than can exist within a particular historical context).

After we identified and classified these discursive objects, the second stage involved analysing the convergences and the silences between the constituted discursive formations. One should stress that, as Maingueneau (2008a) states, there is no such thing as an isolated expression (or one that is general, free, neutral or independent), but rather an expression is invariably part of a series or a set of expressions, playing a role in the midst of the others, supported by them and distinguishing itself from them, in other words, one could then define interdiscursivity as the relationship between one discourse and others. Thus, every discourse is crossed by interdiscursivity, and ‘a discursive formation only exists and is maintained thanks to interdiscourse’ (Maingueneau, 2008a: 242).

The third, and last stage, involved listing and analysing the cases of interdiscursivity between the discursive formations, in order to try to identify the possible ideological developments of these relationships: the orders of discourse—that constitute the totality of discursive practices within an institution or society, and their struggles for power are fundamental to any discursive formation (Fairclough, 1993).

The articulation and re-articulation of orders of discourse can be understood as a border for hegemony, and reflects the power of a group over society, while always in alliance with other social forces (Fairclough, 1993). It is in this sense that for Foucault (2012: 188), as power relations are no more than daily and shared strategic games, ‘the interesting thing is to know how, within a group, a class, a society, the networks of power work’, in other words, where each person is positioned within the network of power, how he uses that position, how he holds on to it, and how he effects it. For this reason, there is a constant struggle to build, maintain or break such alliances and their inherent relations of domination. Moreover, discursive practice (production, distribution and consumption of texts) contributes to the reproduction or transformation not only of the existing order of discourse, but also to the social relations themselves, as will be discussed in more detail below.

Data discussion and analysis

The analysis of discourse produced through the real contact, symbolic and/or imaginary, of the subjects with the theme of entrepreneurship has allowed us to identify certain more underlying aspects, reach certain conclusions based on evidence and interpret explicit and implicit messages, thereby uncovering possible meanings that are hidden, silent and omitted. We thus identified the following discursive items: 1) academic success as a result of market insertion 2) market lab; 3) proactive search for knowledge; 4) sharing experiences; 5) new ways of doing things; 6) putting into practice; 7) stepping stone into the market; 8) status acquisition; 9) formal education; 10) overcoming oneself and growing professionally; 11) junior slave; 12) establishment and expansion of business; 13) breeding ground for entrepreneurs; 14) leveraging of opportunities; 15) constructing social networking; 16) familial exemplarity; 17) exemplarity of successful businessmen; and 18) exemplarity of former members.

These discursive items were considered as shared discursive formations expressions that, anchored in social practices contributed to a better understanding as to what are the approximation and the distancing relations among the discourses on the subject of entrepreneurship in Junior Enterprises and what the ideological implications of this interdiscursivity might be. Firstly, these items were classified separately, which made it possible to reveal the discursive formations. Secondly, the discursive formations were analysed in terms of their interdiscursivity thereby revealing the orders of discourse.

The discursive formations

Interdiscursivity has led to the grouping of the discursive objects into seven different discursive formations: a) university-market articulation; b) entrepreneurial spirit; c) differentiation in the market; d) importance of practice; e) wealth creation; f) entrepreneur as an organizational product and g) social models of entrepreneurs.

University-market articulation

In this discursive formation, we identified a link between the articulation of academic and market practices, which—as noted by Rasmussen (2011)—are placed as the main source of wealth, growthand personal and professional fulfillment. The two discursive objects that formed this link were: ‘academic success as result of market insertion’ and ‘market lab’.

In the first discursive object, ‘academic success as result of market insertion’, words such as entrepreneurship, applicability, practice, market insertion and success systematically emerged from the discourse of our interviewees and helped reinforce what had already been observed by Ainsworth and Hardy (2008), namely the link between the individual and the company:

… All our members are well placed in the market, everyone leaves and manages to get a good internship, at Petrobras, at Shell, everyone is well placed. It’s a sign that the market is recognizing the value of the junior businessman. (Interviewee No.14, at UERJ)

The interviews showed that, the experience acquired by working at a Junior Enterprise is regarded as relevant, since practice (the application of theory, discursively contained in the activities of these junior companies) prevails over theory (empty, discursively contained in the activities of the classroom). Just as tutors recommend that their students use theory to solve every-day issues at these Junior Enterprises, so they also suggest that professional insertion is the main objective of the university experience and a parameter for one’s individual success:

[The student should believe that] this is what I’m studying for. This here is the application of what I am learning. This is how I will earn money in my life. This is how I will develop my career … . (Interviewee No.22, at FGV-RJ)

The second discursive object deals with the formation of business expectations, the Junior Enterprise being considered a ‘market lab’, as it anticipates the practice of what will be later experienced in the market itself. The discourse on the experience acquired by working in a Junior Enterprise is recurrently associated with the learning about certain office positions, as though the students had to assume the same duties and responsibilities of established professionals:

