Generational Encounters and the Social Formation of Entrepreneurial Identity: ‘Young Guns’ and ‘Old Farts’

Abstract

Generational relations and entrepreneurialism in organizations are attracting increasing attention from organizational scholars. This article bridges these areas of interest, by examining how entrepreneurial identity is shaped by generational encounters within a small organization context. In so doing, it contributes to ongoing challenges to the scientistic orthodoxy regarding the formation of entrepreneurial persons. Evidence from an ethnographic study of two joint ownermanagers in the port fendering industry is presented. Wenger’s ‘community of practice’ framework is used to show that generational encounters, through their influence on self-identity, are an important social context of the decision to embark on an entrepreneurial career. By emphasizing micro-socially situated aspects of identity formation, this article provides an interactionist complement to recent accounts of entrepreneurs and identities as being (re)produced by discourses that have hegemonic effects.

Encountering the Arugula Leaf: The Failure of the Imaginary and its Implications for Research on Identity in Organizations

“…Insert Table 1 about here First, identity may cohere by conforming to dominant discourses or by constructing an oppositional subject position (Bergstroem and Knights, 2006;Down and Reveley, 2004). Second, identity may fragment in the very act of unsettling dominant discourses (Sveningsson and Alevesson, 2003) and the varying positions that may be constructed by drawing on different aspects of the dominant discourses and doing so differently in different situations (Thomas and Davies, 2005).…”

“…This kind of reflection is taken up in a study of entrepreneurial identity (Down and Reveley, 2004). It examines how entrepreneurs attempt to construct coherent selfnarratives in and through encounters with older managers in which they define their younger, entrepreneurial selves in opposition to the older, less entrepreneurial identities they attribute to the older others.…”

“…Second, identity may fragment in the very act of unsettling dominant discourses (Sveningsson and Alevesson, 2003) and the varying positions that may be constructed by drawing on different aspects of the dominant discourses and doing so differently in different situations (Thomas and Davies, 2005). Third, researchers seem to play a part in all of this as they co-construct the identities of research subjects (Jorgenson, 2002) and may in turn subject research participants to their own dominant identity discourses (Ward and Winstanley, 2003), share participants' identity discourses (Down and Reveley, 2004) or subvert and/or normalize the discourses that can dominate identity work in particular contexts (Alvesson, 1998;Merilainen et al, 2004;Thomas and Davies, 2005). I would now like to examine why this set-piece seems to exist and what underlying dynamics and new avenues for research may be missed by reiterating it.…”

“…Indeed, how individual identity is constructed in organizations as the site of more or less managerial control is one of the most important and widely researched topics in organizational studies today (e.g. Ashcraft, 2005;Barry et al, 2006;Bergstroem and Knights, 2005;Down and Reveley, 2004;Hodgson, 2005;Merilainen et al, 2004). There are conference tracks and themed journal issues (e.g.…”

Authoring second-generation entrepreneur and family business stories

“…The interface between first and second-generation entrepreneur stories allow a transition of entrepreneurial identity from one generation to another. For example see the work of Down and Revley (2004) on generational encounters and the social formation of entrepreneurial identity in which the struggle between the young guns (secondgeneration) and the old farts (first-generation) is played out in family business settings.…”