‘If you’re struggling to survive day-to-day’: Class optimism and contradiction in entrepreneurial discourse

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is commonly talked about in the West as a freely chosen, optimistic occupational choice. Yet, as an ideological construct, entrepreneurship is ultimately shaped in ways that legitimize some entrepreneurs while marginalizing others. Taking cues from scholarship that has unpacked the gendered and raced dimensions of entrepreneurial discourse, this article examines the classed dimensions of such discourse. Illuminating the ideological contradiction between American dream promises of class mobility and enterprise initiatives, I argue that the hegemonic allure of entrepreneurial discourse stems in large part from the (re)production of class hierarchies around notions of exceptional capitalist ownership, action and innovation and opportunity recognition.

A common critique of social and organizational scholarship has been that class has all but fallen by the wayside in our theorizing (Cheney, 2007; Zanoni, 2011). While organizational scholars have extensively addressed dimensions and constructions of gender, race and age for their involvement in organizing processes, explicit attention to class as an organizing construct has been curiously absent. This is perhaps understandable, given that notions of work in Western countries—the US in particular—tend to evoke a classless ethos, drawing on notions of equal opportunity in the self made man, boostrapping and American Dream ideologies.

With this in mind, this article endeavours to bring to light and examine assumptions of class in entrepreneurial discourse. An emerging community of scholars has been interrogating the ideological dimensions of entrepreneurialism (e.g. Hjorth et al., 2008; Hjorth and Steyaert, 2004), including entrepreneurial discourse (e.g. Ahl, 2004; Knight, 2005) and the construction of the entrepreneurial subject (e.g. Gartner, 2004; Jones and Spicer, 2005), as well as the articulation and performance of entrepreneurial identities (e.g. Down, 2006; Essers and Benschop, 2007; Gill and Ganesh, 2007). Continuing in this vein, this article focuses a critical lens on the production of class in US entrepreneurial discourse.

Through an examination of US discourse, I argue that class operates as a discursive resource that is muddled and contradictory. That is, entrepreneurialism draws on Protestant ethic and American dream ideology to make the claim that ‘anyone’ can be an entrepreneur, while simultaneously limiting entrepreneurial legitimacy. To tease out this argument, I first provide an overview of critical entrepreneurial perspectives and present considerations for examining class as a discursive resource. After discussing my methodological choices, I present an analysis that explores three dimensions of class in entrepreneurial discourse—entrepreneurial capitalist ownership, action/motivation and innovation and opportunity recognition—that work to restrict legitimate entrepreneurship to privileged groups and other ‘lesser’ entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurial discourse, identity and difference

The linguistic turn in organization studies has been credited with shifting the focus of entrepreneurial studies toward social constructionist, or constitutive, views (Hjorth and Steyaert, 2004). Such views claim that realities and entities are born out of relationships, interaction and communication, where reality is (inter)subjective rather than objective. From this perspective, the constructs of ‘the entrepreneur’ and ‘entrepreneurship’ are taken for granted ideas and practices that are generated in everyday, social interaction. Accordingly, this turn has encouraged entrepreneurial scholars to explore the multiplicity and simultaneity of entrepreneurial realities as well as the conditions that bring about these realities (Hosking, 2004).

Within the ‘family’ of social constructionism, a post-structuralist approach recognizes entrepreneur/ship as the (re)production of a particular discourse, where discourse is a

(semi-)coherent system of representation that crafts a context for language use—that is, a (loosely) affiliated set of metaphors, images, stories, statements, meanings, and so forth that generate a particular and socially recognizable version of people, things, events. (Ashcraft, 2007: 11)

In addition, related practices such as publication norms, the use of ‘expert knowledge’, and editorial or authoritative decision-making are also involved in the production and reproduction of discourse, among other practices (Ahl, 2004). Through these practices, discourse (re)creates the possibilities associated with the label ‘entrepreneur’, ‘definin[ing] the possibilities of meaningful existence at the same time as it limits them’ (Clegg, 1989: 151).

In that discursive regularities create a context for social beliefs and norms, they have effects upon identity and practice. Addressing this, Alvesson and colleagues claim that discourse makes possible certain subject positions, ‘driv[ing] subjectivity (our sense of ourselves, including our feelings, thoughts and orientations)’ (Alvesson and Karreman, 2000: 1131). Identity studies in this vein seek to provide insight into how people cull a coherent answer to the question ‘who am I?’ (Alvesson et al., 2008) by (knowingly or unknowingly) considering and drawing upon discourses to craft an organizationally preferred identity, while also maintaining an enduring sense of self (Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003). In this way, understanding a discourse can help us to consider how people may construct their own identities, make sense of their efforts and navigate competing interests or expectations.

In critical entrepreneurial studies, a number of observations have been made about the limited discursive image of the entrepreneur. For instance, entrepreneurial discourse constructs and ‘fixes’ the ideal entrepreneur as a masculine, independent and rational figure (Ahl, 2004). Similarly, the ideal entrepreneur is patterned on norms of whiteness (Knight, 2005), particularly apparent in the way that entrepreneurs of colour tend to be demarcated as special or unique (Light and Rosenstein, 1995). Entrepreneurs of colour are often textually relegated to ethnic enclaves and networks in scholarly and popular discussions, where they are discursively bound—and therefore ‘controlled’—to particular spaces and networks (Knight, 2010). Yet, one area of difference that has not been addressed in entrepreneurial discourse studies is that of class, and how entrepreneurs may be discursively demarcated from one another based on class stereotypes.