[At the Junior Enterprise] you have the opportunity to be the company president …, a director, or a manager, do you understand? To lead a team, to lead on a project, to lead a company, a department or sector, … you get the company for yourself … and you want to grow with the company, to be an entrepreneur. (Interviewee No. 46, at IBMEC-RJ)

At the same time, they would virtually be able to develop unmatched activities, similar those carried out in the actual market and which could not possibly be experienced in conventional training programs:

You feel important, it’s something I always said at the beginning, ‘ah, I’ve got a meeting’, I love meetings. I feel important … It’s a credibility … ‘Ah what do you do? Ah, I work at the Junior Enterprise’. (Interviewee No.10, at UFRJ)

These analysed discourses highlight the close connection, as noted by Li and Liu (2011) and Taatila (2010), between the individual and the company already at the educational level. The result, in contrast, is a problematic notion that affirms that effective teaching may strictly only qualify professionals for the market. This suggests that they be exclusively committed to business results in detriment to society, and also suggests a radical equipping of higher education.

The entrepreneurial spirit

This discursive formation considered the existence of a certain entrepreneurial spirit, or a new spirit, according to Boltanski and Chiapello (2007), pervading the work being carried out at these Junior Enterprises, and the need for development through innovative actions. Four discursive objects, principles and entrepreneurial characteristics have been identified that guide a given individual’s actions in the world: ‘a proactive search for knowledge’, ‘sharing experiences’, ‘new ways of doing things’ and ‘putting into practice’.

The first of these discursive objects, ‘the proactive search for knowledge’ appears in almost all the interviews. The initiative to search for knowledge is attributed to the member as soon as he joins the Junior Enterprise. Such a proactive stance, which discursively speaking is in line with the appropriate literature and appears as fundamental to the identification of new opportunities (Eckhardt and Shane, 2003; Short et al., 2010), is important because such an environment prepares students for the real labour market. This is perceived as an environment where ‘to each his own’ is the rule:

We recognize much more that individual who doesn’t need to be told what to do—He’s given an opportunity, sees it and seizes it. (Interviewee No.11, at UFRJ)

… This is in line with market practice, in the market, no director, manager or supervisor is going to be stroking your hair and telling you what needs to be done. (Interviewee No. 11 at UFRJ)

Regarding the second discursive object, ‘sharing experiences’, the acquisition of knowledge not only relates to the classroom, although it is an individual activity, but is more commonly perceived as the exchange of experiences among colleagues, members of other junior companies, as well as counseling by former members. On one hand, sharing is made possible by the fact that such organizations—discursively—do not adopt the same notion of competition in the market:

… The Junior Enterprise is a movement … that is much greater than only the one company … . It has this synergy of team work, without the competitiveness of companies on the outside where it’s each one for himself … they work together, always willing to help each other. (Interviewee No. 17, at UERJ)

However, the sharing of information is not entirely complete, especially with regard to the services on offer, suggesting there is a degree of competition among Junior Enterprises as well as between these and their tutors—which rather misrepresents the concept behind the JEMs (Junior Enterprise Movements):

… We don’t offer … very specific company stuff, such as contracts, that kind of legal stuff … we don’t usually supply … a model of our financial spreadsheet … the enterprises [junior] never let on how their projects are carried out. (Interviewee No.11, at UFRJ)

… But it often happens that a professor will demand to know why a certain project was sent to the Junior Enterprise and not to him … Some professors are somewhat envious of projects that are sent to us. I’ve even heard tell … of professors who acted as mentors to a project and then tried to take it for themselves … . (Interviewee No.28, at FGV-RJ)

The entrepreneurial spirit, on the other hand, is discursively connected to the idea of a junior entrepreneurial figure, as it refers to the creation as well as the execution of business related activities. This is clear in the discursive object entitled ‘the new ways of doing things’, where the entrepreneur is considered as someone who is creative and who can see opportunities where nobody else can, and take advantage of them, including at the very Junior Enterprise stage:

In the Junior Enterprise … there is a degree of flexibility in its activities, in its departments … a person has the chance to become an entrepreneur within the company, to make modifications, to implement new things … Of course, there are limits, but he has the room to start experimenting, He can already begin to understand what the consequences of his actions can be. (Interviewee No.1, at UFRJ)

But, these discourses have also shown the limits, similar to those encountered in companies in the marketplace, to acting in an innovative way, limits that arise from the relations of power that exist in organizational practices (Ogbor, 2000):

Not everyone can be an entrepreneur in the company, otherwise you would have each one trying to convince everyone else to join him, pulling them to his side, and a lot of heads for few bodies. (Interviewee No.4, at UFRJ)

Ultimately I can use the presidential card. … Not that I ever do, but I can reach a point where I simply say: shut up and do it. It happens. This kind of thing happens in a company, didn’t you know? (Interviewee No.50, at PUCRio)

However, the entrepreneur is not just someone who sets up a new business and always innovates, but also someone who achieves and implements things successfully, almost in a serendipitous way (Dew, 2009). As a consequence, the fourth discursive object, ‘putting into practice’ suggests that having ideas is not enough—it is also necessary to accomplish them:

Because he needs to have this sense of putting things into practice … Not just stopping at the idea … There was a phrase that I heard here in the Junior Enterprise that I will carry with me for the rest of my life as a personal motto … If you have initiative, you must also have finishing power, to put things into practice and do it right. (Interviewee No.48, at PUCRio)

This discursive formation encompasses a discourse that is aligned with a free-market based society, as pointed out by Du Gay (2000) and it demands values, requiring a professional profile that is, aside from entrepreneurial, also adaptable, committed, autonomous and ambitious.

