Edited by

Anders Örtenblad

Against
Entrepreneurship
A Critical
Examination
Against Entrepreneurship
 Anders Örtenblad
Editor

Against
Entrepreneurship
A Critical Examination
Editor
Anders Örtenblad
School of Business and Law
University of Agder
Grimstad, Norway

ISBN 978-3-030-47936-7    ISBN 978-3-030-47937-4 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47937-4

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 Foreword

The chief characteristic of the mass man is not brutality and backwardness,
but his [sic] isolation and lack of normal social relationships. (Hannah
Arendt 1976, p. 315)

How did democracy finally die in the early C21st? When historians
finally seek to answer this question, they will want to know the beliefs
and knowledge of the day as well as the ways these were shaped and
shared around the world. They will explore artefacts like the literature,
the geological record, the archived multimedia that survived. These will
show them that the leaders of the time knew about the damage they were
doing to the planet and that they understood and amplified the voice of
those who finally rejected the principles of democratic rule. These histo-
rians of the future will understand which arguments were used to justify
the removal of social rights and elderly care, that cut access to medicines,
worker protection and pensions. They will see that, while everyone could
watch real time images of flood waters pouring into homes and great
walls of fire tearing through villages, vast swathes of society were com-
plicit in the removal of already inadequate strategies and techniques for
halting climate change.
When they read these documents and look for who was to blame, they
will repeatedly come into contact with an all powerful and omnipotent
actor—the entrepreneur. This dynamic and transformative individual
v
vi Foreword

will have had a seat at the table of every government and every interna-
tional organization, legitimating and guiding these institutions.
Entrepreneurs will have been deeply involved in policy detail too, helping
to decide who pays how much tax and even setting the obligations of
welfare claimants, job hunters, single mothers, refugees or disabled per-
sons before they received funds to eat.
In schools and university careers services, students would have been
encouraged to become entrepreneurs. The “real world” experiences of
entrepreneurs were taken more seriously than the thoughts of ancient
philosophers, discoveries of Nobel prize winning scientists, creations of
artists or morals of prophets. Teachers, students and faculty will all pros-
trate themselves before entrepreneurs to receive the wisdom of their anec-
dotes and insights. The entrepreneur’s knowledge will have been lauded
with awe, as if the words of a visionary prince, and consumed with equal
fervour in the throne rooms of Europe’s palaces and households. Indeed
the voice of entrepreneurs would have echoed into almost every home
through the social media that entrepreneurs helped to create in a virtual
world that they built.
Even traditional newspapers and TV will adore entrepreneurs, despite
the entrepreneurs’ attempt to break with the past. The entrepreneur was
fast because fast was better than slow and the future was better than the
past. After the Cold War, entrepreneurs rebuilt the world with an entirely
new reality that promised every person the chance to create their own
futures and follow their own entrepreneurial vision. The belief that entre-
preneurs should be as free to act as possible without restraint was a pre-
requisite for being accepted into late C20th civilisation. Valuing the
ability of entrepreneurs to create would help replace democracy with lib-
erty, freeing the world from petulant deliberation in bureaucracies for the
thrilling opportunities offered by global governance.
Sometimes the entrepreneur could be kind. Sometimes the “he” could
be a “she” or black or white or any kind of minority. Indeed for many a
minority group refugee or migrant, becoming an entrepreneur was the
only way they could join a society. The entrepreneurs’ own unique skills
were seen to fix all of society’s problems, even those that faceless civil
servants and ivory tower experts could not. Un-encumbered by the crip-
pling caution of bureaucracy or the unjust burden of red tape, the
  Foreword  vii

entrepreneurs always had better insights because they were entrepreneur-

ial. They promised to deliver more services better than local governments
did before. Entrepreneurs would regularly give of their time at rates gen-
erously discounted from their full market value. Entrepreneurs would
often “give back” to society, just like Victorians did before the welfare
state got in the way. Charitable causes, fund raising balls and monikered
public buildings would celebrate their generosity, adding celebrity and
political capital to the entrepreneurs’ celebrated monetary wealth.
Being a successful entrepreneur meant being a winner not a loser. So
while many had participated in markets, only entrepreneurs could reset
the rules of the game. Governments therefore listened to entrepreneurs as
only winners like them could help a country beat the global economy to
achieve “competitiveness”. Such a totalising project demanded that entre-
preneurial vision permeated every dimension of life to balance work and
life, quantify improvements of personal performances (in anything) and
demonstrate the possibility of endless permutations of potential value
creation. People admired the objectivity of his judgements and respected
his cruelty when he dismissed his minions.
In recent years few have offered systematic critique of the idea of entre-
preneurship or even offered value systems that directly contravene the
necessity of the entrepreneur. Yet, as Hannah Arendt witnessed at the
Nuremburg trials, it was the individuation of life and the destruction of
normal relationships that let in the greatest of darkness. The pursuit of
entrepreneurial outcomes has created all these. Taken together the impact
of the entrepreneur on politics, science and knowledge, our understand-
ing of who we were and want to be and how we value each other, has been
extraordinary.
Yet the ultimate success of the entrepreneur is that they do not exist. In
this era of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurialism, we have no agreed
understanding of who or what they are. The entrepreneur is not a human
trait or even a pattern of behaviour so much as a term that has been
hurled onto individuals who have done valued things. More measured
terms that once described business leaders such as “tycoon” or “specula-
tor” have disappeared for the entrepreneur.
Defining what an entrepreneur is, is the epitome of decision making
power. An entrepreneur is not a person so much as an “empty vessel” into
viii Foreword

which meaning is poured, often for highly instrumental means. The dis-
cursive creation and extension of the term across societies, races, genders
and into every site of human experience has not created convergence so
much as celebrated difference. But it has done so without accountability
for the destruction caused to existing arrangements and without commit-
ment to the shared produce of such change.
For those who believe in democratic scrutiny, accountability and the
rule of law, it is nothing short of baffling that the myth of the entrepre-
neur endures. The costs of the destruction of the public institutions that
sustained and reproduced democratic systems surely exceed the entrepre-
neurial creations that replaced them? Open and competitive elections,
that Schumpeter saw as foundational for democracy, have become widely
abused in the social media empires created by the dot com entrepreneurs.
The “gig economy” has more in common with the dystopian precarity
work of the pre-industrial era than the promises of the knowledge based
economy. Financial and political power is patently centralised leading
authoritarian leaders into power with the banking of shady financiers and
social media bots. Few incentives remain to participate in the social
reforms required to create more equal, inclusive and sustainable societies.
We need to consider what our historians-of-the-future will see because
entrepreneurs are uniquely unbound by material constraints. They have
been custodians of the future since Fukyama’s End of history (1992) thesis
presented the Cold War’s historical divisions as a poor alternative to the
emerging global order of liberal democracy and free market enterprise.
Frank Knight’s 100 year old distinction between risk and uncertainty
placed the entrepreneur as the creator of new forms of profit out of uncer-
tainty. While managers exploited the known of the past by exploring the
statistical groupings of markets, the entrepreneur would use these to
speculate and organize for future needs.
So a simple question might be to ask the historians to assess how the
entrepreneurs of the past faired. Did they create profitability, did they
deliver societal need, have they eradicated historical division? It is unlikely
that you think “entrepreneurs” have been successful if you have read this
far, although many will choose to ignore the evidence presented in the
following pages. More important than empirical validation is the need to
develop insights and techniques that help to break into and expose the
  Foreword  ix

myth of the entrepreneur. As today’s political responses to enterprise and

globalism take on the form of despotic populists, the reality of an enter-
prise society needs to be revealed more than ever.
The chapters here play a vital role in showing how we can do this. They
show how the fetish of self-employment is less empowering than control-
ling and how the idea of enterprise has been weaponized to colonise,
destroy and exclude. We learn that enterprise is an expression of power
that has disengaged with society’s challenges and eventually with the pro-
cess of enterprise itself. At this particular moment of existential crisis in
humanity, fairy tales of entrepreneurial success hide the dark side of
entrepreneurial behaviours and the damage they cause. Enterprise policy
is a form of powerful social control that colonizes many spaces and sus-
tains a great deal of misery and injustice.
This is therefore an important volume that is both timely in its cre-
ation and vibrant in its call: to challenge the hegemonic discourse of
enterprise. It demands a greater respect for truth and a more human
understanding of what it means to live under the yoke of enterprise. It
also requires us to see futures that are not dependent on entrepreneurs
but different forms of society. The historians of today do not have to look
far to find these. Our libraries are full of volumes telling us how uncer-
tainty was turned into welfare, war into equality, famine into life and for
years before the idea of entrepreneurship polluted public debate. Many of
these tales invite alternative ideologies to liberal capitalism, show lives
lived on more collective goals and link to sustainable, caring and demo-
cratic societies that can exist “against enterprise”.

School of Politics and International Studies,

Charlie Dannreuther
University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

References
Arendt, H. (1976). The origins of totalitarianism. San Diego, CA; New  York;
London: Harvest Books.
Fukuyama, F. (1992). The end of history and the last man. London: Penguin.
 Contents

1 Background and Introduction: How Could Anyone

Be Against Entrepreneurship?  1
Anders Örtenblad

2 Self-employment and Entrepreneurship: Productive,

Unproductive or Destructive?  19
Dieter Bögenhold

3 Notes on a Fetishist War Machine 37

Daniel Ericsson

4 Keep the Machine Running: Entrepreneurship as a

Practice of Control in the Neoliberal Economy 57
Kenneth Mølbjerg Jørgensen and Ann Starbæk Bager

5 Fetishizing the Entrepreneurship 77

Frederik Hertel

6 Entrepreneurship ad absurdum 93
Anna-Maria Murtola

xi
xii Contents

7 Against Entrepreneurship: Unveiling Social Inequalities

for Minority Entrepreneurship111
Kiran Trehan, Priyanka Vedi, and Alex Kevill

8 The Fairytale of the Successful Entrepreneur:

Reasons and Remedies for the Prevalent Ideology
of Entrepreneurship133
Fabiola H. Gerpott and Alfred Kieser

9 From Entrepreneurship to Eco-preneurship153

Ove Jakobsen and Vivi M. L. Storsletten

10 Entrepreneurial Insouciance (or Imperiousness),

the Big Risk Shift and the Entrepreneurship
Interregnum167
Philip Cooke

11 The Dark Side of Entrepreneurial Passion: Restraining

Employee Innovative Behaviour?185
Eeva Aromaa, Ulla Hytti, and Satu Aaltonen

12 In Defense of the Comfort Zone: Against the

Hegemony of Creative Destruction203
Jerzy Kociatkiewicz and Monika Kostera

13 Entrepreneurship Addiction and the Negative Mental

Health Consequences of Entrepreneurial Engagement
Among Some Entrepreneurs217
April J. Spivack

14 Against Irresponsible Entrepreneurship: A Dual

Perspective on the Impact of Entrepreneurship
on Firm Survival233
Denise Fleck
  Contents  xiii

15 The Dark Side of Entrepreneurship: The Role of the Dark

Side of Personality255
Bekir Emre Kurtulmuş

 fterword: What Does it Mean to be Against

A
Entrepreneurship? From Antagonistic to Agonistic Critique267
Pascal Dey

Index279
 Notes on Contributors

Satu Aaltonen  is a researcher at the Department of Management and

Entrepreneurship at the University of Turku, Finland. Her main topics of
interest lie in employee-driven innovations, entrepreneurship policy and
migrant entrepreneurship. She has published in Entrepreneurship and
Innovation, International Journal of E-Services and Mobile Applications
and International Small Business Journal as well as in several edited books.
Her background is in social sciences.

