Birds of a feather don't always flock together: Identity management in entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurial Cognition

“…An unmet need for belonging can lead to feeling isolated (Brewer 1991); this feeling can negatively influence the individual's physical and psychological well-being (Leonardelli and Brewer 2001). In this chapter, we develop a framework for entrepreneurs' dealing with multiple micro-identities (Ashforth et al 2000;Pratt and Forman 2000) and specify entrepreneurs' strategies to achieve an "ideal" balance between belongingness and distinctiveness (Shepherd and Haynie 2009a). We also explore how individuals can lose their work identities and the role of entrepreneurship in identity recovery and reconstruction.…”

“…Daniel's feelings and experience are common among small-company owners [Based on a survey of 450 small business CEOs]. (Gumpert and Boyd 1984: 18) The next section introduces our framework to clarify the association between belonging and distinctiveness when entrepreneurs (try to) manage the borders separating their micro-identities (see Shepherd and Haynie 2009a).…”

“…Compartmentalization is a strategy used to maintain an identity that indicates distinctiveness (i.e., their entrepreneurial identity) and one that indicates belonging, choosing between the micro-identities at various times and in multiple situations (Shepherd and Haynie 2009a). Entrepreneurs using a compartmentalization strategy rarely switch between microidentities in order to manage boundaries, specifically to reduce the boundary transition costs.…”

“…In the example, we use two curves representing two identities (refer to Fig. 5.3 (Shepherd and Haynie 2009a)). On the far right is the entrepreneurial identity curve, which confers distinctiveness while the person participates in founding activities.…”

Researching Entrepreneurial Failures

“…While research has explored work-life balance among entrepreneurs (Shepherd & Haynie, 2009a, 2009b, we know little about how entrepreneurs continue to achieve work-life balance when the work aspect of this relationship has ended in failure. For instance, is an entrepreneur able to compartmentalize a failure into his or her work micro-identity, thus making the failure have minimal effect on other micro-identities (e.g., the "spouse" microidentity), or does the failure lead to spillover effects?…”