Differentiation in the market

It is important for each individual to stand out from the others in a competitive context that is considered healthy and normal. The discursive formation, ‘differentiation in the market’ identifies certain distinctive elements mentioned by the participants, as members of a Junior Enterprise. This includes two discursive objects: ‘a stepping stone into the market’ and ‘status acquisition’.

To distinguish oneself from the others, although not indispensable at the Junior Enterprise level, is fundamental in the market. Thus our interviewee discourses showed a need to seek added value to the individual curricula of each student, in order to better compete in the labour market, something that was both desired by students and endorsed by teachers. For them, taking part in a Junior Enterprise is necessary to acquire ‘experience’, something perceived as being desired by the market:

… The first thing is the curricular difference, when you put in it an extra line, ‘I took part in a Junior Enterprise’, and the market today sees that as something important … generally at recruitment and selection events, there are already forms for you to fill out that include a small section: Have you ever participated in a Junior Enterprise? (Interviewee No.3, at UFRJ)

In this sense, a Junior Enterprise is understood as being a ‘stepping stone into the market’ (the first object of discourse), as it helps its members to get good jobs in important companies:

You will develop skills that someone who has only done an internship won’t have … the academic world teaches you to think, not necessarily to apply those thoughts. (Interviewee No.22, at FGV-RJ)

… people use the Junior Enterprise a lot as a trampoline to other things. (Interviewee No.3, at UFRJ)

This process may or may not accompany the second discursive object, ‘status acquisition’. This distinguishes the members from the other students at the same university:

I can network, I get to know lots of students, I get to know professors, the Junior Enterprise gives a student status … Because you have your own room, you have the e-mail, you have some privileges, we can use a printer free of charge, there are … free courses … you can travel on behalf of the university … it’s an incentive. (Interviewee No.28, at FGV)

These two discursive objects corroborate differences perceived by interviewees in working at a Junior Enterprise. The activities are seen as very similar to those carried out by real companies, which makes it possible for the student to take part in day-to-day operations and to hold positions that no internship program could offer, but within the academic environment itself to which they belong.

The Importance of practice

According to the students’ interviews, the discussion regarding entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship downplays the importance of formal education, since their testimonials suggested that successful entrepreneurs could put aside this kind of knowledge by ‘getting their hands dirty’ instead. Therefore, the discursive formation ‘importance of practice’ associates learning to actual practice. Three discursive objects arise from this discursive formation: ‘formal education’, ‘overcoming oneself and growing professionally’ and ‘junior slave’.

The emphasis on the practical does not imply that the students disregard university (viewed as a place of theory), but they believe that learning by doing is inherent to the entrepreneur’s agenda. Consequently, this turns formal education into something potentially irrelevant:

… university is less important … my priority is to the company … . Being in here, putting things into practice, is great. (Interviewee No.52, at PUCRio)

This reasoning also applies to daily life, because in the same way that successful entrepreneurs can do without academic knowledge, assuming students learn from actual practice, then they question the applicability of the courses offered:

We learn a lot, I, in just two weeks, learnt a lot. Even more than in two years at university. (Interviewee No.24, at FGV)

And this included entrepreneurship itself as something difficult to be taught in terms of theory:

To teach entrepreneurism is pretty much like saying, let’s teach, let’s have a course on theology to make people learn to have faith. (Interviewee No.1, at UFRJ)

In this sense, whatever may not be readily put into practice is irrelevant. This concept confuses higher education with both technical education and entrepreneurial education (Thornton et al., 2011), which are allegedly directed at actual practice.

As an initiative, according to these testimonies, the Junior Enterprise offers a practical space that provides students with a degree of maturity, in line with the second object of discourse, ‘overcoming oneself and growing professionally’. Du Gay (2000) and Boltanski and Chiapello (2007) noted, as something positive and ‘naturally’ expected of market logic, the focus on the importance of self-performance and the individual overcoming of challenges, which appears recurrently in the testimonies of the interviewees:

… We don’t have holidays. Sometimes, we work all day. I leave here, on average, at 8.30 at night, and arrive at the university at 7.00 the next morning. As I said, I don’t have holidays … It’s a lot of stress, a lot of responsibility, so you have to really want to work at the Junior Enterprise. (Interviewee No.53,at PUCRio)

These testimonies also indicated that working at a Junior Enterprise is exhausting, although the benefits of professional growth as a result are perceived as significant. This actually led some of the interviewees to state, ironically, that the junior entrepreneur is often a ‘junior slave’ (third object of discourse), because he sacrifices himself, working for no pay:

A lot of people say, ‘oh no, I’m going to work in a Junior Enterprise to earn nothing, I’m going to work for free, I’m going to be a slave, I’m going to be this, I’m going to be that … ’. (Interviewee No.9, at UFRJ)

I think that most people think like that, that it’s a sort of slave labour, that people work too much and get little in return. (Interviewee No.52, at PUCRio)

This kind of sacrifice also involves being absent from family and friends, and, in some cases, having to give up romantic attachments and hobbies:

Nobody can ever know just how much we work, so hard, so hard, how we stay up to the early hours of the morning, without earning a penny … you have to give up other things, … friends, family, just to dedicate yourself, but it’s totally worth it. (Interviewee No.8, at UFRJ)

It’s all about going to bed at 3 am and getting up at 5. Just for the fun of it, right? (Interviewee No.10, at UFRJ)

The relationship between the three discursive objects of this discursive formation favours the practical over the academic life, considering that the entrepreneur can spare the theory, without, however, being able to spare practice. Neglecting the theory can lead to the transformation of individuals into mere merchandise/subjects, always submissive to the labour market. Assuming, as pointed out by Du Gay and Salaman (1992: 626), that in the discourse of enterprise ‘becoming a better worker is represented as the same thing as becoming a more virtuous person, a better self’, working on something considered a priority, along with the commitment of members of the Junior Enterprise, does not make ‘junior slavery’ a problem, but, to respondents, a necessary sacrifice.

Wealth creation

A fifth discursive formation identified, namely ‘wealth creation’, suggests that the entrepreneur has the social function of converting opportunities into economic results, including two discursive formations: ‘establishment and expansion of businesses’ and ‘a breeding ground for entrepreneurs’.

In agreement with other literature on the subject of entrepreneurship (Hitt et al., 2010; Shane and Venkataraman, 2000), our interviewees viewed entrepreneurs as the drivers of capitalism through the ‘establishment and expansion of business’, by the creation of new consumer goods and innovative methods of management and production:

… are the people who want to achieve something. They have the capital and they have a very strong idea … a dream to set up their own business. (Interviewee No.8, at UFRJ)

Such individuals are characterized as owners or employees who have the social function of identifying opportunities and converting them into economic values, thereby playing a key role in expanding or establishing businesses:

He is really an entrepreneur … because he invested in the business, saw the opportunity for growth … and he grew from there. … He’s a guy who went after what he wanted … had an opportunity in the market, of unfulfilled demand, and he began to supply that need … . (Interviewee No.24, at FGV-RJ)

Both students and tutors had difficulty in identifying entrepreneurs in areas outside conventional business, while linking the entrepreneur to the businessman to his identity within the organizational space, particularly at the Junior Enterprises. As a consequence, the other discursive object of this discursive formation refers to junior enterprises as a ‘breeding ground’ for entrepreneurs who will either work in the market or set up companies. This implies that the entrepreneurial practice is discursively associated with the idea of an ideal entrepreneur or entrepreneurship:

… Yeh, I thinks that’s what it is in general, the Junior Enterprise is a great storehouse of people who then go to work in the market and want to do something, set up an enterprise of their own some time during their lives … . (Interviewee No.3, at UFRJ)

That happens over and over, you have large numbers of people who have worked here [at the Junior Enterprise] and who have opened up their own businesses. (Interviewee No.48, at PUC-Rio)

These discursive objects of this formation are structured upon the concept that entrepreneurs can convert opportunities into economic results, thus incorporating the role of a business expansion social agent and contributing directly to the development of society.

The entrepreneur as an organizational product

The discursive formation entitled ‘the entrepreneur as an organizational product’ gathers discursive objects that identify the labour market insertion of professional experience at a large company, while ‘leveraging opportunities’ and ‘constructing social networking’.

Although Junior Enterprises are perceived as organizations that leverage the emergence of future entrepreneurs, the discourses state that working for a large company leads to a more effective learning process; hence, ‘leveraging opportunities’ (first discursive object) by means of the enlargement of opportunities for market insertion, working as an employee or a business owner.

Therefore, the establishment of a business must be preceded by the acquisition of experience in larger, more structured, and more legitimate organizations, which have a more significant share of the market:

… The Junior Enterprise gives you a strong foundation, but still lacks a lot of what you need. You still need to go through a senior consultancy … there are differences. It’s always good for you to experience these differences, to take the abuse. It’s the abuse of life. (Interviewee No.48, at PUC-Rio)

I think about it [opening my own business]. I think it would be fully viable, but I don’t have an idea right at this moment, know what I mean? … So, I prefer to get to know, contact other companies first. (Interviewee No.54, at PUCRio)

This premise supports the arguments by Sorenson and Audia (2000), which state that organizations are responsible for the creation of opportunities for people to develop confidence in their own abilities to set up and run a business:

The Junior Enterprise is a workshop of entrepreneurism. … this here is a place for opening up the experience of being an entrepreneur. (Interviewee No.12, at UERJ)

Thus, the interaction between members of a given Junior Enterprise, other companies’ entrepreneurs, and former junior entrepreneurs, helps foster ‘constructing social networking’ (second discursive object), which consequently facilitates the mobilization of resources, as well as professional insertion:

The Junior Enterprise, I think it’s an excellent starting point … Both in networking, and in terms of one’s skills … You are always learning, even at the end of your career, every day is a new challenge. And I think it’s there that we can develop not only our skills, but also our character and our friends. (Interviewee No.48, at PUCRio)

According to Brittan and Freeman (1986), entrepreneurs rely on their social relationships to mobilize resources for their companies, both in financial and staffing terms, which means having to deal with well-connected and successful people in the area in which the entrepreneur hopes to establishes a business:

We have here a council of former JE members that help us … they help us with internships … ends up being yet one more contact. (Interviewee No.44, at IBMEC)

In the discursive formation entitled ‘entrepreneur as an organizational product’, our testimonials emphasized the importance of the company role in the professional experience of entrepreneurs, which can occur either through the level of expertise gained in the execution of different productive activities, or on the social level, through social ties with successful individuals, which can turn into contributions to the setting up of businesses.

Social models of entrepreneurs

In the last discursive formation, ‘social models of entrepreneurs’, the interviewees were inspired by examples of successful entrepreneurs, according to three discursive objects: the ‘familial exemplarity’, the ‘exemplarity of successful businessmen’ and the ‘exemplarity of former members’.

The first discursive object refers to ‘familial exemplarity’. For many of the interviewees, the recipe for success can be enhanced by the family environment, since the first examples one gets are provided by members of the family, including those who have had informal businesses, who have regular stories of endurance, perseverance and success:

An example of an entrepreneur? … My grandfather … He began at an early age to work in a drug store, at just thirteen. … With the help of my great-grandfather, he bought that drug store, and then bought another … he bought a restaurant, he bought a cinema … and he began to diversify, but then he saw that TV was emerging, so he sold the cinema, invested in a hospital clinic and this became a success, and now he invests in cattle, which is his business now. (Interviewee No.24, at FGV)

The ‘exemplarity of successful businessmen’ is the second discursive object. Supported by the arguments of Anderson and Warren (2011), that entrepreneurs have a distinctive presence in society shaped by expectations, when the interviewees were asked about the first example of an entrepreneur that came to mind, the most cited names were almost always those of successful figures who appear regularly in the media, such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Donald Trump:

[Example of an entrepreneur] Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, we talk about them, talk a bit about their backgrounds … . (Interviewee No.53, at PUCRio)

The third discursive object deals with the ‘exemplarity of former members’. Just as in the case of the previous two discursive objects, when asked about an example of an entrepreneur, the interviewees often recalled the allegedly successful trajectory of a member or former member of the company. Their spoken memories of former members use words such as eternal, blood, DNA, passion, and these former members seem to be regarded by the interviewees as individuals who left a legacy behind, which is reinforced by their return to their former Junior Enterprises, who are always willing to help structure and restructure the enterprises’ professional activities:

He only did that because he loves it so much, so we have lots of former members who come here to give presentations, to teach courses, offer us millions of things, training for us … . (Interviewee No.54, at PUCRio)

And, in a universe where personal experience and professional practice are essential attributes, the help that is offered is always discursively constructed through the person’s background itself:

We invite them [former members] to all the events … they usually say, they start with the phrase, ‘in my day’ … they give good examples … examples of their life experiences that helped get them into the jobs market. (Interviewee No.17, at UERJ)

All the Junior Enterprises that took part in this research survey regularly invite former members to speak at conferences, where they are expected not just to motivate the current students, but also to recruit new workers, which reinforces the discourse of being successful as a result of the experience of having been a junior entrepreneur:

For example, Michel [former member] … the difficulties he went through to start his company and the success he enjoys today in the market. Last year, his company was the company that paid its shareholders the most in dividend. He received seven million in bonuses, in other words, he’s a guy who worked here with us, so you think: I can get there. It’s an inspiration, a motivation. (Interviewee No.43, at IBMEC/RJ)

These three discursive objects refer to examples that may come from the family, the media, or the experience acquired in Junior Enterprises. To a certain extent, this is identified as a standardization of the concept, since entrepreneurs are no longer seen as unique individuals, but rather as commonplace (Santos, 2007), at least with regard to success, especially if they have already worked for a given organization.

Entrepreneurship as an ideology and a social practice

Such discursive formations are understood, in a given ideological formation, as what can and what should be said at a given time and space (Fairclough, 1993). These regions of the speakable reflect ideological differences, that is, the positions of individuals in represented social places that are unequally accessible. In this section we have sought to examine the interdiscursivity of the listed discursive formations which, when inserted into social practices, enable us to explain orders of discourse. In addition to the convergences in the discourses, we also analysed silenced and/or omitted discourses.