Class as ‘difference’ in entrepreneurialism

Studies of how difference is constructed and mobilized within discourse have suggested that identity is neither singular nor monolithic, but that various articulations of difference and sameness around gender, class, race and so forth, are involved in the cultural constructions and practices of identity, organizing, policies and institutions (Ashcraft, 2011; Essers and Benschop, 2007; Gill and Ganesh, 2007). In this sense, difference does not refer to managerial diversity efforts but instead represents an ‘organizing principle of the meaning, structure, practice, and economy of work (i.e. the cultural organization of work via difference)’ (Ashcraft, 2011: 4). Within organizing studies, gender and race have served as the hallmarks of how difference and sameness are constructed, with Ashcraft (2011) identifying gender and race as the salient ‘organizing discourses’ informing work and organizational identities and practices. While I generally agree with Ashcraft in her assessment, I am curious to explore how difference is constructed in arguably ‘newer’ discourses and occupations. In other words, while entrepreneurialism is surely underpinned by gendered and raced discourses, how might other—supposedly gender and race ‘neutral’—discourses of difference drive more recent manifestations of entrepreneurialism? For instance, Ainsworth and Hardy (2008) point to age as a particularly salient entrepreneurial difference. Thus, I here focus on class to argue that entrepreneurial discourse (re)produces an idealized entrepreneurial figure first and foremost through the promotion and promulgation of class difference.

Scholars in the social traditions have consistently examined class, power and labour (e.g. Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999; Collinson, 1988; Willis, 1977), where class involves ‘the ranking of groups according to various criteria, with ascending positions afforded more value, respect, status, and privilege than lower positions’ (Allen, 2004: 97). Yet, class has often been an afterthought to other discussions of identity such as gender and race (Cheney, 2007; Zanoni, 2011). A significant reason for this is due to the shift in thinking about class as ascriptive (where one is considered born into a certain class) to achievement-based (where one is said to be able to move between classes based on skill and ability) (Allen, 2004). The evolution of thinking about class as meritocratic encourages the general acceptance that people are ‘free’ to move between classes. Class is not deterministic, but in the hands of the individual.

The salience that has risen up around the entrepreneur illuminates the shift from ascriptive to achievement-based mobility. Achieved upward mobility parallels emphases on the individual that have been developing since around the turn of the 20th century. That is, assumptions of class and mobility in the US are deeply seated in the ideologies of the Protestant work ethic and the American dream. The Protestant ethic has linked hard work to evidence of strong moral character, where a ‘calling’ for work assuaged potential religious concerns about the ethics of making money. Instead of a ‘temptation to idleness and sinful enjoyment of life’, earning money was interpreted as ‘a performance of duty [that is] not only morally permissible, but actually enjoined’ (Weber, 1930/1992: 163). During the Industrial Revolution and the years following, the Protestant work ethic became embedded in the growing American dream, which held that (moral) hard work and ‘pluck’ could raise anyone out of the trenches of lower-class life. This self-made man ideology incorporated modest economic decision making, including thrift and bootstrapping, opportunity recognition, creativity, quick thinking and acceptable risk.

Supported by emerging occupational gender norms (e.g. division of labour) and Horatio Alger’s ‘Ragged Dick’ stories from the early 1900s, American dream discourse spoke directly to young, white, boys or men. Alger’s stories featured inquisitive, upstanding and lower-class boys who were fortuitous and also responsible enough to find themselves in the right place at the right time (Hendler, 1996; Nackenoff, 1992). Class mobility became the payoff in these stories, as the boys’ decisions and actions (relative to, say, saving a boy who has fallen into a pond) would ultimately garner them respect and a modest reward, such as in the form of an entry-level company position. Yet, American dream ideology has also centred on opportunities for immigrant populations to enter the US and build family-supporting businesses from the ground up. Having traction outside of the US (Grewal, 2005), American dream discourse ‘often understands immigrants as arriving in the USA with “nothing” and slowly working their way up to middle class positioning’ (Finn, 2009: 279).

More recently, enterprise initiatives that took root in the Thatcher administration in Britain in the 1980s and which have spread to the US and other Western(ized) countries have intensified the shift to class-as-achievement. Enterprise discourse has sparked a resurgence of individualism and mobility in that it creates a subject position celebrating an entrepreneurial view of the self (du Gay, 1996; Miller and Rose, 1992). Self-help books and seminars, university programs and even the design and marketing of children’s toys point to a regime of governmentality aimed at individual achievement of a version of success underpinned by middle-class values of education, propriety and constant improvement (Holmer Nadesan, 2002; Holmer Nadesan and Trethewey, 2000). Cloud (1996) argues that the biography and persona of popular talk-show host Oprah Winfrey reflects the hegemonic potential of enterprise initiatives. The ‘Oprah’ brand, according to Cloud, is infused with self-made, rags-to-riches appeals that reassure viewers that the classic American dream is within reach. In that such discourse encourages an entrepreneurial view of the self, then entrepreneurship represents at least one response to achieving the expectations insinuated by the discourse. In this way, entrepreneurship and class are inextricably linked.

Yet, assessing the discursive construction of class is complicated in that it is difficult to get a handle on what, precisely, is said to represent class distinction. Various Marxist-inspired approaches posit class as an economic category that manifests in the membership categories of owners and workers, where those who control production comprise the ruling class and those who perform the labour of production comprise the working class (Savage, 2000; Zweig, 2000). Thus, the state of ownership has traditionally been a marker of upper class wealth and power. Bourdieu (1980), however, forwards a notion of class based on practice and performance, where class is grounded in one’s ability to look and act according to socially constructed norms. Class here is about style and taste, which is reflected in, for instance, assumptions that members of the working class(es) are uneducated and uncouth and members of the upper class(es) are educated and refined (Ray, 2003). Thus, ‘the performance of class position’ (Finn, 2009: 283) as depicted in how one talks, displays manners and so forth, becomes salient.

