Critical perspectives in entrepreneurship research

… unsignificantly

off the coast

there was

a splash quite unnoticed

it was

Icarus drowning.

William Carlos Williams (1962)

Why ‘critical perspectives’ on entrepreneurship research?

In the face of the extraordinary events of the late 2000s ‘global financial crisis’, it may have been expected that some drastic rethink of the unquestioning idealization of the entrepreneur as prototype ‘homo economicus’, all aspirational and risk-taking would flood the world’s media and preoccupy social commentators. One might have expected social, political and business media to pursue empirical research and theoretical analyses seeking out new forms of financial and organizational life to militate against the obscenely unequal, grossly exploitative and boom-crash ethos of market economics. It could equally have been imagined that newly awakened ‘captains of industry’ would champion new ways to re-locate business within society, not continue to reify business as social life. Instead we have witnessed the world convulse in mourning at the untimely death of Steve Jobs and confronted countless outpourings that romantically celebrate his savvy entrepreneurial ‘gifts’ as if these represent some unassailable truth: the treasure lying dormant at the core of ‘good’ capitalism. Jobs, with his marketing friendly name and all pervasive merchandising is an enterprising hero of [prototype] mythic proportions. This post-modern morality tale seems to have signified to some that while ‘man’ may die or economies struggle, the entrepreneurial dream lives on! Despite major systemic jolts through the global financial crisis and faltering EU economies it seems individualism remains the corner stone of competitive capitalism and entrepreneurial ‘spirit’ its raison d’etre. Indeed, entrepreneurship has been increasingly eulogized in dominant neo-liberal policy discourses, infiltrating diverse aspects of social life in potent, but seemingly innocuous ways (Armstrong, 2005).

In proposing this special issue to focus on Critical Perspectives in Entrepreneurship Research we aimed to explore the ‘taken for granted’ norms of entrepreneurship scholarship as a whole including its ideologies, dominant assumptions, grand narratives, samples and methods. Even though entrepreneurship is a very diverse phenomenon that calls for divergence and multiplicity in its understanding, the majority of entrepreneurship research is still functionalist in nature (Jennings et al., 2005). As Calás et al. (2009: 552) suggest, with ‘few exceptions, the extensive literature on entrepreneurship positions it as a positive economic activity’. The normative assumption that entrepreneurship is a ‘good thing’ prevails along with an acceptance that ‘the more entrepreneurs the merrier’ (cf. Weiskopf and Steyaert, 2009). Entrepreneurship as a field of study has generally been dominated by research and researchers interested in it as a purely market-based phenomenon: a ‘special’ trait or set of behaviours which drive venture creation. This focus on entrepreneurship as ‘desirable’ economic activity, perceived unquestioningly as positive, obscures important questions:—of identity, phenomenology, ideology and relations of power. Few studies have aimed at ‘peeling away’ such ‘layers of ideological obscuration’ (Martin, 1990) to engage openly with the dark sides—the contradictions, paradoxes, ambiguities and tensions at the heart of ‘entrepreneurship’.

We proposed this special issue as a means to create more space for a critical interrogation of entrepreneurialism for how it has tended to privilege certain forms of economic action, while implying other more collective forms of organization and exchange are somehow problematic. We invited papers that would explore how political and socio-cultural factors influence entrepreneurial processes, identities and activities and have sought to extend entrepreneurship research horizons by highlighting new critiques and contexts that challenge neo-liberal orthodoxies. We aimed also to build on the growing critical voice emerging in this field in recent years. Authors, such as Armstrong (2005) for example, have exposed the ideological nature and convenient political manipulation of many contemporary applications of the rhetoric of entrepreneurship. Jones and Spicer (2009) have also exposed the powerful interconnections between conceptual and political representations of entrepreneurship to reveal what is cynical and sinister behind the ‘smiling mask’. Rindova et al. (2009) have suggested entrepreneurship scholarship move away from a focus on wealth creation as a dominant motive for starting a venture, and have made a call to start addressing entrepreneurship’s ‘dark sides’. Likewise, authors such as Ahl (2004), Essers (2009a, 2009b), Essers and Benschop (2007, 2009), Ozkazanc-Pan (2009) and Pio (2005) among many others, have sought to ‘voice’ other entrepreneurial subjectivities than those traditionally privileged. The mystification of ‘the entrepreneur’ based solely on essentialist conceptualizations of the archetypical ‘white’ male entrepreneur has come under increasing challenge. Calás et al. (2009) have used feminist theoretical perspectives to argue for the opening up of new spaces that make room for a concerted focus on what they term: Critical Entrepreneurship Studies (CES).