Eeva  Aromaa is a PhD student of Innovation Management at the

University of Eastern Finland. She is interested in research areas such as
human side of innovation, circular economy, co-creation, sensemaking
and qualitative research methods. She has published her research in
Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International
Journal, International Journal of Human Resources Development and
Management, International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Management and International Journal of Knowledge Management Studies.

Ann Starbæk Bager, PhD  Associate professor, Head of the Center for

Narratological Studies at SDU’s department of Design and
Communication. She’s part of defining the field of organizational dis-
course and storytelling activism. Ann’s research and teaching concerns
organizational and leadership in regard to matters of sustainability,
xv
xvi  Notes on Contributors

s­torytelling/narrative, discourse, ethics and communication. She has

published broadly at publisher/journals such as Routledge, John
Benjamins, Palgrave, Communication and Language at Work, Tamara
and Journal of Philosophy of management.

Dieter  Bögenhold is a professor in the Faculty of Management and

Economics at the University of Klagenfurt at Klagenfurt, Austria, and Head
of the Department of Sociology, and the doctoral program “Entrepreneurship,
Innovation and Economic Development”. His research areas include social
stratification, consumption and life-style studies, interdisciplinary studies,
economic sociology, history of economic thought. He has published more
than 250 contributions including numerous books.

Philip Cooke  was University Research Professor in regional economic

development (1991) and founding director (1993) of the Centre for
Advanced Studies, University of Wales, Cardiff. In 2013 he was appointed
Research Professor at the Mohn Centre for Innovation & Regional
Development, Vestlandet, Bergen. His research interests lie in studies of
Green Innovation, Regional Innovation Systems, Knowledge Economies,
and 4.0 Industry. In 2006 he received the Honorary Doctorate in
Economic Geography, University of Lund, Sweden.

Charlie Dannreuther  who works in the School of Politics and International

Studies at the University of Leeds, has provided critiques of SME policy in
the EU and UK through regulationist, constructivist, and linguistics
approaches. Currently general secretary of the European Association of
Evolutionary Political Economy, Charlie has 20 years training policy elites
from around the EU and 10 years leading large research networks.

Pascal Dey  is Professor of Value-Based Management at Bern University

of Applied Sciences (Switzerland) and Associate Research Fellow at the
University of St. Gallen (Switzerland). Before coming to Bern, he was
Associate Professor at Grenoble Ecole de Management, France. Pascal’s
current research interests are in the domain of social business models,
digital entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship and disability inclusion,
entrepreneurial narratives and storytelling, and the spatio-temporal
dimension of alternative organizing.
   Notes on Contributors  xvii

Daniel  Ericsson received his PhD from the Stockholm School of

Economics and is currently Professor in Organization and Leadership at
Linnaeus University. He is particularly interested in understanding how
entrepreneurship is constructed in society, and in exploring different
ways of writing within the social sciences. His award-winning thesis,
Kreativitetsmysteriet (“The Creative Mystery”), was for example written as
a postmodern detective novel fiction. His latest book is Organizing
hope—narratives for a better future (2019, co-edited with Monika Kostera).

Denise Fleck  is Professor of Strategic Management and Organizational

Studies at Coppead Graduate School of Business, UFRJ, Brazil. Her
research program on Responsible Growth offers a dualistic perspective of
the impact corporate growth may have on the development of individu-
als, organizations and society. The more than 50 completed studies on
long-lived organizations provide evidence of the dualistic role entrepre-
neurship and growth may play in fostering or precluding individual hap-
piness, organizational survival, and societal well-being.

Fabiola  H.  Gerpott is professor of leadership at the WHU—Otto

Beisheim School of Management, Germany. She received a double PhD
in business administration (Jacobs University Bremen) and psychology
(Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam). Her research blends communication sci-
ence, management research, and organizational psychology to study dif-
ferences between how people perceive the organizational world and what
is actually happening. Her areas of interest cover leadership, entrepre-
neurship, knowledge sharing, and learning.

Frederik  Hertel, PhD  Associate Professor in Organization,

Communication and Management. Before returning to academia, he
worked for 12 years as a project manager and for a short while as head of
development in public organizations. He has published articles on
Leadership, Everyday Creativity in Organizations, Educational
Anthropology, Philosophy of Management and Organizational
Communication. He is right now engaged in case studies on leadership
in Danish cooperative organizations.
xviii  Notes on Contributors

Ulla Hytti  is Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Turku,

Finland. Her research focuses on entrepreneurship, particularly on entre-
preneurial identities and entrepreneurship education including critical
perspectives. Ulla was the European Entrepreneurship Education
Research Laureate in 2019. Ulla has been co-editing various Special Issues
and books. She is Associate Editor for Journal of Small Business Management
and President-Elect for the European Council for Small Business and
Entrepreneurship.

Ove Jakobsen  is professor of ecological economics at Centre for Ecological

Economics and Ethics at Nord University Business school. He has pub-
lished a large number of books and articles, nationally and internationally
focusing on transformative ecological economics, anarchism as a political
platform for ecological economics, business ethics, c­ irculation economics
and sustainable societies. Jakobsen is often invited as keynote speaker and
facilitator on conferences, seminars, workshops and public meetings.

Kenneth  Mølbjerg  Jørgensen, PhD is Professor in organization at

Aalborg Business School, Aalborg University. His research interests com-
prise power, storytelling, ethics, sustainability and learning in organiza-
tions. He teaches sustainability, ethics, leadership development and
Human resource management. Kenneth has authored, co-authored and
edited numerous books, articles and book chapters in amongst others
Scandinavian Journal of Management, Business Ethics—A European
Perspective, CBS Press, Sage and Nova.

Alex Kevill  is a lecturer at the Centre for Enterprise and Entrepreneurship

Studies at Leeds University Business school. His area of research focus on
the micro-foundations of dynamic capabilities in micro-enterprises,
Entrepreneurship and social exclusion. Alex has published in a wide range
of international journals, guested edited a Special issue on entrepreneur-
ship and social exclusion and contributed to several book chapters in the
area of entrepreneurship and diversity.

Alfred Kieser  is Professor emeritus at the University of Mannheim. He

studied Management and Sociology at the University of Cologne and
   Notes on Contributors  xix

Carnegie University, Pittsburgh. He received his PhD in Management

from the University of Cologne. His research interests include the history
of organization, management consulting, organizational learning, and
entrepreneurship. He published e.g. in Administrative Science Quarterly
and Academy of Management Annals.

Jerzy Kociatkiewicz  is a professor of Human Resource Management at

the Institut Mines-Télécom Business School. His research interests sit
broadly within organization theory and include organizational space and
experience, sensemaking, and narrative processes within and around
organizations. He has published in a variety of journals including Journal
of Business Ethics, Management Learning, Organization Studies, and Annals
of Tourism Research. With Zygmunt Bauman, Irena Bauman, and Monika
Kostera he co-authored Management in a Liquid Modern World.

Monika  Kostera  is Professor Ordinaria and Chair in Management at

the Jagiellonian University in Poland and Professor at Södertörn
University, Sweden. She has also been professor and Chair at Durham
University, UK and Linnaeus University, Sweden. She is the author, co-­
author and editor of over 40 books in Polish and English; and of numer-
ous scientific articles. Her current research interests include organizational
imagination, disalienated work and organizational ethnography. She is
member of Erbacce Poets’ Cooperative.

Bekir Emre Kurtulmuş  is an Assistant Professor at Kuwait College of

Science & Technology, Kuwait. He conducts research on institutional
theory, entrepreneurial orientation, the dark side of leadership, the dark
side of personality and the toxic work environment. His current research
focuses on the dark side of personality and its impact on individuals. He
taught organizational behavior, organizational theory, leadership and
strategic management classes to the BA, MBA, and Ph.D. students.

Anna-Maria  Murtola teaches global political economy at Auckland

University of Technology. Her research focuses on cultural studies of cap-
italism, contestation of commodification, and critiques of capitalist
socialization. She has published on entrepreneurs who are critics of com-
xx  Notes on Contributors

modification; entrepreneurship and expropriation; and entrepreneurship

as a cause of financial crisis. She is a member of the left think tank
Economic and Social Research Aotearoa in New Zealand.

Anders Örtenblad  is Professor of Work Life Science at the University of

Agder, Norway. He is the editor-in-chief of The Learning Organization,
and has edited books for publishers such as Edward Elgar Publishing,
Oxford University Press, Palgrave Macmillan, Routledge and Sage. His
main research interest is learning in and by organizations. He likes books
in which different positions on a topic are debated, and has founded the
book series Palgrave Debates in Business and Management.

April  J.  Spivack  is an assistant professor of management in the Wall

College of Business at Coastal Carolina University, USA. She has pub-
lished her research in Academy of Management Perspectives, the Journal of
Business Venturing, and Entrepreneurship, Theory and Practice. Her current
research interests include the entrepreneurial experience, the changing
nature of work, and creativity and well-being outcomes of human-envi-
ronment interaction.

Vivi  M.  L.  Storsletten  is associate professor at Centre for Ecological

Economics and Ethics at Nord University Business school. She holds a
PhD in Ecological Economics, publishes articles and book chapters both
nationally and internationally, is active in interdisciplinary course devel-
opment and holds lectures within philosophy, responsible leadership and
global citizenship, dialogue for practitioners, eco-preneurship and change
processes, ecological economics and business ethics.