These ways of describing class suggest that class is evoked in several dimensions. In particular, class judgements are made around: upward mobility (achieved by hard work, recognizing opportunity and ownership); education and potential (being educated per standards of the day and utilizing this education); morality (eschewing laziness, being responsible); performance (well put together in talk and appearance) and network (reputable and connected contacts and friends). Thus, in my analysis, I locate representations of class in biases and stereotypes involving these dimensions in order to consider the following questions: How are assumptions of class present and positioned in contemporary entrepreneurial discourse? and How do entrepreneurs discursively engage (reproduce and/or resist) these notions of class?

Examining the ‘class’ of entrepreneurial discourse

This article is part of a larger data collection effort that occurred in 2009. The larger project sought to examine entrepreneurial identity in the US and particularly in the Western state of Utah. The original intent was to examine the relationship between broader, national discourses and local, ‘on the ground’ interpretations and practices of this discourse. In the process of conducting this broader study, I was piqued by comments that seemed to suggest that lower-class status limited one’s ability to become an entrepreneur, despite the influential notions of hard work and bootstrapping entwined in American dream ideology. Thus, the focus of this article represents a way to understand this seeming contradiction.

Procedures and participants

To surface class assumptions, I gathered data at both national and local levels. For the national level, I adopted choices made by Achtenhagen and Welter (2003) to assess representations of entrepreneurship in US business periodicals. Business periodicals represent an approximate proxy for professional and mainstream discourses in that they are looked to as ‘experts’ on state-of-the-art practices and trends (Holmer Nadesan, 2001). At the local level, I conducted interviews and observations with self-identified entrepreneurs and networking organizations in the US state of Utah. Gathering data in Utah was partly out of convenience, but as I note below, also provides a unique context for the study.

Articles from US business periodicals

Newspapers and periodicals offer a partial glimpse at currently circulating discourses that allows for an understanding of what ‘counts’ as reality in a particular time and place (Holmer Nadesan, 2001; Nicholson and Anderson, 2005). Arguably, periodicals represent particular interests. In this case, business interests predisposition these periodicals to highlight economically successful ventures, protect capitalist interests and so forth. This therefore presents an intriguing case, in that these periodicals are simultaneously engaged in encouraging entrepreneurialism while also defining and protecting related concepts and activities. With this in mind, I analysed two broadly representative business periodicals, each with a large readership base. Published weekly, BusinessWeek has a paid circulation 921,839 ¹ and 4.7 million readers per week (Bloomberg, 2012). Read in over 140 countries, BusinessWeek ranks as the third best selling general business magazine in the US. Published monthly, Inc. Magazine (hereafter Inc.) has a circulation of 705,417 and is known for ranking the top 500 and 5000 fastest growing companies. Additionally, Inc. is specifically geared toward entrepreneurs as indicated by its subtitle ‘the handbook for the American entrepreneur’.

To gather articles, I performed a search of these periodicals in the Lexis/Nexis electronic database for the years 2000–2009. This span of time allowed for a snapshot during a period of significant change relevant to entrepreneurs (i.e. the dot.com bust, the 9/11 tragedy and recession, a short revival, then the 2007 economic downturn). Using entrepreneur and its variants (entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial, etc.) as search terms, my initial search located thousands of articles, many of which included minor descriptive uses of the term (Nicholson and Anderson, 2005). In that my goal was only to surface themes, the requisite amount of data is somewhat arbitrary (Jager, in Achtenhagen and Welter, 2007). After considering ways to limit the search, I eventually gathered articles that used the search terms seven or more times. This generated a manageable data set of 195 articles (73 from BusinessWeek and 122 from Inc.), totaling 680 single spaced pages. The articles included lengthy feature stories, shorter state-of-the-art reports, editorials and other miscellaneous commentary.

Observing and interviewing entrepreneurs

For six months in 2009, I observed the monthly meetings of four entrepreneur organizations located in the Utah cities of Salt Lake City, Sandy and Provo. These organizations met monthly to discuss best practices and provide networking opportunities. Open about my researcher status, my participation typically involved listening to talks, conducting small talk and answering questions about my study. After observations, I typed up the notes that I had taken during the meetings into descriptive accounts (Geertz, 1973) and attached any documents that I had collected to the typed accounts.

During this period of time, I also conducted interviews with members of these organizations, recruiting interviewees through the connections I made as a participant observer. For the interviews, I adopted a semi-structured and open-ended schedule so that each interview would have some structure but would also allow me to follow emerging lines of interest (Schensul et al., 1999). For example, I asked questions such as ‘why did you become an entrepreneur?’ and ‘who would you say is not an entrepreneur in your organization?’. This approach allowed thoughts and ideas to come up naturally, rather than me presuming what would be relevant and important to the participants (Watson, 1995).

That said, I was also curious as to how the concept of entrepreneurship might be expressed vis-à-vis the Utah context. Popular events have drawn national and global attention to Utah (i.e. the 2002 Winter Olympics), and rates of entrepreneurship and economic growth had been rising quickly relative to other US states, even during the economic recession (Badenhausen, 2011). In addition, the considerable presence of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS, or Mormons) in Utah has been said to foster entrepreneurial and innovative qualities (James, 2006; Loyalka, 2005). Given this, it seemed likely that some participants would link their motives to LDS influences. As such, when participants did not themselves make this connection, I asked exploratory questions such as, ‘why would you say it is that Utah has such a high rate of entrepreneurship?’ and ‘others have suggested that LDS culture fosters entrepreneurship; why do you think that is?’.

All told, I interviewed 29 self-identified entrepreneurs, five to eight from each organization. Eighteen participants were women and 11 were men. One participant was Hispanic, one participant was American Indian and the remaining 27 participants were white, mirroring the racially homogenous population of Utah, where 93% of residents are white (US Census Bureau, 2009). State demographics indicate that the majority of residents are LDS, and this was also reflected in this study—approximately 80% of the participants identified as LDS. Interviews lasted 90 minutes on average and were conducted at the participant’s place of business or home. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed, totaling approximately 1,500 pages.