Convergences

The discursive formations are inserted in a context that emphasizes, according to Boltanski and Chiapello (2007) and Du Gay (2000), a particular model of entrepreneur (a business owner or an employee) who converts his individual and social goals into organizational strategies, while taking into account a company’s demands, priorities, values and principles.

In this sense, an initial convergence between the discursive formations (entrepreneurial spirit, wealth creation and social models of entrepreneurs) understands entrepreneurship as a mass phenomenon in which anyone can, through it, realize themselves personally and professionally. Anyone can be an entrepreneur, under two necessary conditions: 1) the individual must be seen as being autonomous and have the characteristics considered as ‘adequate’ and 2) an inherently socioeconomic context of a free market must be in place. And in this process, the individual is taught in terms of ‘how to control his conduct, his behaviour, his attitudes, how to intensify his performance, multiply his capacity, how to put himself in his rightful place, where he can be most useful’ (Foucault, 2012: 177). This allows the individual to be a full-time entrepreneur, which should be an attitude assumed by everyone because this is the way to promote the growth and socioeconomic development of nations. In other words, the goal of a disciplinary power is to run the lives of individuals and to control them in their relations, in their learning, in order to make them docile and castrated and thus absorb all their potential (Foucault, 1979).

A second discursive formation convergence (university-market articulation, importance of practice, entrepreneurial spirit) arises as a consequence of the first and refers to the discursive gap between formal education and professional practice. Based on the concept that anyone can become an entrepreneur, simply by meeting certain conditions, formal education loses its significance in shaping the individual, since it does not necessarily form new entrepreneurs. One should point out that the exception occurs when the intention is to create new entrepreneurs. At this point, academia and market merge through similar curricular proposals for entrepreneurial education (Mars and Rios-Aguilar, 2010) which prioritise values, assumptions, activities, skills and competencies demanded by the market and by the business world in its present form. Thus, as Ogbor (2000) argues, to discipline the individual, in Foucaultian terms, means disciplining the individual for the market through an entrepreneurial education.

The third discursive formation convergence (market differentiation, social models of entrepreneurs) refers to the close ties between the individual and the company in a simultaneous process of discursive construction that strongly encourages individuals who realize their potential in the workplace. This aligns with the argument pointed out by Du Gay and Salaman (1992: 624) that the discourse of enterprise creates the vision of an harmonic relation between ‘the greatest possible realization of the intrinsic abilities of individuals at work and the optimum productivity and profitability of the corporation’.

This is evident, for example, in the case of those entrepreneurs who cannot stop working, despite the sacrifices seen as inherent to the process and who, on the contrary, articulate and consider as natural, the binomial of pleasure and suffering in their professional day-to-day in a fairly instrumental kind of way. In part, this is due to the importance attributed to the exemplary models (familial, media-sponsored or success) of entrepreneurs whose stories serve as a stimulus in associating the figures of the entrepreneur with a hero, an extreme worker, who should be imitated.

The fourth discursive convergence (entrepreneur as an organizational product; market differentiation) shifts the focus from the innovative enterprise of an individual to the figure of the employee entrepreneur. The business space—especially that of a large enterprise—is discursively depicted as essential for the formation of someone who is a developer of entrepreneurship and who may choose to continue working as an employee (internal entrepreneur) or quit and establish his own business. Even when the Junior Enterprise appears in the discourse as an entrepreneurial environment, the discourse is that its members must work in a large company before opening up their own business.

This, however, does not happen without a fifth adjacent convergence: the discourse that business initiatives, which favor the flexibilization of work, transfer the full responsibility with regard to their careers to a company’s employees. Such careers are defined accordingly to an individual’s ability to compete and ultimately win. These discursive formations (market differentiation and entrepreneurial spirit) converge to praise the innovative, adaptive and autonomous individual, that is, someone who has an aversion to anything that is rigid, ordinary and safe, as opposed to the required availability and commitment to pace, change and risk.

The eighth, and final convergence refers to entrepreneurs as social actors by definition, actors who are more suitable to drive the capitalist machine, to maximize gains generated by innovations and to leverage countries by promoting economic development.

Discursive silences

An analysis of discursive silences is fundamental. The discourses have a number of silences, omissions and obscure connotations which enabling research that reveal hidden intentions, implicit assumptions and veiled ambiguities. It is through its recognition that whatever can and cannot be said about something becomes perceptible (Fairclough, 1993).

The first silence refers to the negative side of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. The link between entrepreneurship and the current world economic order is an inexorable and natural discourse, which certainly implies adhesion. Relevant questions are silenced, such as: is not the current stage of capitalism favourable to the concentration of capital, mega-mergers and oligopolies? Furthermore, are not such phenomena antagonistic to free-markets and free competition? The same silence occurs in the students’ discourses, where they failed to mention the real dimensions of personal sacrifice represented by so many hours of dedication and work needed to deliver projects on time, something that is always softened by words such as passion, love, dedication and devotion.