Kiran Trehan  is Professor of Entrepreneurship and Pro- Vice Chancellor

at the University of York UK, her research areas are entrepreneurship,
diversity and leadership development within small firms. Kiran’s interests
coalesce around the theme of inclusive entrepreneurship, and include
exploring the connection between diversity, minority enterprise and
social and economic development with respect to entrepreneurship activ-
ities. She has extensively published a number of journal articles, policy
reports, books and book chapters in the field.
   Notes on Contributors  xxi

Priyanka Vedi  is a doctoral researcher at the University of Nottingham.

Her research interests are focused around the emotional labour of profes-
sional workers in light of increasingly changing political and institutional
contexts. She takes a multidisciplinary approach which encompasses
fields of sociology, psychology, organisation studies and institutional the-
ories. Priyanka has also contributed to projects within fields of entrepre-
neurship and management.
 List of Tables

Table 1.1 Main arguments against entrepreneurship in Chaps. 2, 3, 4,

5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15 5
Table 4.1 Disciplinary power versus societies of control 64
Table 9.1 Entrepreneurship in contrasting contexts 159

xxiii
 1
Background and Introduction: How
Could Anyone Be Against
Entrepreneurship?
Anders Örtenblad

Already a few years ago, there were almost 10 million people who had an
addiction problem because of gambling, in the U.S. alone, and in the UK
only the gambling addiction drained about 1.2 billion pounds per year
(North American Foundation for Gambling Addiction Help 2016). Online
gambling is even more addictive than any other type of game (Chóliz
2016). Gambling companies, especially the online ones, are very profit-
able (Aria LLC 2020; GamblingClub 2020). Celebrities, often already
rich, are hired to do commercials, in order to generate more gamblers
(Gunter 2019).
Most people would probably agree that this is one of the dirtiest of all
(legal) businesses in the world. Insofar as the gambling industry (espe-
cially the online one) can be counted as “entrepreneurship”—many new
online gambling companies have at least recently been started up—then
it would probably also be correct to assume that many, not to say (almost)

A. Örtenblad (*)
School of Business and Law, University of Agder, Grimstad, Norway
e-mail: andersortenblad@yahoo.com

© The Author(s) 2020 1

A. Örtenblad (ed.), Against Entrepreneurship,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47937-4_1
2  A. Örtenblad

all, people would be against (such) entrepreneurship. In relation to (some

of ) these entrepreneurs and the negative, often devastating consequences/
implications they necessarily have for people, it would probably not even
be a very controversial thing to do, to suggest that something such as
“exit-preneurship” should complement “entre-preneurship”. Exit-­
preneurship could, for instance, be realized in terms of those companies/
organizations that are harmful, or destructive in any other way, disappear
(cf. Pedler et al. 1991, p. 36)—either through (metaphorically speaking)
voluntarily jumping down a precipice, committing “organizational sui-
cide”, or through being convicted in form of a “people’s court”, deciding
on whether the most destructive organizations should be allowed to con-
tinue to exist or not.
However, this book is not about the dirtiest forms of entrepreneurship
only, but about entrepreneurship in general. While (almost) everybody
probably would agree that the online gambling industry is awful in many
ways, it is reasonable to assume that very few would claim being against
entrepreneurship whatsoever, in any form. Not least since “entrepreneur-
ship” has become such a positively value-loaded term; for instance, which
business school today does not include “entrepreneurship” in its profile,
even among its areas of strengths (cf. Armstrong 2005)? The mainstream
perspective of entrepreneurship—as well as the major part of the litera-
ture on entrepreneurship—is positive and uncritical (e.g., Armstrong
2005; Brandl and Bullinger 2009; Nightingale and Coad 2014; Parker
2012; Spicer 2012). It is exactly this exaggerated enthusiasm that “entre-
preneurship” has come to be associated with—especially during the last
few decades—, which gives reason for a book in which it is explored
whether there is reason to be against entrepreneurship.
Sometimes, when something is given quite a one-sided image, there is
a need to be critiquing—and even criticizing—, to explore if the one-­
sided image is a fair image, and to explore if there also is another side to
it. One way of conducting such an exploration is to start by asking “why
not the opposite?”, as suggested by Ohlsson and Rombach (2015, p. 151).
This book explores the opposite of the mainstream, positive and uncriti-
cal image of entrepreneurship, and if there actually are any reason-
able reasons to be against entrepreneurship in general. Such an exploration
could offer a balance to the often one-sided debate on entrepreneurship.
 1  Background and Introduction: How Could Anyone…  3

It could also act as a catalyst for the generation of alternatives to entrepre-

neurship, or at least insights on how to do to entrepreneurship differently
(Spicer 2012).
The literature that opposes such predominating, mainstream perspec-
tive is still scarce. It would, however, be unfair to say that there is no such
literature whatsoever. In fact, a term has been coined for such stream of
research, “critical entrepreneurship studies” (CES) (e.g., Verduyn et  al.
2017, p. 37; see also Trehan et al., Chap. 7 in this volume). Thus, there
are works that deserve to be mentioned that have explored darker sides of
entrepreneurship.
This stream of critical literature includes—but is not limited to—sug-
gesting entrepreneurship as potentially harmful for the entrepreneurs
themselves, whose health may be jeopardized through stress (Akande
1994; Boyd and Gumpert 1983; Buttner 1992). Another dark side to
entrepreneurship is manifested by those who argue that the entrepreneur-
ial personality is a bit dysfunctional or even a bit not-normal (e.g., Kets
de Vries 1977; McKenna 1996; Hmieleski and Lerner 2016; Tucker et al.
2016). This kind of argument gives, in turn, rise to a critique of the
overall “insanity” that there is to entrepreneurship.
There are also others who have taken interest in the personality of
entrepreneurs but who have avoided psychologizing to such an extent as
the studies that were mentioned above. One example is those suggesting
that entrepreneurs are inclined to take risks and that their failures may
cause negative effects (e.g., Olaison and Sørensen 2014). Another example is
those who point at risks for the entrepreneurial firms that the entrepre-
neurs run or otherwise are involved in, such as Beaver and Jennings
(2005) who see risks for those firms from the entrepreneurs’ egoistical
attitudes, and Osborne (1991) who sees a potential for power abuse
among owner-operated entrepreneurial companies. Hanlon (2014)
suggests “capturing” and “harvesting” as an appropriate way of under-
standing entrepreneurship, rather than “creating”. Yet others have pointed
at negative consequences for the employees in these entrepreneurial firms
(e.g., Nightingale and Coad 2014). Some have pointed at destructive
consequences for the overall economy, via “parasitical” activities such as
rent seeking, tax avoidance and corruption (e.g., Baumol 1990).
4  A. Örtenblad

Not least have quite a few scholars taken interest in entrepreneurship

and discrimination. Many of those scholars have pointed at the gender-
bias—and, consequently, discrimination of women—there is in entrepre-
neurship research, concept, discourse, policy, and/or practice (e.g., Ahl
2006; Ahl and Marlow 2012; Bruni et al. 2004; Calás et al. 2009; Goss
et al. 2011; Ogbor 2000; Verduijn and Essers 2013; Vossenberg 2014).
Entrepreneurship discourse has been criticized for having an overly
strong focus on small firms, at the expense of firms of other sizes
(Nodoushani and Nodoushani 1999), and for reproducing capitalist ide-
ology (da Costa and Silva Saraiva 2012; Verduyn et al. 2017). Some have
criticized the entrepreneurship discourse for turning everything to entre-
preneurship, “we are all entrepreneurs now” (e.g., Brandl and Bullinger
2009; da Costa and Silva Saraiva 2012; Spicer 2012). There are also those
who have criticized the discourse on and/or practice of the certain type of
entrepreneurship that often comes under the notion of “social entrepre-
neurship”, for, e.g., conserving capitalism (e.g., Dey and Steyaert
2010, 2012).
This literature, and other similar literature, has definitely added impor-
tant knowledge and perspectives, as a contrast to the uncritical main-
stream literature on entrepreneurship. The present book strongly
acknowledges this previous literature; it connects to it and even bases
many of its reasonings on it.

“Against” as a Twist
What makes this book slightly different from the previous critical studies
of entrepreneurship is the twist towards “against” that is given to entre-
preneurship in this book—that is, the intention to focus on against, and
not only pointing out backsides of entrepreneurship. A number of schol-
ars were invited to explore whether there may be reason to be against
entrepreneurship—in part(s) or fully, against practice and/or against dis-
course. This book presents the results of this explorative journey (see
Table 1.1).
If we start to look at on whose behalf the contributors claim that there
is reason to be against “entrepreneurship” (parts/fully; discourse/prac-
tice), quite some of them (Bögenhold, Chapter 2 in this chapter; Ericsson,
 Table 1.1  Main arguments against entrepreneurship in Chaps. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15

D Ch. Authors Against WHAT? WHY against? Perspective Explicit alternative

2. Bögenhold Entrepreneurship as term, The use of the entrepreneurship Lexical semantics;
I in that it covers a variety of term instead of other terms—such pragmatism
meanings as self-employment—
S hides problems, causing
them to be unsolved
C 3. Ericsson Entrepreneurship discourse (Re)produces entrepreneurs without Marxist
free will and agency
O 4. Jørgensen Entrepreneurship discourse, Gives rise to control Anti-neoliberal;
& Bager especially neoliberal and anti-capitalist
U capitalistic notions
5. Hertel Entrepreneurship discourse, The employees, within the Marxist
R especially the overly focus entrepreneurial entities, runs the
on individual entrepreneurs risk of becoming marginalized
S 6. Murtola Entrepreneurship Harmful for those who Anti-neo-­liberalist
discourse, especially unintentionally may harm
E entrepreneurial themselves by doing
opportunities anything in the name of
entrepreneurial opportunities
7. Trehan Rhetoric of the entrepreneurial Hides political, structural and social Institutional; systems
et al. opportunity as a panacea inequalities in entrepreneurship, psycho-­dynamic
and driven by free choice, such as the socially excluded
and entrepreneurship entrepreneurs, for which
research that paints an entrepreneurship often
overly positive picture of is driven by an economic
entrepreneurship need to survive
(continued)
 Table 1.1 (continued)
Ch. Authors Against WHAT? WHY against? Perspective Explicit alternative
8. Gerpott & Over glorification of Many start-up fails, Ideological Entrepreneurial
Kieser entrepreneurship; i.e. hardly a success for the teams
research uncovering success entrepreneurs; risks stemming
principles of the individual from having people in jobs
entrepreneur they are not educated for
9. Jakobsen & Entrepreneurship in cases when Unsustainable, for the environment Philosophy of science Eco-­preneurship
Storsletten principles such as increased and people in general (especially the
growth and competition concepts of being
are defended and becoming);
ecological
economics
P 10. Cooke Entrepreneurship (practice Employees, as well as people Ideological;
and discourse) has come to outside the organization, are anti-neo-­liberal
R be associated with lawlessness not well taken care of, nor
and arrogant, unconcerning, is the environment
A and people-unfriendly
conditions
C 11. Aromaa Manifestations of Entrepreneurship passion may Psychological: passion
et al. entrepreneurship passion restrain employee innovative theory
T behavior
12. Kociatkiewicz Entrepreneurship practice in In oganizations that lack Humanistic;
I & Kostera terms of transient and fluid homeliness and balance, socio-economic
structure; entrepreneurship people will not feel good
C literature presenting familiarity
as an obstacle to innovation
E and growth
13. Spivack Inbuilt risks to become addictive Harms those of the entrepreneurs Psychological:
that become addictive addiction theory
14. Fleck Irresponsible Negative consequences for all Dualistic; Responsible
entrepreneurship units of analysis including the sustainability entrepreneurship
practice entrepreneur, the entrepreneurial
entity, organizational members,
society and the planet
15. Kurtulmus Unconditional support of The same (dark) personality Psychological:
entrepreneurship traits that are beneficial in personality traits
entrepreneurship often cause
harm for the entrepreneurial
entity and its people
Source: Author
8  A. Örtenblad