Others calling for more ‘critical’ applications in the study of entrepreneurship include Down (2006, 2010), Hjorth and Steyaert (2009), Nodoushani and Nodoushani (1999), Ogbor (2000) and Steyaert and Hjorth (2007). Authors such as Rehn and Taalas (2004) have also led the way by exploring alternative and often marginalized narratives that challenge dominant entrepreneurship stories. Hjorth (2007) and Steyaert (2004) have also pursued more subtle and nuanced narrative work on entrepreneurship—as a conscious shift away from a preoccupation with model-building more commonly promoted in the mainstream outlets of this field. Rather than simply generate add on perspectives to entrepreneurship studies, we sought through this special issue to further the momentum for alternate analyses of entrepreneurship within the field of critical scholarship.

Why a ‘special issue’ of Organization?

In elucidating what a critical journal is, should or can be, Parker and Thomas (2011: 426) suggest that Organization as a ‘critical’ journal, should be prepared to pursue papers that are ‘controversial, interdisciplinary’ and even ‘not written like a journal article’ but ‘provocative, irritating or stylistically demanding’. They bravely suggest (2011: 426) this might mean embracing what others might find annoying; ignoring some reviewer’s ‘passionate doubts or objections to particular pieces’; persisting with seeing difference as stimulating and consciously trying ‘to build an agreement about disagreement’. We viewed such preparedness to erode even the orthodoxy that can grow up around what might be considered a comfortable ‘norm’ for critical management studies to be an engaging opportunity to solicit discussion around themes not the usual norm either for entrepreneurship scholarship. Reflexive analyses that focus on illuminating the messy, heterogeneous and problematic nature of entrepreneurship are not always well received in mainstream journals. While entrepreneurship has been well serviced in terms of journal outlets, with several high ranking entrepreneurship journals and many other lesser ranked but nonetheless respected, the political, critical and more ‘edgy’ aspects of entrepreneurship scholarship have been less able to find a home. It is the more marginalized perspectives and/or the perspectives of those people whose voices are most often silenced that a focus on critical entrepreneurship studies seeks to amplify.

The Call for Papers inviting submissions on ‘Critical Perspectives in Entrepreneurship Research’ elicited far more papers than either we as Associate Editors or the Editors of Organization expected. It has provided a strong sense of the richness of entrepreneurial studies and the fascination of many good critical scholars with the ‘sublime object of entrepreneurship’ (Jones and Spicer, 2005) and of many good entrepreneurship scholars for the critical messiness of this ‘elephant’ (Gartner, 2001). It has been a difficult task to narrow down the focus of the special issue and one not made easy by the incredible range, calibre and interests of the submitted papers. To have reached near 50 submissions in response to the special issue call for papers demonstrates the level of growing interest in critical dissection of this ponderous pachyderm!

The papers finally selected for the special issue have been chosen, amongst other things, because of their provocative contribution. We have sought out here papers which we feel add specific foci that we hope will stimulate further debate to enrich this nascent but passionate field. We are indebted to the very many skilled and generous reviewers who gave their time to assisting in this endeavour and whose patient, detailed and diligent critical feedback has enabled the papers in this special issue to reach fruition. The issue is a reflection of a community in dialogue; and it has been a privilege for us to be part of this diverse forum. The papers selected include a range of foci we considered quite critical to the field including: gender; developing and indigenous contexts; the hegemonic nature of entrepreneurship discourse in specific contexts and entrepreneurship as expropriation of the common.