A second silence concerns failure, which is only highlighted when the goal is to associate it discursively to a tale of overcoming that culminates in success. Recursively, the image of the hero or the successful entrepreneur is opposed to the anti-hero: the bad entrepreneur, the lunatic and the loser.

The discursive constructions on entrepreneurship—as emphasized by McChesney (1998) and Chomsky (1998)—do not note the consequences of neoliberal principles (the third silence). The implications of the (re) production of entrepreneurial ideals towards contemporary labour relations are not questioned. The concept that the contemporary professional is an independent economic unit inserted into a competitive context becomes natural, as it is embodied in the image of the ‘Individual SA’. The silence about the precariousness of labour relations, especially in Junior Enterprises, remains.

A fourth silence deals with the principles behind the application of certain concepts to entrepreneurial activities, such as harmony and synergy (with a company’s expectations), capacitation, training and adequation (to the market’s needs). The conciliation between the interests of companies and those of their employees is assumed as natural. In the students’ discourses, this was reflected in the choice of these words and not of others in the discursive composition.

Finally, the last silence stands out: the absence of comment on the power relations that are part of the initiatives carried out in Junior Enterprises. Similarly, hierarchies, dismissals (referred to as resignations), the high turnover rate and the competition between companies for customers also received no mention. The issue of competition is one example. Although most interviewees claimed that competition does not exist, we identified competition among: students who wish to join such organizations; students and tutors who aim to find new customers and projects; students who wish to be assigned to the most important positions; Junior Enterprises seeking customers and Junior Enterprises who seek more power within their organizations.

The orders of discourse

Analysis of the interdiscursivity (relation between discourses) that exists in the discursive formations allowed us to identify three ideological developments or discourse orders: 1) a consensus regarding the centrality of companies; 2) the exemplarity of the neoliberal capitalist entrepreneurial model and 3) the absence of feasible alternatives for the contemporary capitalist model.

The first order of discourse refers to the consensus regarding the centrality of companies in terms of the thinking and acting of a given individual in the world (Du Gay, 2000). At the same time as the hegemonic discourse derived from the discursive formations proclaims the search for autonomy by an individual, this concept is not detached from the labour universe, the company being a central element in such a process. The entrepreneur is considered an autonomous and proactive individual who, motivated by his vocation, pursues opportunities without ever freeing himself from the company.

The entrepreneurs’ discourses bestow the hegemonic discourse through recurring examples: parents, colleagues, former junior members, as well as successful executives who make the pages of business magazines. Such discursive formations constitute the second order of discourse: the exemplarity of neoliberal capitalist entrepreneur models. The discursive formations produce and reproduce the hegemonic discourse, which rely on models that legitimate an entrepreneurial spirit (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2007). There is an exaltation of an entrepreneur who knows how to innovate, who is flexible, capable of adapting himself to the market and work relations changes, while always remaining persistent and unequivocal so as to overcome barriers and obstacles. Obstacles and barriers which, it is worth pointing out are created by the very companies that recurrently seek an increase in their profits. As Meszaros states (2000: 34), ‘the real obstacles faced at work … that synthesize the most aggressive anti-work and political aspirations of neoliberalism, oddly intend to be advisable for every rational creature, just like maternity or apple pie’.

The third order of discourse refers to the discourse that ignores alternatives to the capitalist system. The Western neoliberal model, consolidated by the discourses regarding entrepreneurial practices is a consensus, which allows for its transposition to other societies as inevitable and benefic. As a result, criticism of such a model is rare, for ‘the logic of profit and the respect for people are not perceived in the same way … on one side, there is the ‘harsh reality’ to which one must adapt; on the other, the ‘moods’ which one should ‘overcome’’ (Gaulejac, 2005: 25). Since the hegemonic powers involve a complex articulation of discourses that incorporate efforts to consolidate the meanings of particular discursive forms, entrepreneurship becomes a sort of ‘entrepreneurial capitalism’; a discursive representation of the world which justifies the adoption of an instrumental and utilitarian approach, so as to mediate, through profit, the relations among men, as well as among them and the business environments.

Nevertheless, just trying to avoid the danger of slipping into determinism, we should highlight what Foucault (2010a) suggests as a distinctive trait of power relations: some people can more or less determine the conduct of other people, but never in an exhaustive or coercive way, as you cannot have power without some potential for refusal or revolt. In other words, ‘there is necessarily the potential for resistance, because if there was no such possibility for resistance—violent resistance, flight, subterfuge, strategies to invert the situation—power relations would simply not exist’ (Foucault, 2010b: 277). Thus, by taking this view that you cannot have power relations without resistance (which means that the exercising of power does not always result in the absorption of the full individual potential), it was possible to identify, in the interviews, some occurrence of certain alternatives discourses that may be understood as manifestations of a degree of questioning the predominant ones.