Chapter 3 in this volume; Murtola, Chapter 6 in this volume; Trehan

et al., Chapter 7 in this volume; Gerpott and Kieser, Chapter 8 in this
volume; Spivack, Chapter 13 in this volume; Fleck, Chapter 14 in this
volume), actually believe that the entrepreneurs—existing or potential
ones—themselves run the risk of being hurt by “entrepreneurship”.
Equally frequent is it, in the present book, that the contributors see risks
for the employees in the entrepreneurial firms (Jørgensen and Bager,
Chapter 4 in this volume; Hertel, Chapter 5 in this volume; Cooke,Chapter
10 in this volume; Aromaa et al., Chapter 11 in this volume; Kociatkiewicz
and Kostera, Chapter 12 in this volume; Fleck, Chapter 14 in this vol-
ume; Kurtulmus, Chapter 15 in this volume). Less frequently taken posi-
tions are the environment (Jakobsen and Storsletten, Chapter 9 in this
volume; Cooke, Chapter 10 in this volume; Fleck, Chapter 14 in this
volume) and people outside the entrepreneurial firms (Cooke, Chapter
10 in this volume).
The arguments that are presented make it reasonable to say that there
in fact is reason to be against entrepreneurship discourse. The entrepre-
neurship discourse is being critiqued in general (Ericsson, Chapter 3 in
this volume), as well as certain aspects of it, such as the term “entrepre-
neurship” (Bögenhold, Chapter 2 in this chapter), neoliberal and capital-
istic notions (Jørgensen and Bager, Chapter 4 in this volume), the focus on
individual entrepreneurs (Hertel, Chapter 5 in this volume), the talk about
entrepreneurial opportunities (Murtola, Chapter 6 in this volume; Trehan
et al., Chapter 7 in this volume), and the overly positive picture of entrepre-
neurship (Trehan et al., Chapter 7 in this volume; Gerpott and Kieser,
Chapter 8 in this volume).
The arguments presented in the book suggest that there is, in addition,
reason to be against (at least) some aspects of entrepreneurship practice.
Such aspects include the unconditional support that is given to entrepre-
neurship (Kurtulmus, Chapter 15 in this volume), certain irresponsible
entrepreneurship practices (Fleck, Chapter 14 in this volume), inbuilt risks
to become addictive (Spivack, Chapter 13 in this volume), transient and
fluid structure of entrepreneurship organizations (Kociatkiewicz and
Kostera, Chapter 12 in this volume), manifestations of entrepreneurship
passion (Aromaa et al., Chapter 11 in this volume), arrogant, unconcern-
ing, and people-unfriendly conditions (Cooke, Chapter 10 in this volume),
 1  Background and Introduction: How Could Anyone…  9

and the defense of increased growth and competition (Jakobsen and

Storsletten, Chapter 9 in this volume).
Whether there also is reason to be against all entrepreneurship prac-
tices whatsoever, is a question that is bit more delicate to answer; to con-
vincingly argue against entrepreneurship in total, one would probably
need to include a suggestion for some kind of alternative to “entrepre-
neurship”. A few alternatives are actually presented in the current book,
alternatives that do not necessarily replace “entrepreneurship” as such but
turns it into something less harmful. The ones most explicitly presented
are those offered by Gerpott and Kieser (Chapter 8 in this volume), who
suggest entrepreneurial teams, Jakobsen and Storsletten (Chapter 9 in this
volume) who suggest eco-preneurship, and Fleck (Chapter 14 in this vol-
ume) who suggests responsible entrepreneurship. Even if a few alternatives
in fact are suggested in this book, there may nevertheless be reason to (1)
develop the existing alternatives further, in more detail, (2) consider if
there are any other measures that can be taken that even better than the
already existing alternatives may help to decrease the harmful conse-
quences from entrepreneurship, and (3) develop alternatives that not
only develops existing entrepreneurship in a positive direction but that
endeavor to replace entrepreneurship as such.

An Outline of the Remainder of the Book

From a social constructionist perspective, there is not always a very clear
border between “practice” and “discourse”. These two terms have never-
theless been used as a dimension, on which the chapters have been placed
in an order so that the first chapters are more in line with suggesting argu-
ments against entrepreneurship discourse, while the last chapters of the
book deal with being against entrepreneurship practice. Chapters appear-
ing in the middle of the book do not necessarily include an equal (50–50)
amount of arguments against entrepreneurship discourse and entrepre-
neurship practice, but could be considered to be more about entrepre-
neurship practice than any of the preceding chapters, as well as more
about entrepreneurship discourse than any of the following chapters.
10  A. Örtenblad

Unlike many other books, the main concept of attention for the book
is not given any firm definition in the introductory chapter. Neither is
there any chapter in the book that exclusively discuss definitions of this
concept and present one definition, to be used by all other chapter con-
tributors. The chapter authors have been free to define entrepreneurship
in any way of their preference. To define “entrepreneurship” in a way so
that all agree is not an easy task to accomplish. All the way since
Schumpeter (1947) suggested that there is a difference between “inven-
tor” and “entrepreneur”, the issue on how best to define entrepreneurship
has been discussed, among entrepreneurship scholars. It is, of course,
open for discussion, whether “entrepreneurship” should be given one,
clear and distinct definition that everybody could agree with and stick to,
or if the concept should remain what it—as it seems—currently is,
namely more of an “umbrella device” (Hirsch and Levin 1999).
Chapter 2, “Self-employment and entrepreneurship: not only produc-
tive but also unproductive and destructive”, authored by Dieter
Bögenhold, offers a discussion of different meanings and definitions of
entrepreneurship. However, Bögenhold’s aim goes beyond defining entre-
preneurship. He criticizes that the term “entrepreneurship” is inconsis-
tent in that it covers many meanings and interpretations. A consequence
of the many meanings that the term is given, according to Bögenhold, is
that the entrepreneurship concept is often misleading—especially in
equating entrepreneurship with self-employment. This is also the reason
Bögenhold holds against entrepreneurship, thus, especially against the
definition and common understanding of the term.
Chapter 3, “Notes on a fetishist war machine”, authored by Daniel
Ericsson, is also focused on the discourse on entrepreneurship. Ericsson
argues, based on a Marxist reading of a case company (Boo.com), that the
discourse on entrepreneurship contributes to the formation of a coloniz-
ing war machine—“everything” turns into “entrepreneurship”. On that
basis, Ericsson questions the discourse on entrepreneurship and its con-
sequences to such an extent that he suggests that there may be reason to
be against (the discourse on) entrepreneurship. Kenneth Mølbjerg
Jørgensen and Ann Starbæk Bager have authored Chap. 4, “Keep the
machine running: entrepreneurship as a practice of control in the neolib-
eral economy”. Just like the above chapters, Jørgensen and Bager are
 1  Background and Introduction: How Could Anyone…  11

arguing against entrepreneurship discourse, which they claim is a practice

of control, and they illustrate their arguments through two stories about
entrepreneurship. Just like in Chap. 3, Jørgensen and Bager criticize that
“everything” tends to come in terms of “entrepreneurship” as well as “eco-
nomic value” and “human capitals”; environmental and societal prob-
lems that are caused by capitalism, are—through entrepreneurship
discourse—transformed into “market opportunities”, giving rise to that
capitalism can outsource and deny the consequences of its actions. This is
the main reason they put against entrepreneurship (discourse). Also
Hertel, in Chap. 5, “Fetishizing the entrepreneurship”, is mainly arguing
against entrepreneurship discourse. Just like the author of Chap. 3, Hertel
bases his arguments on a Marxist reading, in this case of a book on entre-
preneurship, authored by a Danish entrepreneur. Hertel argues against
the contemporary discourse on entrepreneurship, which he claims legiti-
mates the logic on profit maximization and, in turn, inequality and eco-
logical crisis.
In Chap. 6, “Entrepreneurship ad absurdum”, Anna-Maria Murtola
connects to a few of the above chapters and argues that the entrepreneur-
ship discourse has come to colonize our lives; Murtola argues that the
entrepreneurial imperative posits that everyone should model their lives
on the imagined figure of the entrepreneur, and that everything is to be
regarded as “opportunities”, while hiding things such as exploitation. She
exemplifies this overly optimistic discourse by a case of attempts by
women to sell space on their skin for tattoo advertising. Murtola argues
that there is reason to be against entrepreneurship when entrepreneurship
discourse and practice become tools to view such activities as “opportuni-
ties” while obscuring underlying asymmetries of power. Chapter 7,
“Against entrepreneurship: unveiling social inequalities for minority
entrepreneurship”, is authored by Kiran Trehan, Priyanka Vedi and Alex
Kevill, who challenge the positive rhetoric surrounding entrepreneur-
ship. Their argumentation is based on studies of ethnic minority entre-
preneurs, for whom, the authors argue, entrepreneurship is often a
necessity, due to structural and economic discrimination, rather than a
career of choice. For such ethnic minority entrepreneurs, entrepreneur-
ship offers a vulnerable living. Trehan et al. argue that there is reason to
12  A. Örtenblad