A gender agenda

The conviction that organizational contexts are not gender-neutral spaces in which individuals have an equal say or the same opportunities—an assumption primarily stemming from neo-liberal thought—is not a new concept in organization studies. However, within entrepreneurship studies, the difference between men and women entrepreneurs is often still taken as a point of departure, rather than the focus being on the gendering of entrepreneurship as a whole, or about the more complex, social issues concerning power. During the past few decades, studies of women’s entrepreneurship have begun to depart from previous studies of the ‘biological differences’ to pursue a more nuanced socio-political understanding of how gender difference is constructed.

Critical perspectives in entrepreneurship studies, which use insights about gender in their analysis, aim to go ‘beyond’ essentialized gender identities, to question and critique gendered power relations within entrepreneurial contexts. Such approaches aim not just to describe but to challenge and change existing gendered structures. Already in 2004 Ahl was stating that most research on female entrepreneurship departs from the assumptions that women and men are essentially different, and that the discourse on womanhood is in conflict with the discourse on entrepreneurship. Authors such as Bruni et al. (2004) also have noted that entrepreneurship is a male mentality, which is in line with more traditional entrepreneurship literature which claims ‘entrepreneurial activity belongs to the symbolic universe of the public, and so any signs of the private must be expunged (-)’ (Bruni et al., 2004: 18). More recently, authors have critiqued the entrepreneurship literature for adopting a predominately gender-neutral perspective (Marlow et al., 2009) and failing to engage with more complex theories of gender (Lansky, 2000). A recent (2012) book entitled Global Women’s Entrepreneurship Research, edited by Karen Hughes and Jennifer Jennings, further explores the diversity and heterogeneity among women entrepreneurs from various global contexts. By addressing both the masculinity and whiteness of the archetypical entrepreneur other authors have set about including the identity categories of gender and ethnicity, studying what is being produced at the intersection of the social axes of gender and ethnicity within the context of entrepreneurship (for instance Essers and Benschop, 2007, 2009; Essers et al., 2010).

Calás et al. (2009), proposed the use of various perspectives of feminist theorizing in entrepreneurship to understand how entrepreneuring on the one hand may reproduce gendered normative practices and the subordination of women, and how on the other hand entrepreneurship could potentially change gendered power relations and contribute to social change. In line with the above, our special issue seeks to enhance a broad understanding of entrepreneurship as a gendered process. It is perhaps not at all surprising that it is a contribution from Helene Ahl and Susan Marlow that has been selected. In their paper, Ahl and Marlow provocatively contend that the current entrepreneurial research agenda is in danger of reaching an epistemological ‘dead-end’. They argue for an alternative, conceptually informed feminist critique of the prevailing hetero-normative assumptions which have informed the dominant entrepreneurship research agenda as well as contemporary policy development. Ahl and Marlow emphasize the merits of adopting a poststructuralist feminist critique of entrepreneurial discourse to prevent this ‘dead end’. Providing different readings through a discursive analysis of contemporary newspaper papers and textbook cases they illustrate how alleged neutral norms uncritically reproduce gendered stereotypes, constructing women as ‘the other’ deviant from the (male) norm.

An interesting argument of this paper is its proposal to transform the construct of entrepreneurship into a verb, entrepreneuring, to emphasize this phenomenon as a complex web of intertwined socio-economic and politically framed activities constructed by contextualized institutional frameworks. By analysing the language of media texts and teaching cases, Ahl and Marlow demonstrate how gendered assumptions underpin ‘normative’ tales of every-day entrepreneurship to reproduce a male-dominated sphere of activity. They argue such assumptions are ‘dangerous’ if taken forward by the next generation of scholars and students as the taken-for-granted normal and natural construction of entrepreneurship. Finally, Ahl and Marlow argue that the challenge for future research is about applying a (post-structural) feminist epistemology not only to women entrepreneurs but to the field of entrepreneurship more broadly. Ideally, women should not be separated out from the normative population of entrepreneurs [men] based on their biological identity, but studies will focus instead on how gender relations are played out in entrepreneurial activities, behaviors and ambitions.