Analysis

Surfacing the assumptions present in discursive formations involves ‘uncover[ing] the way in which social reality is produced’ (Hardy, 2001: 27), often with careful attention to inequalities of power. Power is a central component here because the ability to control or influence discourse shapes what ideas and practices are taken as ‘truth’, and what ideas and practices are submerged or marginalized (Grant, Keenoy, and Oswick, 2001). Thus, examining how authorities, experts, institutions and other leadership—such as the editorial staff of national business periodicals—may frame particular activities, can provide insight into how certain interests are privileged over others within discourse (Ahl, 2004). Notably, this process is itself an exercise in (re)producing discourse, since the author/researcher forwards her own privileged viewpoint, necessarily obscuring other perspectives (Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003). Any study of discourse, therefore, is partial and tentative.

The process of examining discourse has been described as craftwork, where researchers cobble together methods given the particular study (Hardy, 2001). In this study, I endeavour to surface multiple perspectives or possible readings. Thus, the business periodicals represent a ‘long-range’ conceptualization of discourse as a standard and semi-enduring phenomenon across contexts (Alvesson and Karreman, 2000). Accordingly, such discourse transcends specific sites and can have broader influence across experiences and regions (Ashcraft, 2007). In addition, the interviews and observations offer an indication of how such discourses are interpreted. Assuming that individuals adopt discourses in making sense of their activities and identities (Alvesson and Karreman, 2000), it is possible to locate discourse in the use of everyday ‘interpretive repertoires’, or the claims and comments made by individuals that are ‘comprised of recognizable themes, common places and tropes’ (Wetherell, 1998: 400). Together, then, these texts compel a nuanced reading that guards against over-determining identity (Down, 2006).

In my readings of the texts, I sought to identify how class was largely shaped and forwarded, asking questions about the data that evoked the dimensions discussed previously: upward mobility, education, morality, performance and network, including What distinctions are established between those labelled as entrepreneurs and others? What characteristics are attributed to entrepreneurs most likely to be described as successful? What is the stated role of education or network? What kinds of businesses are most often highlighted—technology, high-earning, slow-growth, neighbourhood ventures? Asking these questions surfaced patterns of how individuals and groups labelled as entrepreneurial were described and ranked, allowing me to generate an understanding of how class characteristics and hierarchies were (re)produced in entrepreneurial discourse.

Three classed dimensions of entrepreneurial discourse

In the ensuing discussion, I consider how class is discursively present and seemingly ‘fixed’ and how self-identified entrepreneurs may (and/or may not) use class dimensions to make sense of their own and others’ endeavours. In order to allow for the multi-faceted aspect of these dimensions, I first discuss the manifestation of class in the national business periodicals and then discuss the participants’ class positioning of themselves and others as a reflection and (re)production of discourse.

Dimensions of class in business press articles

Three dimensions of class characterized the business press, generating a divide between ‘legitimate’ entrepreneurs and supposedly lesser, or non-entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs were most respected or valued when they reflected the following: 1) American exceptional capitalism; 2) action and innovation and 3) opportunity. While these characteristics were entwined and variously overlapping, for purposes of analysis and discussion, I present them separately.

Entrepreneur as capitalist, American owner

A central understanding of class distinguishes between those who control the means of production (owners, or the bourgeiouisie) and those who are employed by the owners (workers, or the proletariat) (Savage, 2000; Zweig, 2000). Thus, class is demarcated based on ownership and one’s position in a capitalist system. Echoing this, one significant pattern in the business periodicals framed entrepreneurs in positive terms as owners and champions of monetary growth. This emphasis was established through monetary descriptions of companies where the value of a company was communicated through financial figures. For example: ‘her business is healthy, too. She expects Pharmacopia to double it sales this year, to $800,000, and turn its first profit’. Ultimately, the ‘essence’ of the entrepreneurial process was deemed to be financial. These capitalist leanings were further bolstered by appeals to American national identity, implicating American dream ideology. For instance, entrepreneurialism was described as one of the ‘greatest American strengths’, and the US was deemed ‘a magnificent place to advance entrepreneurialism’. Capitalism and the American dream were simultaneously entwined in images recalling certain beginnings of the US, such that entrepreneurs represent a ‘spirit of independents’ and a ‘federation of equals’ capable of bringing about ‘a more perfect union’.

One particular twist involved the reification of capitalism such that it trumped difference based on foreign-born status, complicating who was considered suitably capitalist. On one hand, the periodicals established a non-American ‘other’, where foreign ideas were framed as threatening to America’s entrepreneurial legacy because ‘in a networked world, US leadership in innovation will find itself under siege’. On the other hand, countries and foreign-born individuals who performed entrepreneurial capitalism became allies. Suspicion of ‘foreigners’ was quelled by assurance of common-ground capitalist leanings, for instance, when Inc. re-storied historical tensions between the US and Japan by claiming that ‘Japan’s economy was rebuilt after the war by a bunch of radical entrepreneurs—people like Konosuke Matsushita [of Panasonic]…Akio Morita, who built Sony; and Soichiro Honda, who built Honda’. Foreign-born entrepreneurs were powerfully heralded as a ‘new breed’ and the ‘global elite’ who are attracted to the US because of free market deregulation and unprecedented opportunity unheard of in their home countries. And, what foreign-born entrepreneurs have to recommend them is that they ‘have created companies that push aggressively into the business mainstream’.

The entrepreneur as active and innovative

Working class discourses paint a picture of blue-collar labour that ‘lack[s] … on-the-job creativity and autonomy’ (Lucas, 2011: 352) and employees who appear unwilling to work hard are viewed as not deserving of respect (Zanoni, 2011). In contrast, professional discourses support a creative class of artists, designers, scientists and entrepreneurs, said to be highly educated, innovative, networked and technologically savvy (Florida, 2005). Along these lines, the business press periodicals emphasized action and innovation as dimensions of the ideal entrepreneur, representative of ‘gold-collar knowledge workers’ (Holmer Nadesan, 2002).