be against entrepreneurship, as long as the (poor) conditions for ethnic

minority entrepreneurs are not acknowledged, nor improved.
Chapter 8, “The fairytale of the successful entrepreneur: reasons and
remedies for the prevalent ideology of entrepreneurship”, authored by
Fabiola H.  Gerpott and Alfred Kieser, criticizes the “heroization” of
entrepreneurs—those who are successful are celebrated as entrepreneurial
role models. Those who are successful are celebrated as entrepreneurial
role models. Gerpott and Kieser suggest that it is not really possible to
predict entrepreneurial mastery, and that it is the “entrepreneurial ideol-
ogy” that is to be blamed for the heroization. The reason for being against
(the over-glorification of ) entrepreneurship, which Gerpott and Kieser
put forward, is that the promises that are made often do not hold—for
instance, entrepreneurial tries do not usually turn people rich, since most
start-ups fail. Gerpott and Kieser end by critically reflecting whether
“entrepreneurial teams” may be a way forward.
Entrepreneurship may also cause lots of harm outside of the clos-
est sphere, such as to the environment. In Chap. 9, “From entrepre-
neurship to eco-preneurship”, Ove Jakobsen and Vivi M.L. Storsletten
suggest that an entrepreneur is an economic actor who develops a
business and who is responsible for the risks and rewards of her or
his business venture. They argue against a definition of entrepre-
neurship which defends principles that characterize the dominating,
reductionistic and product-oriented market economic business model.
They suggest “eco-preneurship”, which is based on cooperation with
humans and nature, as a fruitful alternative to “entrepreneurship”.
“Eco-preneurship”, Jakobsen and Storsletten argue, implies that the
business is not primarily driven by profits, and they believe that “eco-
preneurship” is much more capable of creating socially and ecologi-
cally responsible businesses than what “entrepreneurship” is. Chapter
10, “Entrepreneurial insouciance (or imperiousness), the big risk shift
and the entrepreneurship interregnum”, is authored by Philip Cooke,
who suggests that lawlessness, iconoclasm, imperiousness and delib-
erate insouciance are reasons enough to be against entrepreneurship.
Cooke argues, in relation to narrative case material, that neoliberal-
ism, or the reckless deregulation of market guidance norms, is closely
associated with fraudulent practices by entrepreneurs and innovators.
 1  Background and Introduction: How Could Anyone…  13

Furthermore, the author discusses deregulation and its free market

“entrepreneurial” expression, outsourcing and its discontents, and glo-
balization and its social depredations and yawning polarization.
Eeva Aromaa, Ulla Hytti and Satu Aaltonen are the authors of Chap.
11, “The dark side of entrepreneurial passion: restraining employee inno-
vative behaviour?” They argue that most studies on entrepreneurship
focus on positive outcomes. On basis of a case study of a small owner-­
manager-­led firm, Aromaa et al. argue against manifestations of entrepre-
neurial passion, which—on basis of a critical examination of the
case—may turn employees passive and restrain employee innovative
behavior. In Chap. 12, “In defense of the comfort zone: against the hege-
mony of creative destruction”, Jerzy Kociatkiewicz and Monika Kostera
argue—on basis of a longitudinal study of alternative organizations
focused on the common good—against entrepreneurship insofar it
implies stepping (or being pushed) out of one’s comfort zone, since this
may contribute to erasing the homeliness and familiarity that all people
need in the workplace. Thus, Kociatkiewicz and Kostera see the discourse
of entrepreneurship as detrimental to finding the necessary collective
structural solutions to the multiple social and environmental crises chal-
lenging contemporary organizations and societies, and conclude that the
widespread glorification of instability is harmful to management, organi-
zations and society. April J.  Spivack, in Chap. 13 “Entrepreneurship
addiction and the negative mental health consequences of entrepreneur-
ial engagement among some entrepreneurs”, takes as a starting point that
entrepreneurship is often regarded as positive in that it offers opportuni-
ties for autonomy and passion for the entrepreneurs. Spivack argues, to
the contrary, that there are negative aspects of entrepreneurship engage-
ment, such as that it may be addictive, and this is also why she suggests
there may be reason to be against entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurship may also be dangerous/devastating for the orga-
nizations that entrepreneurs create. For instance, in Chap. 14, “Against
irresponsible entrepreneurship: a dual perspective on the impact of entre-
preneurship on firm survival”, Denise Fleck argues that entrepreneurship
affects firm survival in two opposite ways. On the one hand, it may contrib-
ute with innovation and organizational renewal, which are important for
organizational survival. On the other hand, entrepreneurship may threaten
14  A. Örtenblad

organizational existence, if one carries it out in an irresponsible manner,

neglecting its likely side effects. Irresponsible entrepreneurship practice is
also what Fleck argues against. In the chapter, Fleck explores entrepreneur-
ship’s destructive potential, likely pitfalls and adverse consequences on the
continued existence of the firm and the environment. Finally, in Chap. 15,
“The dark side of entrepreneurship: the role of the dark side of personal-
ity”, Bekir Emre Kurtulmuş argues that the personality traits that quite
some entrepreneurs possess, since they make a good base for succeeding
as an entrepreneur, are proven to be harmful both for organizations and
their people. Kurtulmuş suggests also that the lack of formal structure and
less bureaucracy that often is the case in entrepreneurial organizations,
increases the negative impact of the entrepreneurs’ dark personalities. He
argues against unconditional support of entrepreneurship, and suggests
that entrepreneurship may be harmful to others, in that certain personality
traits influence owners/leaders’ behaviors and decisions in such a way that
their behavior and decisions become unethical. The entrepreneurs’ almost
egoistical attitude may not only cause negative economic outcomes, the
author argues, but also undesirable working conditions for employees.
In his Afterword, Pascal Dey argues that critique as the act or gesture of
being “against” is never static but is contingent on the object of the con-
frontation. If the object of the critique changes, then the form and sub-
stance of that critique must change too. Dey suggests that the academic
discourse on entrepreneurship has developed a remarkable interest in social,
political, and ethical issues in recent years. Dey thus argues that this “social
turn” in mainstream entrepreneurship literature requires a rethinking of the
general parameters of critique on the part of the critical community. As a
first step in this direction, Dey develops the outlines of a critique adapted
to the changed circumstances of entrepreneurship research, Critique 2.0.

For the Future
In summary, it is reasonable to conclude that there are strong arguments
against the (current, mainstream) entrepreneurship discourse, and like-
wise there are strong arguments against aspects of entrepreneurship prac-
tice. It is difficult to say if these strong arguments against aspects of
 1  Background and Introduction: How Could Anyone…  15

entrepreneurship practice are enough for being against entrepreneurship

practice in total, for two reasons:

1. “entrepreneurship” is not that easily defined (see, e.g., Bögenhold,

Chap. 2 in this volume), which also leads to that it is not that easily
demarcated (i.e., how to tell what is “entrepreneurship” apart from
what is “not entrepreneurship”), in turn implying that it is not easily
said whether the aspects that one reasonably could be against, together
fully make up “entrepreneurship”;
2. to convincingly being completely against entrepreneurship practice,
in total, there is a need for a replacement—that is, if there were no
entrepreneurship (practice) at all, what would then happen? Would
humans even survive?

On basis of these concluding thoughts, a few recommendations for

further research and authoring on entrepreneurship can be outlined.
One recommendation is, naturally, to see to that the discourse on entre-
preneurship is transformed into a more relevant discourse. The definition of
entrepreneurship, of which there seems to be strong reasons for an update,
is one important part of it, but it is not enough—there is also a need to
transform the way we talk about entrepreneurship. The present book is a
step in that direction, but this transformation should preferably not be sepa-
rated from the mainstream discourse on entrepreneurship, but rather inte-
grated into it. Another recommendation for further studies is to investigate
whether there are other aspects of entrepreneurship that there are reasonable
arguments against, and whether there are other reasons for being against
entrepreneurship than those suggested in this book (see Table 1.1). A final
recommendation is to improve entrepreneurship practice; in terms of:

(1) suggesting more or less minor changes to existing entrepreneurship

practice, which therethrough could be turned less destructive through
reducing the negative consequences that are dealt with in this book
(as well as in other literature);
(2) further developing the alternatives to mainstream entrepreneurship
practice presented in this book, especially entrepreneurial teams (sug-
gested by Gerpott and Kieser, Chap. 8 in this volume), eco-­preneurship
16  A. Örtenblad

(suggested by Jakobsen and Storsletten, Chap. 9 in this volume), and

responsible entrepreneurship (suggested by Fleck, Chap. 14 in this volume);
(3) creating other alternatives than those suggested in this book, to
mainstream entrepreneurship practice, which may offer reasons to be
against current, mainstream entrepreneurship practice, in total,
and—thus—avoid all negative consequences stemming from the
practicing of entrepreneurship.

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 2
Self-employment and Entrepreneurship:
Productive, Unproductive
or Destructive? 
Dieter Bögenhold

Introduction
In various countries, discussions on economic policy are led by some fun-
damental ideas which drive policy instruments. Especially those instru-
ments which are intended to foster economic prosperity, social wealth and
job creation are based upon a very few statements of belief. The core idea is
that entrepreneurship has to be supported in order to increase the number
of new companies and, consequently, to improve labour market incentives.
Schumpeter’s (1942/2000) philosophy that new swarms of entrepreneurs
lead to positive business booms is always in the background as an inspiring
credo. Since entrepreneurship is hard to define or measure, pragmatically,
an equation is operationalized in almost all policy documents by diverse
national and supra-national agencies, parties, governments and policy
organizations in which entrepreneurship is defined as self-employment. In
other words, strengthening entrepreneurship—both conventionally and

D. Bögenhold (*)
University of Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, Austria
e-mail: dieter.boegenhold@aau.at

© The Author(s) 2020 19

A. Örtenblad (ed.), Against Entrepreneurship,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47937-4_2
20  D. Bögenhold

practically too—means strengthening the ratio of self-employment.