It is through engaging with a deeper and more nuanced understanding of how women go about their daily entrepreneurial activities that we gain insight into the complexity of entrepreneurship. One of our aims in this special issue has also been to challenge the homogeneous image of the entrepreneur and to open debate about who and what constitutes an ‘entrepreneur’. The next paper in this special issue considers ‘barefoot’ entrepreneurs whose indigenous entrepreneurial activities take place largely outside the dominant cultural norms more usually discussed in entrepreneurial studies.

At the margins: barefoot but not voiceless

Reveley and Down (2009: 162) made the prescient observation that ‘public narratives concerning indigenous economic development are increasingly being colonized by enterprise discourse’. They suggest (2009: 162) that vanishing welfare support and ‘spending cuts due to neo-conservative state governance’ have promoted calls for local indigenous and other forms of more socially oriented enterprise as forms of economic development and entrepreneurialism that might redress chronic social inequality (see for example: Peredo et al., 2004). However, post-colonial critical analyses of such approaches (see for example Banerjee and Tedmanson, 2010; Dana and Anderson, 2007; Foley, 2003, 2006; Lindsay, 2005) point out the continuing effects of colonial repression and how the largely unquestioned sovereignty of Western epistemological, economic, political and cultural representations continue to negate and silence indigenous communities.

As Hindle and Moroz (2010) suggest, indigenous entrepreneurship takes on a wider range of external stakeholders and social impacts than simply being focused on economic success defined in market terms alone (see also Dana and Anderson, 2007; Hindle and Lansdowne, 2005). Entrepreneurial activities in such developing contexts are often marginalized and stereotyped, with the voices of ‘others’ either patronized or eulogized. The delicious ironies and puzzling ambiguities of entrepreneurial activity being at one and the same time, both part of the armoury of ‘free’ market regimes, promoting individualism and competition with the aim of reducing the dependence of the ‘poor’ on retreating states; and on the other hand being also means of resistance and cultural sustenance for many of the world’s poor, highlights why entrepreneurship is a rich field for ethnographic research. It is a field where greater interdisciplinary research between sociology, anthropology, psychology, development studies, political economy and organizational studies can arguably contribute more together, than separately (Reveley and Down, 2009).

In keeping with this interdisciplinary approach, the paper by Imas, Wilson and Weston contributes a thoughtful exploration of what they term ‘barefoot’ entrepreneur[ing]—the entrepreneurial practices and narratives of individuals who live primarily in marginal, poor and excluded places and contexts. Drawing on Max-Neef’s barefoot economics and a methodology based on sharing their ‘microstorias’, the authors ask how agents in deprived areas of Chile, Argentina, Zimbabwe and Ghana undertake entrepreneur[ing] from the margins. The paper offers new insights about the levels of creative and often under-discussed entrepreneurship occurring at the ‘periphery’, bringing the lived experience of these ‘barefoot’ entrepreneurs centre stage. The paper challenges us to seek better explanations for how these individuals apply their entrepreneurial practices, discourses, (social) creativity, and novel organizational skills to maintain communal, organizational, familial and personal wellbeing. Speaking from spaces different from the often ‘taken for granted’ familiarity of dominant global North contexts, this paper brings the imaginary, the narratives and the inventiveness of the ‘barefoot’ entrepreneurs and their ‘microstorias’ into focus. In doing so, Imas et al. seek to question the predominant conceptualization of entrepreneurship with its Western heroics and splinter its ‘grand’ narratives into many smaller fragments and stories from the streets and thereby bring into focus creative snapshots of entrepreneurship in different cultural and economic contexts.