This dimension was implicit in the support for innovation as an inherently positive and beneficial activity, imbued with mythical qualities that foster strength and growth. This was reflected in the description of Bill Gates’ business approach as ‘embody[ing] the cornerstone of entrepreneurial talent: it ain’t what you’ve got, it’s what you do with it that counts’. Where individuals who had acted on their ideas were ‘realists’, those who had not yet taken action were ‘dreamers’ and ‘wanna-bes’. Additionally, those who were active but not necessarily innovative were pushed to the margins of this framework. Despite longstanding affiliation with American dream ideology (Finn, 2009), immigrants were undercut as ideal or significant entrepreneurs. As far as immigrants were concerned, they were described as only having ‘entrepreneurial leanings’ (emphasis added) and ‘starting small retail or service businesses, just as they always have’. This is in stark contrast to the description of non-immigrant foreign-born entrepreneurs noted above.

Action and innovation were further promoted in the contrast depicted between professors of entrepreneurship and ‘actual’ entrepreneurs. Here, studying entrepreneurship was inferior to doing entrepreneurship. One article took it for granted that professors secretly and desperately desired to leave academia for entrepreneurship, quoting a professor’s desire to ‘run out onto the court and join the game’ after a classroom lecture from an entrepreneur. The article further represented the academic as saying, ‘hear[ing] him talking in class, it pierced my heart. Here’s someone who made the leap and made billions, and I’m just sitting there, exposed to all of this’. Moreover, while professors were acknowledged to have entrepreneurial potential, they were deemed unsuitable as entrepreneurs because of their responsibilities; tellingly, ‘three kids and a wife and a mortgage’.

This emphasis on action and innovation was bolstered by echoes of hegemonic masculinity. To be sure, entrepreneurship was assumed to be a paid and public activity, therefore evoking the historical and patterned link between men and masculinity in the public realm (Ferguson, 1984). But more than this, particularly innovative and enviable entrepreneurs were linked to physical ability and extreme living. Claims that entrepreneurs have ‘guts with a capital G’ were juxtaposed with stories of entrepreneurs engaging in daring recreational sports, such that ‘while those titans of industry are battling churning seas and screaming winds, they are also exercising valuable management insight’. Along with this, entrepreneurs were admonished to prioritize emotional control and strategic rationality, to avoid ‘touchy-feely’ emotions and throwing in the towel simply because the ‘going gets a little bit rough’. These characteristics reflect qualities of the hegemonic self-made man that emphasize physical strength, economic prowess, mobility and emotional control (Kimmell, 1997). In contrast, women and minority entrepreneurs were virtually unremarkable entrepreneurial ‘others’. Continually compared to the white male standard, women were made out to be unserious and childlike, needing to rehearse entrepreneurship in order to get it right. And entrepreneurs of colour were relegated to ethnic enclaves—Black entrepreneurs in Harlem and Cuban entrepreneurs in Havana—evoking an essentialist assumption that ethnic groups require the same resources and share a sense of solidarity. The positioning of women and minorities in the discourse was a far cry from the active identities and freedom to do business anywhere afforded to white men.

Recognizing and capitalizing on opportunity

Finally, the ability to recognize and capitalize on opportunity is a characteristic often linked to the upper classes, where ‘individual striving’ indicates one’s desire for a better life (Zweig, 2000: 41). In this way, what is often luck or serendipity is reframed as one’s moral ability to work hard to be upwardly mobile. Similarly, opportunity recognition and capitalization were morally necessary entrepreneurial skills. Opportunities were elevated to a discriminatory position, where ‘the entrepreneurial mindset is, by definition, protean and fluid, able to identify opportunity where others see chaos’, and only ‘smart entrepreneur[s]’ are able to identify opportunities. Consequently, opportunities were characterized as moving and cyclical targets, arising or diminishing based on external events such as boom and bust cycles. According to one observer, it is ‘apparent that the best long-term business opportunities don’t arise during a bubble but after the bubble bursts’ and entrepreneurs should carefully consider ‘when and how to expand businesses in booming fields that appear to be headed for a bust’.

Yet, recognizing and capitalizing on opportunity was painted as impossible for certain groups. Despite ideological, American dream assumptions in the US that ‘any individual from the humblest origins can climb to well-being’ through hard work and opportunity (Shipler, 2005: 5), people who did not already possess certain resources (e.g. a particular mindset, resources, energy) were given short shrift, as in the following claim:

In a poor community it’s often difficult to look past the problems, because the problems seem so pervasive. But someone who recognizes opportunity can look beyond those blighted areas and see the possibilities. Unfortunately, too often people brought up in poor communities never learn to recognize opportunities, the essence of entrepreneurship.

The claim that ‘people brought up in poor communities never learn to recognize opportunities’ is particularly striking in its contrast to American dream ideology, which typically celebrates the condition of poverty, or ‘lack’, that inspires entrepreneurialism in the first place. Accordingly, the insinuation is that an ‘outsider’ to poverty—someone seen as already possessing certain mental and physical resources—is best suited for being entrepreneurial. As such, it is certain kinds of entrepreneurship (i.e. capitalist, pro-growth, innovative) that come to represent one’s moral entrepreneurial character.

Dimensions of class among self-identified entrepreneurs

Here, I turn to an exploration of how dimensions of class are mobilized by self-identified entrepreneurs. To a degree, the class dimensions noted above represent discursive resources for these entrepreneurs to express an entrepreneurial identity. Yet, in that individuals (at least partially) craft their own identities by drawing from a variety of discourses (Down, 2006; Gill and Ganesh, 2007; Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003), I also draw attention to how these entrepreneurs resist and/or alter such class categorizations, particularly in relation to the local context of Utah and the LDS religion. Similar to above, the dimensions I discuss are: 1) heroic capitalist ownership; 2) action and innovation and 3) opportunity recognition.