According to this thought, rising figures for self-employment can be inter-
preted as an indicator of policy success.
This chapter argues that it is too simple to set up an equation between
self-employment and entrepreneurship and between increasing self-­
employment and increasing entrepreneurship. In most cases  the terms
self-employment and entrepreneurship are used synonymously, although
strictly speaking these terms do not mean the same. The chapter aims to
clarify the meaning of these terms which raise semantic difficulties and
problems of interpretation.
The chapter is about (i) a critical discussion of the term entrepreneur-
ship, (ii) the differences between being an  entrepreneur and being  self-­
employed and (iii) the observation that high rates of self-employment are
ambiguous because they do not only reflect wealth and prosperity but also
reflect high rates of unemployment and poverty in societies as well. In a
nutshell, entrepreneurship (as a  term) covers too many different items
simultaneously that it should not be used scientifically. Several reasons
cause confusion: (i)  specific behaviour and social psychological disposi-
tions, (ii) specific segments of companies and (iii) newly emerging firms
and labour market sections such as self-employment groups, which all
include many different contents, domains, origins and destinations. This
variety is multiplied by many specific combinations such as academic
entrepreneurship, female entrepreneurship, micro entrepreneurship,
migrant entrepreneurship, rural entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship,
to name but a few. In sum, the multiplicity is too broad to take them under
just one single term. “Against entrepreneurship” is just the claim for a criti-
cal examination and differentiation.

Critical Discussion
of the Term Entrepreneurship
While most scholars currently working in the field of entrepreneurship
take the term as given, it is eye opening to explore the changing contents
of the term in the history of economic thought, including some contra-
dictory interpretations over time and simultaneously. Different
 2  Self-employment and Entrepreneurship: Productive…  21

interpretative issues surrounding the word entrepreneurship are over-

looked and the use of the term is often based on selective associations.
Not only did the nature of entrepreneurship change during the historical
processes of the twentieth century but also the academic treatment of
entrepreneurship in the history of economic thought has changed and is
inconsistent (Bögenhold 2019a). Different approaches coexist and aca-
demic discussion on entrepreneurship is trying to develop typologies of
the different concepts. A brief glance at selected classics in the field already
serves to show how disparate the contents of the meaning of entrepre-
neurship have been and still are (Kuratko 2006; Hébert and Link 2009;
Landström and Lohrke 2010). Popular encyclopaedias (Westhead and
Wright 2002; Shane 2002) show the variety of topical associations, appli-
cations and changing interpretations.
Just scanning some selected but relevant works within the history of
economic thought during the last 250 years reveals that it is necessary to
differentiate between (a) what entrepreneurship is, and (b) what entre-
preneurship can be. One side of the talk about entrepreneurship covers
phenomena which include dynamic, fast-growing firms, which form the
core of hope in the economic policy debate. This practical field is closely
related to further discussion on how to raise funds, especially through
venture capital markets. Another, less spectacular, form of entrepreneur-
ship covers both the emergence of new micro firms without the intention
or possibility for growth and of many diverse new developments in small
business (including so-called social entrepreneurship). Such small busi-
nesses  are often also effects of labour market changes and which are
mostly  connected to low income levels rather than themselves being
potential new multipliers. Additionally, we have a growing segment of
sustainable “ecosystem” entrepreneurs (Volkmann et al. 2019). Between
those two poles and their different and sometimes competing applica-
tions and economic and social realities, Bögenhold (1985, 1987) subdi-
vided the field by introducing another two poles, which mark a “logic of
self-realization” at the one end and a “logic of necessity” at the other. Of
course, the combinations and shades of grey in between are manifold.
It is not only that the contents and applications of the term entrepre-
neurship have changed across the decades and centuries but also that they
are subdivided and segmented nowadays. We come across such a variety of
22  D. Bögenhold

different entrepreneurial categories and related discussions about them

that we might wonder how all those specific issues can be interpretations
of the same word; among them are female entrepreneurs, migrant entre-
preneurs, freelancer entrepreneurs, academic entrepreneurs, micro-­
entrepreneurs, agricultural entrepreneurs like farmers and fishermen, team
entrepreneurs, senior entrepreneurship in retirement, or social entrepre-
neurs, so that the divergences are sometimes greater than the common
attributes they share. Schumpeter described the entrepreneur as the “cap-
tain of industry” (Schumpeter 1963, p. 78), while other authors deal with
sustainable eco-entrepreneurs in niches of the economy. Sometimes entre-
preneurship is used to describe or express a specific economic behaviour
(“entrepreneurial behaviour”); sometimes whole nations or regions are
described as more entrepreneurial than others where cultural forms of
alertness and mentality are discussed, in which case entrepreneurship is
very much linked to the issue of opportunity finding (Shane and
Venkataraman 2000; Davidsson 2015); other times firms or start-ups are
put under the umbrella of entrepreneurship; and finally individual people
are regarded as more or less effective entrepreneurs. Taken together, it is
extremely obvious that despite the establishment and revival of entrepre-
neurship during the last three or four decades on the international stage,
the term entrepreneurship itself is vague and not precisely defined.
Problems occur with the inner segmentations of the content of the term
but also with the overlaps with other concepts such as innovation or self-
employment (Stam 2008). We can conclude  that entrepreneurship has
multiple meanings and consequences (Bögenhold 2004).
In view of the variety of different interpretations, entrepreneurship
emerges as a “hodgepodge” (Shane and Venkataraman 2000, p. 217). It
is honest when researchers point to the heterogeneity of entrepreneurship
semantics but it is questionable when they decide not to “restrict [them-
selves] to a singular meaning of entrepreneurship, but … instead fully
embrace heterogeneity and differences” and when they call for “diversity
in entrepreneurship” (Welter et al. 2017, p. 317). In my view, academic
terms, as scientific tools, should possess clear contours and content.
Researchers and students should be able to refer to definitions which are
shared inter-subjectively and which are robust in order to recognize them
as definitions. Otherwise, entrepreneurship as term is in danger of getting
“ideological delusion” (Schumpeter 1949; Ogbor 2000).
 2  Self-employment and Entrepreneurship: Productive…  23

 ntrepreneurship between Being Productive,

E
Unproductive and Destructive
Entrepreneurship is mostly regarded as a very productive source of eco-
nomic creation and recovery. It is, by itself, the fundamental impulse which
keeps “the capitalist engine in motion” (Schumpeter 1942/2000, p. 83).
The conventional belief is that entrepreneurship creates and drives modern
economies over and over again. In fact, despite having no clear understand-
ing of what entrepreneurship really is, as the previous discussion indicated,
this general but vague statement provides some evidence. However, not all
of the observations point in the same direction. Especially William
Baumol’s (1990) often cited article Entrepreneurship: Productive, unproduc-
tive, and destructive demonstrated that entrepreneurial action can be in
accordance with an economic renewal but it can also be unproductive or
destructive. Baumol’s article is considered one of the most cited sources in
entrepreneurship research (Boettke and Piano 2016; Lattacher 2018).
Baumol (1990) insists on acknowledging the institutional framing of
societies, focussing heavily upon historical contexts. Different times show
different institutional settings which have completely different legisla-
tions and societal aims. Those framings are the “rules of the game”
(Baumol 1990, p. 894) and they matter for the way in which economies
evolve. Entrepreneurial activities, naturally, also correspond to changes in
the rules of the game, with Baumol providing illustrations from Ancient
Rome, medieval China and the earlier Middle Ages up to more recent
economies.
Baumol explains that

entrepreneurs are always with us and always play some substantial role. But
there are a variety of roles among which the entrepreneur’s efforts can be
reallocated, and some of those roles do not follow the constructive and
innovative script that is conventionally attributed to that person. Indeed,
at times the entrepreneur may even lead a parasitical existence that is actu-
ally damaging to the economy. How the entrepreneur acts at a given time
and place depends heavily on the rules of the game. (Baumol 1990, p. 894)
24  D. Bögenhold

The institutional framing of entrepreneurship with which Baumol

(1990) considerably extended the previous discussion provided by
Schumpeter (1942/2000) or Kirzner (1973) is the “most satisfactory
framework” for discussing entrepreneurship policy (Minniti 2008, 2016).
According to Baumol (1990), entrepreneurs may be divided into two
categories, namely productive and unproductive ones, whereby the
unproductive ones are divided into subgroups like rent-seeking entrepre-
neurs and destructive entrepreneurs, including the organizers of criminal
groups. A steady change in the institutions surrounding and framing
economies and societies at their given times determines the relative
rewards of the different groups. In other words, even criminal groups like
the Mafia may be very entrepreneurial but they are not considered to
comply with the innovative and positive image of entrepreneurship (in a
public understanding).
Destructive entrepreneurship must be seen through the eyes of crime
economics:

Crime economics often limits itself to the destructive aspects stemming

from merely illegal activities. Mafia investments in the legal economy and
mafia entrepreneurship are also an underestimated source of latent conflict
that is costly to the economy and society. (Champeyrache 2018, p. 157)

In addition, a vast range of contributions on entrepreneurship in the

so-called informal economy (Williams et  al. 2017) and especially in
developing countries (Sauka and Chepurenko 2017; Cieslik 2017) pro-
vide social and economic pictures which do not reflect contemporary
stereotypes of entrepreneurship, which are mostly designed as a “one-size-­
fits-all” policy which ignores history and culture as well as related institu-
tions and their principal rationalities. What Baumol pioneered has been
continued as research trying to contextualize entrepreneurship, to under-
stand “when, how, and why entrepreneurship happens and who becomes
involved” (Welter 2011, p. 165). Contextualizing entrepreneurship is—
nomen est omen—the exemplification of a question for the rules of the
game (Zahra et  al. 2014; Welter et  al. 2016; Welter et  al. 2019). The
Baumol-Welter-view indicates the variety of different phenomena which
all are synthesized under the term entrepreneurship without taking into
 2  Self-employment and Entrepreneurship: Productive…  25

consideration that so diverse activities exist which oscillate between pro-

ductive, unproductive and destructive.