Although they do not appear in explicit and textual form as resistance, these speeches could corroborate both the argument of Fournier and Grey (1999: 116) that the ‘enterprise does not have the monopoly of representations’ as the point of view of Foucault (2010b: 277) that power is not a ‘system of domination that controls everything and that does not leave any space for freedom’. Just in order to illustrate this point, we can highlight as examples of emergency contexts of ‘resistence’ discourses: (1) the discussion about the financial remuneration of the members of Junior Enterprises, where some respondents argued in favour of non-remuneration of the members emphasizing the preponderance of basic values such as volunteering and knowledge acquisition in relation to market practices and values; (2) the discussion about the ‘junior slavery’, a controversial discursive categorization attributed in a ironic way to define the student who works hard in a Junior Enterprise and receive no money for that, but also used by own members to talk about their day-to-day practices of management and (3) the discussion about the ‘ghosts’ around the Junior Enterprises, i.e. the students formally included in the organizational structure who do not play the role expected: nobody knows who they are or what they really do in the company (when they appear, they do not talk with the other members and do not get involved with the main projects).

Final considerations

In terms used by Foucault, the mechanisms of power are considered as techniques (which at the same time control, and do not burden society and which operate within the economic process itself) and one of the most significant expressions of disciplinary technology is exactly education (and the educational discourse) which, by means of control and vigilance, classifies ‘individuals in such a way that each person is exactly in his place, in view of the master, or in view of the qualification and the judgment that we make of each’ (Foucault, 2012: 179). In this sense, an acknowledgment of the orders of discourse makes it possible to question the potential ideological developments in the relationship between education and the labour market.

As a consequence of the first order of discourse, the consensus about the centrality of the company in the establishment of thinking and acting of a given individual in the world, the enterprise acquires a primary role in society: to ensure that every individual accepts the productive goals of the capitalist system as his own. Since all individuals may be entrepreneurs, even those who are not innate, anyone can develop the skills and behaviour required in specific organizational spaces.

This implies a new attitude towards the productive scope, since the entrepreneur effectively becomes the manager of his own career, a sort of entrepreneur of himself. How is the work scope going to be configured in a form of entrepreneurial capitalism that does not renounce the keeping of an entrepreneur in business, but that also burdens him with the onus of changes in work relations? Would it be possible to conciliate capital and work? In other words, to what extent is the discourse on entrepreneurship related to an increase in the precarious state of labour relations, through an increase in professional labour relations without a work document or of independent work? That is, does the discourse reflect an innovative professional realization, and one of success, or is it merely an alternative to the capitalist productive restructuring of the labour market?

As an outcome of the second order of discourse (the exemplarity of neoliberal capitalist entrepreneur models) some aspects stand out. It is through success that a given entrepreneur is discursively constructed as ‘master of his destiny’ and able to minimize the uncertainties of life. He then becomes a hero who is supposed to be imitated and who contributes to the spread of management fads that do not question the reductionism and the ideological constraints embedded in their information. In this scenario, entrepreneurs and business leaders no longer represent the exploitation of men by men: they are converted into symbols of social success, as profit is nothing more than ‘a legitimate surplus that does not regard anyone as an exploited or exploiter, but simply puts winners on one side and losers on the other side’ (Aktouf, 2005: 68). The discourse of failure, in return, is produced silently in the form of unproductiveness, sterility, laziness, and professional disqualification. In this sense, discourses present aspects of social control since reality, ideology, and fiction are blended and scattered as stories of success.

The third order of discourse—the lack of viable alternatives to contemporary capitalism—elects only one possible way forward: entrepreneurship as a driver of economic development, based on the logic of free competition. This inevitability is questionable, since the very orders of discourse presuppose an unstable equilibrium that features articulations and re-articulations motivated by the struggles for hegemonic positions (Fairclough, 2003). Since the discourse not only reflects, but also builds social relationships, such a process is not monolithic. There are limits regarding the reproduction of hegemonic discourses, since these are not only representations of existing realities, but also of imaginative representations, projections of possible alternative realities, visions of possible futures, as well as distortions of existing realities (Fairclough and Thomas, 2004).

Consensus, example and inexorability: these three orders of discourse identified ideologically contribute to the understanding of the contemporary capitalist enterprise as being the only possible model for generating wealth, income and employment in society. Reflecting upon such hegemonic discourses makes one question if young citizens are being prepared for life or simply for the work market. This study suggests that we actually prepare them for the market by means of an ideological view, which is that by doing this we are preparing them for life.

In other words, we legitimize the invasion of market aspects into life. As we do so, the knowledge produced in universities is regarded as a mere addition to the business routine, which reduces the importance of academic reflexivity (Contu, 2009). Faced with this, it becomes opportune to reflect upon the current orientation of higher education so as to avoid that the idealization of the entrepreneur, which may in turn reduce the importance of the university. Furthermore, we must ensure that academic institutions do not inadvertently support business interests in their teaching practices, which can transform the university into a market of ideas (Faria, 2006) and students in various shelf selves … available in any size, style, color, and price conceivable’ (Brown, 2005: 16). If education is not a commodity, then the preparation for the market should be relative, so that it does not become solely a mechanism of capital multiplication, but also provides a means to human emancipation.