While attempting on the one hand to elevate the microstoria of ‘barefoot’ entrepreneurs as counter-point to the universalizing totality of the dominant discourses of heroic (white male) individual heroism, we have also given space in this special issue to analyses which directly tackle the political and hegemonic nature of much mainstream entrepreneurship discourse. These papers originate in different locations, use different research methods and discuss different topics; however, they each illustrate importantly similar points about the role played by a particular kind of entrepreneurship discourse in the production and reproduction of relations of power.

Hegemonic discourses

Entrepreneurship is not only a social construct but also functions as political ideology which can be used to reproduce conservative assumptions and behaviour and confuse, distort and shape public policy and public perception in ways that serve conservative political or economic (capitalist) ends. In discussing hegemonic discourses of entrepreneurship as ideological mechanisms in Brazil, the paper by Costa and Saraiva argues that entrepreneurship is an ideology of the ‘new capitalist spirit’ that needs to be questioned. The authors identify the orders of discourse that are emerging from existing entrepreneurial discourses within ‘Junior Enterprises’ in Brazil, assuming that the inter-discursive relations regarding this subject ideologically contribute to the construction of the contemporary capitalist enterprise as the ‘only possible’ model for the generation of wealth in society. They identify 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 neo-liberal capitalist entrepreneurial model and (3) the absence of feasible alternatives to the contemporary capitalist model. This leads them to problematize the hegemonic discourses on entrepreneurship, suggesting that higher education has become less about human enlightenment and more about the reproduction of capitalist ideology.

Contrasting with this, the paper by Kenny and Scriver explores a particularly Irish case of hegemony. Kenny and Scriver analyse how political and economic ends have been served by a conflation of Irish public sensibility for heroic and nationalistic grand narratives and the construction of a mythical innate and stoic form of Irish entrepreneurialism. Drawing on Jones and Spicer’s (2009) conceptualization of the entrepreneur as an empty signifier, Kenny and Scriver explore the function of the signifier ‘entrepreneurship’ within the social context of economic crisis: Ireland 2007–2010. They show how the articulation by government of this triumphant entrepreneurial discourse acted to legitimize the continuation of market logics and, the political status quo. Using Laclau and Mouffe’s conception of hegemony, which shares a Lacanian legacy with Jones and Spicer, Kenny and Scriver reveal the contradictory nature of this entrepreneurial signifier in Irish political and social discourse, and its relationship to the reproduction of political hegemony.

While located in different geographic and political contexts and with quite distinct topics these papers both serve to expose the pervasive and hegemonic role of entrepreneurship discourse in civil society. Our human sense of the social contract seems to gravitate towards narratives of the heroic, tales of great leaders, the talisman of great fortune, the harbingers of luck and an ideology which accommodates a belief in competition amongst ‘special’ people with the ability to generate and husband resources. What then of the commons? How do we theorize a ‘collective’ ownership or accountability within the confines of such hegemonic discourses of entrepreneurship?

Call to the commons

Jones and Murtola’s paper argues that entrepreneurship is in effect an ideological contest between production in common and the expropriation of the common. They suggest within entrepreneurship there exists both a ‘positive moment’ of the increased socialization of work but also at the same-time its counter-face: a ‘negative moment’ which separates, encloses and captures this common for more private or individualized purposes. They argue while much entrepreneurship research may recognize entrepreneurship rests on production in common, there is a reluctance to extrapolate this recognition to explore more radical conclusions. Referring to, for example Hardt and Negri (2000), Jones and Murtola use autonomist thought to explore ‘entrepreneurship’ as a political project. While not denying (or denigrating) the cultural, discursive, narrative and identity dimensions of entrepreneurship, they focus specifically on theorizing it as political economy.