Entrepreneur as capitalist, heroic, owner

As argued previously, the national business press articles sought to describe the ideal entrepreneur as someone who was a capitalist owner of the means of production. Similarly, the participants expressed ownership, and particularly pro-growth ownership, as emblematic of entrepreneurship. One entrepreneur insisted that ‘entrepreneurs grow things. They not only start something, but they grow it, significantly’. Another entrepreneur spoke of her plans to spend more time on marketing than production because ‘when I’m making [my product], I’m not growing my business. I’m sustaining my business, [but] I’m not growing my business’.

Most often, entrepreneurial ownership was framed as the increase of resources. Some entrepreneurs envisioned profit increases or being able to generate more clients and hire more employees. As an example, one entrepreneur explained in no uncertain terms that what entrepreneurs need most is ‘access to money, markets, and mentors’, and that entrepreneurs need ‘traction … so they can grow their businesses to the point where they would be attractive to bigger pools of money’. Thus, the point of making money is to continue to generate more money. Entrepreneurs also talked about harvesting the venture as an ideal pay-off. When asked if he would pass his venture on to his children, one entrepreneur mused, ‘it’s a difficult [decision] because I need to harvest the company in some fashion, right?’.

Not all of the participants were focused on growth, however. Approximately one-fourth of the participants talked about the ‘extra-financial’ benefits of entrepreneurship. One entrepreneur admitted that ‘as much as I want financial rewards’, he is more interested in what he refers to as the ‘emotional rewards’ of entrepreneurship, particularly in that entrepreneurship is ‘an outlet for innovative, creative thinking and energy and not being constrained by a larger organization’. Likewise, other entrepreneurs valued the satisfaction of achievement and the social missions of their ventures. One entrepreneur talked about the economic downturn, saying that ‘if we go into deep dark depression and cash flow stops, my cash flow might stop but my mission will continue’ (emphasis added).

In a departure from the business press articles, the participants did not speak about their efforts in explicitly American terms, though they did frame their efforts as having positive, almost heroic, impact on the public economy and society. One entrepreneur claimed that entrepreneurship ‘is so key to the fundamental strength of our economy it’s mind blowing’ and several other participants described entrepreneurs as valuable because they are ‘constant problem solvers’ and individuals who ‘fix a need’. Thus, while the patriotic feature of the national discourse did not appear in the participants’ explanations, a heroic feature did. As economic figures, the participants believe that they offer something particularly valuable and superior.

The entrepreneur as active and innovative

The participants also identified action and innovation as entrepreneurial necessities. One participant referred to entrepreneurship as a ‘wild ride’ and another explained that entrepreneurship is ‘doing something. … We all have these great little ideas, but we don’t act on them. It’s the action part that really creates entrepreneurship’. Yet another distinguished entrepreneurs from other classic idea-generators, remarking that ‘there are great thinkers, innovators, and inventors, but an entrepreneur has to be more than that. They have to have those capabilities but also the action item. And action is far more important even than the others are’.

Participants also expressed similar sentiments about university collaboration. Claiming that education and university programs are highly respected in Utah due to the influence of LDS culture, many participants emphasized their collaboration with universities, saying they enjoyed presenting in college classrooms and working with student entrepreneurship organizations. However, most of the participants did not express a desire to pursue higher education themselves. In this way, the participants upheld the construction in the national discourse that entrepreneurs are doers. One entrepreneur admitted that she ‘would love to go get an MBA’, but that ‘honestly, I don’t know why I would get an MBA because it wouldn’t really change what I’m doing business-wise’. Moreover, a handful of participants expressed concern that institutionalized learning would ‘squash creativity’ and constrain them as entrepreneurs.

Judgements about the relative innovativeness of entrepreneurial ventures were evoked as a way to distinguish entrepreneurs. Two-thirds of the participants were quick to distinguish themselves as someone who creates services or products (e.g. a software startup) in contrast to individuals who sell existing services (e.g. a graphic design shop owner). This distinction was present in one entrepreneur’s explanation that entrepreneurs are visionary leaders who hire others to perform traditional management duties. Sentiments like this constructed a division of labour between entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs where entrepreneurs hire non-entrepreneurs to perform the daily labour of the business. This was echoed in another entrepreneur’s statement that an entrepreneur is ‘the salesperson or the product developer, but they’re not necessarily doing the accounting and taking out the trash. They’ve got people to do that for them’.

Significantly, those entrepreneurs who owned supposedly less innovative ventures—what Aldrich and Ruef (2006) name ‘reproducers’—expressed ambiguity, when pressed, about whether or not they were entrepreneurs. While they grappled with this, they also upheld entrepreneurship as innovative. After much reflection, one entrepreneur (owner of a fairly traditional graphic design and print shop) reasoned that ‘truthfully, I don’t really have any new product to offer. I take the things that other people are doing and see how it can help my client. So I guess I would be just a business owner, then’. And yet, just seconds later this entrepreneur also admitted that she tells people that she is an entrepreneur because the term feels more representative. All told, the participants who resembled reproducers expressed a kind of ‘entrepreneurial yearning’, where they wished they were more like what they imagined real entrepreneurs to be.

These kinds of expressions reinforced the notion that the ideal entrepreneur creates something new and innovative. Participants claimed that entrepreneurship ‘[pushes] forward innovation’ and that ‘successful entrepreneurs measure results and continue to innovate’. Ability to innovate was linked to autonomy, where the ideal entrepreneur had control over creative and financial decisions. Thus, franchisees and multi-level marketers (MLMs) were not considered entrepreneurs because they are:

… given the program, they’re given the logos, they’re given the displays, everything in a box, right? And they’d probably be breaking … some of their franchise agreements if they changed the logo to pink or something, right? Well I would say that an entrepreneur might change that logo to pink to see if it makes the project better, if there’s more sales. There’s some changes in innovation, right?