Self-employment and Entrepreneurship:
A Difficult Interaction
To summarize, entrepreneurship as a term is not precisely defined. A
glance at the relevant literature indicates that no consensual understand-
ing exists about the scope of the term. It has covered and still covers dif-
ferent circumstances, including firms and firm sizes and firm populations,
individual actors, socio-psychological mentalities in societies and labour
market categories  such as self-employment, and very often even just
part(s) of the above, depending on researchers’ interests. The most con-
ventional practice is to translate entrepreneurship into self-employment.
In this sense, the postulated political need to strengthen entrepreneurship
will consequently mean to strengthen the rate of self-employment.
Scanning public policy institutions and governments worldwide and
analysing their documents always shows a pragmatic translation of entre-
preneurship into self-employment. The call for entrepreneurship becomes
translated into a call for new business start-ups and for people to enter
the occupational area of self-employment. In this sense, rising self-
employment is regarded as a stimulus toward fresh social and economic
blood in the economy.
Of course, innovation and the restructuring of actors and organiza-
tions are always needed in contemporary economies but too little account
is taken of the fact that even self-employment is fragmented into different
classes of actors having different socio-economic attributes, rationalities
and related biographies. Among this category of people, the potential
keys for future positive developments may be found just as easily as the
opposite, e.g. people who are self-employed since they have no other
chance in the labour market of getting a job.
In addition, too little acknowledgment is paid to the fact that we
always have different markets simultaneously, which are constituted by
different agents following different aims and having different histories. If
26  D. Bögenhold

we do not think about markets as institutions which are always in transi-

tion and always embedded in a cultural framework, the issue under dis-
cussion is sterile and formal, non-institutional and distant from reality.
Recent new developments, such as the emergence of IT technologies,
have found a new discussion forum under the label of digital districts,
which has its own interface with the debate on regional network econo-
mies. It has been forcefully argued that we are entering the state of a new
“network society”. From the perspective of a changing economy in gen-
eral, and the dominant modes of expansion of small businesses in par-
ticular, this may appear as a simple matter of fact.
The long-term historical decline in self-employment has come to a
relative standstill. In fact self-employment has even experienced a slight
revival since the 1980s, although different countries show different pat-
terns of concrete development. Looking at self-employment rates reveals
a specific level of self-employment at a specific time, but this view hides
the fact of inter- and intragenerational social mobility behind the figures.
In other words, the figures may remain the same while, at the same time,
multiple inflow and outflow dynamics are taking place. Sociological
stratification and mobility research shows high dynamics between wage-­
dependent work and unemployment on the one hand and self-­
employment on the other. In other words, self-employment as a labour
market category continuously receives fresh blood and loses old blood
through diverse forms of exits. These labour market dynamics and social
mobility patterns in particular are of great interest to researchers focusing
on the division of occupations and related dynamics in the economy.
The ambivalent issue is that self-employment shows some degree of
stability and continuity in terms of size while its inner composition is
changing continuously. To use a metaphor, looking at self-employment is
like looking at a river which is always flowing and which always keeps the
same name but whose identity is changing physically.
If the widely used practice of translating entrepreneurship with self-­
employment generally is followed, as is very often the case in public pol-
icy discourse, we include all the marginal and problematic issues of
self-employment which are not acknowledged when respecting the posi-
tive public statements on entrepreneurship because they lack solid aca-
demic reflection.
 2  Self-employment and Entrepreneurship: Productive…  27

Conventional discourse about self-employment is very often unsatis-

factory since there is no clear acknowledgement of its heterogeneity.
Interpretations tend to refer to an average type, which does not exist in
practice, and there are problems of coherence, demarcations and overlap.
Examining macro-level patterns of self-employment, a number of pat-
terns emerge. Firstly, self-employment includes both marginal and privi-
leged positions, within individual countries and also in international
comparisons. It can put people at risk of precariousness and poverty,
especially in the gig economy, or it can be a vehicle to bring wealth to
individuals and enterprises, contributing jobs and economic growth to
society. Secondly, people increasingly switch between wage- or salary-­
dependent labour and self-employment and hybrid forms of employ-
ment as forms of micro entrepreneurship are combined with dependent
labour. Too little attention is paid to the fact that self-employment ranges
from hybrid entrepreneurs to entrepreneurial billionaires and vice versa
(Bögenhold 2019b).
The socioeconomic heterogeneity of self-employment may mirror the
“diversity of entrepreneurship” (Welter et  al. 2017, p.  317) but—even
better—it teaches us the lesson of not using the terms entrepreneurship
and self-employment interchangeably. Taking a look at the statistics, we
see that in Europe more than 70% of self-employed people are working
in companies without further employees, mostly in micro-firms or as
freelancers (Bögenhold and Klinglmair 2016). Rather than engaging in
career paths, these actors are permanently moving from contract to con-
tract or from “gig” to “gig”, always on standby for new demands, or free-
lancers who are permanently at the direct disposal of customers asking for
individual services (Burke 2011; Burke and Cowling 2015; van Stel and
de Vries 2015; Kitching and Smallbone 2012). Additionally, an increas-
ing number of actors combine employment activities which are in self-­
employment and in salary dependency simultaneously. They are
commonly called “hybrids” (Folta et  al. 2010; Shevchuk and Strebkov
2017; Bögenhold and Klinglmair 2017). Further research is needed to
evaluate whether those phenomena are increasing, whether they are
forced or chosen and whether they are biographically temporarily or per-
manently intended. However, all these different phenomena point to the
fact that they indicate and reflect changing work organizations, new
28  D. Bögenhold

boundaries to and problems of the concept of companies much better

than when companies and company owners get a one-to-one fit, one self-­
employed person being one company and vice versa (van Stel 2005). The
“blurred boundaries” (Bögenhold and Fachinger 2013; Bögenhold et al.
2014) between dependent work and self-employment are also of interest
since they overlap each other. Also, hybrids are observed here and perma-
nent processes of social mobility in terms of inflow and outflow mobility
occur (Cieslik 2015).
Different studies have introduced the idea that increases in unemploy-
ment rates push self-employment rates. For a sample of eight countries
based upon OECD Labour Force Statistics in a time series from 1950 to
1987, Bögenhold and Staber (1991) could show that changes in unem-
ployment positively influenced changes in self-employment. In their
study of 17 OECD countries, Staber and Bögenhold (1993) found that
other different institutional factors are partly responsible for variations in
self-employment. Especially the availability and generosity of unemploy-
ment insurance schemes can explain, at least partially, relative self-­
employment variations and levels. Acs et al. (1992) came to comparable
conclusions when including further variables in their analysis.
Blanchflower (2000) explored a large set of data for OECD countries
from 1966 to 1996, suggesting that self-employment is predominantly
male and more prevalent among older age groups than it is among the
young. Constant and Zimmermann (2014) analysed labour market tran-
sitions between self-employment, gainful employment and unemploy-
ment across the business cycle comparing the performance of migrants
and locals (non-migrants) in Germany. They showed the same cycles for
self-employment but to different extents. The transition to self-­
employment of Germans was three times higher. Evans and Leighton
(1990) found that unemployed white men are nearly twice as likely as
wage- or salary-dependent workers to enter self-employment. Thurik
et al. (2008) argued in a more differentiated fashion that there is both a
“recession-push” and a “prosperity-pull” aspect of the relation between
unemployment and self-employment. In their analysis of a broad sample
of countries worldwide, Falco and Haywood (2016) reported the varying
attractiveness of self-employment for different degrees of education and
professional backgrounds while Dvouletý (2017) showed a weak but
 2  Self-employment and Entrepreneurship: Productive…  29

Self-employment rate; total % of employment

40.00
36.90
35.90
35.00 33.00
31.20
30.00
27.40
25.10
25.00

20.00 17.90
16.00 16.50
15.00 14.30
11.20 11.50
10.10
10.00 8.80
6.80 7.30

5.00

0.00
A

da

alia

ny

an

19

ain

ly

rea

zil

ey

ce
ssi

n2

xic
US

Ita
do

Bra

ee
rk
a
na

Jap

Sp
rea

Ko
str

rm
Ru

Me

Tu
nio
ing

Gr
Ca

Au

a
Ge

nU
dK

ro
Eu
ite

ea
Un

rop
Eu

Fig. 2.1  Self-employment rates on international comparison based upon OECD

labour force statistics. (Source: the author's  own calculation based upon OECD
labour force statistics, OECD: Paris)

positive relationship between self-employment and unemployment for

the Czech Republic. The more specialized people are, the higher the
appeal of self-employment. In all, there is no ultimate consensus about
the links between unemployment and intentions to become self-employed
but worse labour market conditions with high or increasing levels of
unemployment always serve as a kind of proxy for such intentions, serv-
ing as a logic of need.
Different countries show different patterns of concrete status, develop-
ment and self-employment rates (see Fig. 2.1).

Brief Lessons
Without going into great detail, there is one empirical lesson to be learned:
those countries with comparatively high self-employment rates are countries
with high levels of unemployment and vice versa. Countries with lower
30  D. Bögenhold

self-employment rates are mostly countries with lower unemployment fig-

ures and, additionally, higher ranks for wealth and development. What can
be taken from these observations is that the equation of self-employment
with an unclear definition of entrepreneurship should not be taken further.
The term entrepreneurship is currently  oscillating between hybrid forms
with dependent work on the one hand and entrepreneurial billionaires on
the other hand (Bögenhold 2019b).
Economic systems of work are complex systems of interrelations, causes
and consequences. By claiming the need to increase self-­employment as a
medicine for a lack of prosperty, vitality and growth, the data can, in fact,
suggest a relationship in the opposite direction: high and climbing self-
employment rates are less the medicine but more likely the disease, namely
not enough growth, not enough prosperity and too few jobs in a formal
labour market. Hence, people have to escape into self-employment to at
least have this chance to participate in the employment system.
Researching and publishing on entrepreneurship has become very
popular but various problems have also been revealed. Firstly, entrepre-
neurship is a vague and somehow empty term which has already been
given many meanings. Secondly, Baumol (1990) coined the formulation
that entrepreneurship also has unproductive or even destructive elements
which serve as the dark sides of a discussion about entrepreneurship.
While entrepreneurship is usually seen in optimistic and bright colours,
these unproductive and destructives dimensions also have to be acknowl-
edged, both historically and in current societies. This chapter contributes
to this discussion by offering some reflections on the contradictory mean-
ings of entrepreneurship and the problem of identifying entrepreneur-
ship with self-employment as is so often the case, at least in public policy
discourse and documents. Serious difficulties arise when talking about
entrepreneurship in a narrative way without bringing order and system
into those competing and often hazy interpretations. Last but not least, a
general discussion should attempt to combine an explanation in econom-
ics, which is rather economically-functionally oriented, with an explana-
tion with a sociological-institutional focus. This combination will focus
more on the dimensions of social rationalities, biographies, careers, job
patterns and new labour market configurations as well as various other
dimensions.
 2  Self-employment and Entrepreneurship: Productive…  31

The term entrepreneurship is inconsistent and misleading since it cov-

ers a variety of different meanings and interpretations that a commonly
shared and precise definition is missing. Entrepreneurship covers too
many different items simultaneously that it does not qualify as a proper
scientific term. Different meanings are overlapping and they range from
specific behaviour and social psychological dispositions, specific segments
of companies to newly emerging firms and labour market sections such as
self-employment groups. All of them include many different academic
contents, domains, origins and destinations. This variety is multiplied by
many specific combinations such as academic entrepreneurship, female
entrepreneurship, micro entrepreneurship, migrant entrepreneurship,
rural entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, to name but a few. In
sum, the multiplicity is too broad to take them under just one single
term. The meaning of being “against entrepreneurship” is the conclusion
and recommendation to look for more adequate semantic terms and
applications which avoid misunderstandings.