We felt this paper provided both an in-depth and comprehensive summary of much of contemporary critical and political economy scholarship on entrepreneurship—revealing its darker tendencies towards expropriation and exploitation, as well as a strong and original analysis based on a novel application of autonomist thought. By suggesting that expropriation of the common is the ‘open secret’ of entrepreneurship, Jones and Murtola’s paper completes this special issue with what we feel is a timely cautionary reminder to us all to remain cognizant of the dialectics of entrepreneurship, and to continue to be disquieted and disturbed by the exploitative nature of dispossession that lies as the ‘open secret’ at the heart of the easy triumphalism of entrepreneurialism. We hope this paper will provoke discussion and further research into the political economy of entrepreneurship.

Implications for the future . . .

Always be questioning is the motto of this special issue. Always be questioning the taken for granted ideas, theories, methods and facts that constitute the ‘orthodoxy’ of the entrepreneurship field. Yet, this motto also puts us in an uncomfortable position with ourselves and others. Critical scholarship on entrepreneurship will always be uncomfortable with complacency about or fixation on, any particular position, idea, theory and method. What we have selected and written about here, we know should also be questioned, challenged, and debated. Critical scholars are not seekers of ‘truth’ but questioners of whose ‘truth’ is being perpetuated, privileged and positioned in any particular context/s—and why? A critical analysis is not about replacing one position with another but about questioning the very assumptions being made—in this case about entrepreneurship. If we act in this fundamental stance to ‘always be questioning’ the challenge is to build from a foundation of inherent scepticism in our work. How then is a community of scholars to be developed who can openly challenge their own work and the works of others? We suggest here through a ‘critical humility.’ We see in the poem which introduces this paper the sensibility of ‘critical humility’. As critical scholars we are all Deadelus, fashioning the wings of ideas, theories and methods to take us out of confinement towards new places of understanding. Yet, easy it is, as Icarus, to forget the limitations imposed by anything we fashion from our minds—and we fall into the sea. So, the role of critical entrepreneurship scholarship is not to be arbiter, or judge of the scholarly efforts among colleagues. That would be hubris and there would be no firm ground under any of us then! We see in this special issue, in the many papers that were submitted, and in the few that we were able to publish here, a growing desire to exercise the ‘critical humility’ and spirit of critical inquiry to move entrepreneurship scholarship.

While the number and standard of submissions received was considerable, it may also be worth reflecting on some of the areas that were less attended to and/or eventually did not end up in this special issue, as suggestions for possible future research. As indicated above, the gendered nature of entrepreneurship generated the most submissions in response to our call for papers. Yet, perhaps surprisingly, given the current socio-legal debates about, for example same-sex couple’s rights, discrimination and consumer power, there were few papers tackling issues of sexuality and entrepreneurship. While indigenous entrepreneurship and cultural research finds representation in this Special issue we would suggest greater attention to research in this area is also needed. The diversity of indigenous experience and the plurality of contexts and complexity of challenges faced are matters often overlooked in mainstream accounts of entrepreneurship. There remains a disproportionate under-representation of the global South, the Asian Pacific region, Africa, India, China and Latin America in the dialogue about entrepreneurship. Given the extraordinary events surrounding recent ‘hacking scandals’ and the associated revelations of the exploitative practices of the media and new technology (digital) empires, research into the development of an ‘ethics of entrepreneurship’ is fertile ground for new thought. Much creative innovation and social entrepreneurship is emerging through globalized social media networking across diverse regional, political and environmental contexts; yet positive forms of entrepreneurial activity as resistance or self-determination remain under-researched. While the political economy of ‘disaster capitalism’ and the ‘business of war’ have featured in critical scholarship (including in this journal) the growth of an entrepreneurship which is capitalizing on the increasing marketization of ‘violence’ has been little discussed. These are just a few of many new directions to be pursued. We know there are many more new voices to be heard.

We hope this special issue will stimulate more input into passionate and ongoing conversations on critical entrepreneurship research. We are inspired and excited by the work of the authors of the papers that follow and humbly commend them to you.