Other entrepreneurs similarly disparaged Mary Kay or Pampered Chef by claiming that representatives of these MLMs are ‘just trying to run a business’ and that they ‘[duplicate] somebody else’s concept’. ² What is particularly interesting about the distinction being made here is that taking on franchising and multi-level marketing is arguably a practice of recognizing and acting on opportunity, and yet this alone is not ‘enough’ to be viewed as a legitimate entrepreneur. Franchisees and MLMs are viewed as second-grade entrepreneurs in the eyes of these participants because they seemingly lack creativity and initiative. ³ This contradiction highlights a catch-22 of expectations regarding opportunity recognition.

Recognizing and capitalizing on opportunity

This catch-22 was further reflected in moral judgements levied at working class segments of society and assumptions about working class groups as lacking initiative and resourcefulness. This was apparent, for instance, in comparisons to working- or retail-class employees. One participant surmised that ‘if you polled a group of employees from a department store, they … would have a much different attitude toward life than entrepreneurs do’. Another participant contrasted entrepreneurs with janitors, noting that entrepreneurs are ‘ … generally not your janitor. They’re generally not your lower rung employee, if you will’ and continued:

You’ve got to set goals and work toward them and be aggressive and, and [pause] be a leader … and I’m not trying to diss on janitors or anything like that, but if you have no drive or ambition in life to get a good education and to be a great employee and to rise to the top, how are you going to be a leader?

Underpinning this claim was an explicit grounding in LDS values. This participant believed that Utah entrepreneurship was encouraged by LDS church practice of having a lay clergy, where church members are ‘called’ to perform leadership roles within the church. According to this participant, being a leader in the church reflects and predispositions one to be a leader elsewhere, therefore accounting for the high rate of Utah/LDS entrepreneurs. Yet, in connecting church morality, leadership and employment, this participant also belies his assumption that being under-employed must signal a moral failing on the part of the individual that precludes the individual—in this case, a janitor—from becoming an entrepreneur.

Other participants made similar claims. Two entrepreneurs contended that poor individuals need to be educated or given access to opportunities in order to be entrepreneurs, reproducing the assumption that poor individuals need education and opportunity but that wealthy individuals do not (Mantsios, 2001):

If you’re struggling to survive day-to-day and that’s all you’ve ever known, then it’s very unlikely you’re going to think, ‘oh, I should start a business’. I mean, you might, and I’m really interested as a side thing in micro-credit and micro-entrepreneurship for solving poverty situations. …but if you are just struggling from day-to-day and nobody presents you with an opportunity then you would have a really hard time because probably all the people you know are also struggling. I mean, your network’s different.

This comment, in particular, reflects the comment in Inc. that the poor are incapable of imagination and inititative, individually or collectively, and protects a market-based, economically savvy rendering of entrepreneurship. Instead—running antithethically to a rags-to-riches American dream ideology—entrepreneurial opportunities must be provided to the poor.

Not surprisingly, these ideas about opportunity were supported by the invisibility of white privilege. While one entrepreneur claimed that entrepreneurial disadvantage was more of a class than a race issue, he did not also consider how white privilege has advantaged him. This was the case for most of the entrepreneurs. When asked if they had a ‘leg up’ as white entrepreneurs, most participants answered by dismissing the relevancy of the question, given Utah’s predominantly white population, or by jealously (in the case of the male participants) referencing the numerous programs and services available to women and minorities (and not white men). However, the sensemaking of two participants of colour brought into relief how whiteness in Utah may provide unseen benefits. One participant talked about her experience as a foreign-born Hispanic woman entrepreneur:

… because I’m a marketing and consulting business [and not a high-tech business], I’m a woman, and I’m Hispanic, and so there’s a lot of things that it’s been difficult for me. You know, I don’t have an MBA from [Brigham Young University], I don’t have an MBA from the University of Utah, you know, I’m not local, so definitely there’s a lot of things that play, could be they play against [me] …

Another participant explained that growing up as an American Indian in Utah, she felt that she needed to learn how to navigate in white society in order to get her business up and running. These entrepreneurs voice the underlying norm of white entrepreneurship alongside other factors such as technology, gender and education, where as entrepreneurs of colour, they have a unique experience from the other (white) participants.

Summary

The above discussion illuminates the presence of class in entrepreneurial discourse. Despite differences in scope and focus at the national and local levels of discourse (e.g. local sensemaking entwined with LDS-inspired justifications), this analysis suggests that overall, entrepreneurial discourse constructs a context in which an entrepreneurial hierarchy denies entrepreneurial legitimacy to lower or working classes based on assumptions that these classes are not creative, educated or motivated. Rather, the discourse establishes a context in which legitimate entrepreneurship is within the purview of the creative, experienced, white, professional middle and upper classes.

This phenomenon is accomplished through a series of entwined dimensions. Entrepreneurs are positioned as owners in and supporters of capitalist growth. Supporting this characteristic are discourses of nationlism (at the national level) and discourses of heroism (at the local level). Overall, entrepreneurs are valorized as crucial to economic health, where they are producers (not reproducers) of economic vitality. Additionally, entrepreneurial discourse insists on action and innovation as requirements—entrepreneurs are not people who consider ideas or invent products, but are individuals who bring innovative, technological and high-growth ideas to market. Innovation resonated deeply with the participants, to the extent that some expressed an ‘entrepreneurial yearning’ that indicated they felt a sense of lack. As well, entrepreneurialism produces discursive obstacles that restrict opportunity recognition to those who are privileged in some way. In this way, the discourse of entrepreneurship contradicts fundamental aspects of the long-standing and powerful self-made American dream ideology.

American dream ideology meets enterprise initiatives

Taken together, the findings of this analysis posit three dimensions of class bias embedded in entrepreneurial discourse: capitalist ownership, action and innovation and opportunity recognition. Arguably, these dimensions construct an ideological contradiction whereby, on one hand, American dream ideology optimistically encourages members of lower and working classes to buy into the notion of being self-made. On the other hand, entrepreneurial discourse (re)constructs a class-based hierarchy of entrepreneurs inspired by enterprise initiatives that emphasize market individualism and innovation. Thus, while it has been said that ‘work is known … in large part by the gendered and raced bodies with which it becomes aligned’ (Ashcraft, 2011: 8, emphasis in original), class difference—albeit entwined with gendered and raced discourses—emerges as the significant organizing discourse of entrepreneurialism.

Together, the American dream and enterprise ideologies comprise a tempting, hegemonic bait-and-switch characteristic that instructs individuals in endeavours that are complicated to achieve. Entrepreneurial discourse encourages involvement by all persons (because we want to be special and admirable), but ultimately rewards only certain of those persons who are able to successfully achieve or perform these class dimensions (of being an owner, innovative, technological, etc.). Such a conception of privilege is built on ideas of public mobility associated with whiteness and masculinity (Savage, 2000), as well as a culture of poverty, which ‘contends that poor people collectively exhibit traits that keep them down’ (Allen, 2004: 105). From this, the blame for not being ‘successful’ or entrepreneurial in the ‘right’ way is placed on the individual, scrutinizing ethnic minorities and the poor in particular for the resources they lack while ‘ignor[ing] the fact that many wealthy people have inherited their wealth and resources or that they were better positioned to attain the American dream’ (Allen, 2004: 105).

For instance, innovative ventures were marked as particularly entrepreneurial, despite that innovative and cutting-edge entrepreneurs actually ‘[represent] a very small proportion of the individuals … engaged in starting organizations’ (Gartner, 2004: 247; see also Aldrich and Ruef, 2006). Innovation was such a powerful dimension that successful performance in this arena transcended traditionally problematic identity differences (i.e. suspicion of foreign-born persons) where bridges were built to those able to reflect the dominant discourse. Difference based on national identity is therefore mitigated by capitalist production, but only for some entrepreneurs. Immigrant entrepreneurs were marginalized in comparison to the ‘new breed’ of foreign, innovative and technologically savvy entrepreneurs. Thus, where immigration and entrepreneurship have previously been compositional cornerstones of American ideology, the discourse has edged toward ‘technological manifest destiny’ (Holmer Nadesan, 2001).

In addition to obscuring difference based on nationality and ethnicity, innovation also complicates the expectation of education as a marker of class. Typically viewed as a path to upward mobility, formal education does not carry this weight in entrepreneurial discourse. While education was certainly respected by the business press and participants, it was made clear that these entrepreneurs felt that, if anything, formal education would stifle their entrepreneurial capacity. Lest the lack of formal education call into question the entrepreneur’s credentials, the action/innovation component supported the rejection of formal education. This claim was contradicted, however, in the case of lower-class or working-class individuals, as well as for women, for whom it was seen as necessary to ‘learn’ or ‘practice’ entrepreneurship.

At the same time that entrepreneurial discourse purports to be equitable, then, it elevates some entrepreneurs over others. Here, the notion of labour raises a relevant and intriguing observation. The ideal entrepreneur is represented as an innovative owner, but not as a worker or labourer. While entrepreneurs of all stripes arguably ‘labour’ in some way, the discourse represents legitimate entrepreneurs as owning, but not necessarily as working in, their venture. This phenomenon points to the possibility of the ‘entrepreneurial class’ as an emerging ruling class. Whereas earlier conceptions of class divisions located entrepreneurs and other professionals in the petit bourgeoisie (Ehrenreich and Ehrenreich, 1979), entrepreneurial discourse positions entrepreneurs as the heirs to traditional, corporate and managerial ownership.

To be sure, the entrepreneurs who were participants in this study belied the allure of entrepreneurial ownership, subscribing to elitist conceptualizations. This was seen particularly in the expression of ‘entrepreneurial yearing’ and the othering of less innovative entrepreneurs. With entrepreneurial yearning, entrepreneurs who felt that they were neither technological nor innovative (enough) expressed the desire to learn more about how to incorporate these characteristics into their mentality and/or daily practices, or they talked about their ‘next business’ as fulfilling these ideas. With othering, many entrepreneurs were quick to distinguish others as not entrepreneurial (e.g. MLMs and franchisees), despite that they also subscribed to the general notion that entrepreneurship offers open and equal opportunities. Thus, in identifying the ‘other’ with poverty and apathy, the majority of the (white) participants glossed over the hardships and privileges that they themselves might have experienced.

Conclusion

Ultimately, this essay further illuminates ‘the paradoxical and apparently mysterious nature of entrepreneurship discourse’ (Jones and Spicer, 2005: 237), where class hierarchy is simultaneously present and erased by entrepreneurialism and other, intersecting discourses. Accordingly, this analysis suggests that class is a significant organizing discourse of difference in entrepreneurial discourse. Whereas gender, together with race, have long been foregrounded in studies of entrepreneurial identity and difference, class may be a more powerful organizing discourse, though certainly one supported by discourses of gender and race. Innovation as a marker of class membership and mobility operates as the crux on which legitimate entrepreneurial identity turns. Thus, while this article addressed entrepreneurialism at the level of discourse, it seems a necessary and interesting endeavour for future research to consider how entrepreneurs may constitute a material class and how membership in this class is experienced and navigated. In this way, we are able to explore the trade-offs in how new economy entrepreneurialism has engendered the supplanting of traditional ownership with entrepreneurial ownership.