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 3
Notes on a Fetishist War Machine
Daniel Ericsson

Introduction
The discourse on entrepreneurship can in many regards be understood as
a war machine: with great missionary capacity, it conquers all those in
opposition, subsumes almost every corner of the Western world and
establishes a ruling class of self-made men (cf. Ericsson 2010). This war
machine has indeed been harshly criticized (cf. Ogbor 2000; du Gay
2004; Jones and Spicer 2005; Perren and Jennings 2005; Berglund and
Johansson 2007), but its colonizing tendencies seem to be disregarded.
This is not least the case within the many social and processual turns
within the field of critical entrepreneurship where ideas on a widened,
non-economical empirical base for entrepreneurship are proposed, and
attempts are made to rewrite the discourse (cf. Hjorth 2003; Hjorth and
Steyaert 2004). The outcome of these turns is not less entrepreneurship,
but more and more—until practically “everything” is turned into

D. Ericsson (*)
Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden
e-mail: daniel.ericsson@lnu.se

© The Author(s) 2020 37

A. Örtenblad (ed.), Against Entrepreneurship,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47937-4_3
38  D. Ericsson

entrepreneurship (cf. Steyaert and Katz 2004). One could thus argue that
such critique functions as a “discursive plug-in device for the war
machine” (Ericsson 2010, p. 190).
In this chapter, it is argued that the war machine installs a fetishist rela-
tion towards entrepreneurship. The arguments stem from a Marxist read-
ing of the rise and fall of the company Boo.com,1 and it leads to a
questioning of the discourse on entrepreneurship and its consequence of
depriving entrepreneurs their agency and turning them into mere objects
of desire—larger than life, yet at the same time beyond life. With such
fetishism in mind, there is good reason to be against the discourse on
entrepreneurship; it simply risks promoting unethical and irresponsible
behaviour.
Boo.com is not an ordinary case of entrepreneurship. It is an extreme
one: the company was established in the midst of the Millennium hype
around the Internet and grossly capitalized upon investors’ expectations
regarding return on investment (ROI). In retrospect it was a dayfly, but a
very costly one. It is estimated that well over $100 million of venture capi-
tal was burnt, and the company is considered to be one of the major dot-
com failures of all time (Lindstedt 2001). The narrative behind Boo.com,
however, in many regards serves as a blueprint for ordinary entrepreneur-
ship, from idea generation and the spotting of an opportunity through
the materialization of the idea and the creation of an organization to
finance-led upscaling and rent-seeking. It is the depressing ending of the
company that is out of the ordinary, but it is at the same time the very fall
of Boo.com that lays the fetishist moral bare. And as such, Boo.com
represents a warning to all those being inexorably in favour of entre­
preneurship, thus aligning their interest with the war machine.
In the following, the Marxist concepts of reification and anthropomor-
phism are briefly introduced, as well as Marx’s notion of fetishism. In the
perspective of this Marxist framework, the entrepreneur stands out as
synonymous with “the capitalist”, that is, someone who (through others)
produces goods through which use values are converted into exchange
and surplus values; however, focus is at the same time directed towards
the relation between the entrepreneur and the things the entrepreneur
produces. This relational view forms the basis for the interpretation of the
Boo.com case, which is presented as a narrative with five phases. As the
 3  Notes on a Fetishist War Machine  39

story unfolds, a tentative theory on entrepreneurship as a fetish can be

discerned, as well as the hidden secrets of the war machine.

On Reification and Anthropomorphism

In terms of use value, Marx (1867/1952) disputes the naïve understand-
ing that attributes a thing’s use value to the thing itself. Use value does
not arise as a thing’s given response to specific needs, but resides in the
relation between the thing and its users in terms of usefulness.
Consequently, Marx is critical of inscribing a thing’s exchange value into
the thing itself. Exchange value arises in and through social processes in
which different things’ use values are compared with each other.
This relational epistemology of value attribution of things may be self-­
evident. A fundamental idea within Marxist theory is, however, that our
understanding of such self-evident “facts” becomes flawed as soon as a
thing occurs as a commodity in a market. As soon as “wood” is trans-
formed into “a table” and this table is produced for, and sold on, a com-
modity market, it transforms, Marx writes almost poetically, “into
something transcendent… [I]t stands on its head, and evolves out of its
wooden brain grotesque ideas” (1867/1952, p. 31). As a commodity, the
table becomes enigmatic—lost is, at the very same time, the user’s imme-
diate experience of use value, and the user’s ability to see the social signifi-
cance of all the work that is put into the commodity. The thing becomes
something objective, out of subjective control.
This Marxist idea, György Lukács (1924/2000) came to call reification.
As a concept within social science, however, it is perhaps best known
through Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s (1966/1991) construc-
tionist framework as an inalienable aspect of all human coexistence, and
as such, not only reserved for the circulation of commodities. Berger and
Luckmann’s idea is that we are all born into an ordered and institutional-
ized reality, and that this reality is traded to us as an objective reality, for
us to internalize and transform into subjective reality.
In the dialectic between these realities, reification lurks as a risk—and
as an opportunity. On the one hand, reification tends to make us forget
our own agency. As the institutionalization process continues, reification
40  D. Ericsson

represents the extreme phase during which we risk perceiving the world
deterministically, as a reality over which we have no control. Reality
becomes an opus alienum. On the other hand, reproduction of the social
order would be significantly hampered and weakened without reification.
That is, reification constrains what we believe we can accomplish, but
enables (re)productive action.
From reification, the step is not far from anthropomorphism, that is, the
attribution of human characteristics and qualities such as consciousness,
needs, interests and wills to non-human entities, such as social institu-
tions. In his theory of the fetishistic nature of the commodity, Marx even
inscribes reification and anthropomorphism as reciprocal processes. In
order to find an analogy with the glamour of capitalism, causing man to
forget his own agency, we must, Marx writes, “have recourse to the mist-­
enveloped regions of the religious world”:

In that world the productions of the human brain appear as independent

beings endowed with life, and entering into a relation both with one
another and the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the
products of men’s hands. This I call the Fetishism which attaches itself to
the products of labour, so soon as they are produced as commodities. (Marx
1867/1952, p. 31)

Although Marx himself did not make a distinction between reification

and anthropomorphism, there may be political reasons in doing so.
When Lukács (1924/2000) launched the concept of reification, it there-
fore was put in opposition to anthropomorphism. Lukács’s idea was, in
accordance with Marx’s thinking, that the social classes were reified into
passive objects under the yoke of capitalism. Lukács argued, however,
that through anthropomorphization, the classes could be recognized as
active forces in the development of society by means of conscious class
struggle. Lukács thus placed anthropomorphism in the service of the pro-
letariat against capitalism and its reifying consequences. Critics, however,
have argued that only people are endowed with human agency. Breathing
life into collective entities such as classes does not lead to societal change;
instead, it contributes to exacerbating the deterministic tendencies in
society (cf. Silverman 1970).
 3  Notes on a Fetishist War Machine  41

The Rise and Fall of Boo.com

Having outlined the Marxist concepts of reification (in terms of deter-
ministic objectification), anthropomorphism (in terms of the attribution
of human characteristics to non-human constructs), and fetishism (in
terms of the worship of an enigmatic commodity), attention now turns
to the Boo.com case. What comes to mind, looking through the Marxist
lens? What types of relations between the entrepreneur and the things
produced can be discerned, and in what way do processes of reification,
anthropomorphism and fetishism contribute to the company’s rise
and fall?

(1) Opportunity knocks

The story starts when childhood friends Kajsa Leander and Ernst
Malmsten reunite as adults in the beginning of the 1990s, one with expe-
riences from modelling, the other with experiences from the literary
world. Together they organize a poetry festival in New York; they start a
publishing company; and they establish themselves as successful IT entre-
preneurs through the company Bokus, a Swedish equivalent of Amazon.
As they sell Bokus in March 1998, they become millionaires overnight,
finding themselves in a unique situation at the time: money on hand, and
already with a track record as Internet entrepreneurs (Malmsten et  al.
2002, p. 19).
Malmsten realizes that the rapid development of the Internet repre-
sents a golden opportunity for them to position themselves as serial
entrepreneurs, but that they have to act swiftly; otherwise, the opportu-
nity will be foregone. Shortly after the sale of Bokus, they therefore decide
to invest their newly acquired capital and good reputation in building an
e-commerce website centred on a strong pan-European brand. What
kind of e-commerce does not really matter to them, the important thing
is to get the company up and running as quickly as possible. “Fashion”
comes up as a wild idea, and soon enough a business idea starts to form:
to offer an online store in which the customers by revolutionary 3D tech-
nology and “body scanning” can try out the clothes as if it were “for real”
(Malmsten et  al. 2002, pp.  1–24). The brand, Boo.com, emerges in an
42  D. Ericsson

equally random manner: the only requirement is that the brand name
should be short, simple and sufficiently universal to appeal to the masses:

Our goal was to be as much on everyone’s lips as other brands that had
become an inseparable part of everyday life. If you want to quench your
thirst, drink Coca-Cola; if you want a practical car, drive a Ford; if you
want to be urban and cool, buy your gear from boo… The trick was to
promote boo.com not simply as an online store, but as a lifestyle. In doing
this, Kajsa and I felt we had a great advantage over a lot of the other brands,
because we believed in everything we claimed for boo. We ourselves
belonged to our target audience of the young, educated and fashion-­
aware… If there was one quality, besides a dogged persistence, that we
prided ourselves on, it was a sense of style. We seemed to have a knack of
making whatever we turned our hands to contemporary and eye-catching.
(Malmsten et al. 2002, p. 123)

The company’s vision becomes to “democratize the fashion world” by

connecting “ordinary people”, wherever they are in the world, with the
latest fashion trends.

* * *

The entrepreneurs behind Boo.com seem to be well socialized into the

societal role of the “entrepreneur”: they know what to do, what is expected
of them, and whom to identify themselves with. Through their “track
record” they have appropriated an objectivized (dis)position in society
that separates them from “ordinary people”, and they now seek to main-
tain this (dis)position by letting Boo.com represent a materialization of
their very own (dis)positions. One could indeed argue that Leander and
Malmsten externalize a reified life-style elevated to entrepreneurship—
conditioned by the market—and that they now not only have to attend
to the entrepreneurial heirloom that has been handed to them, but also
to (re)produce it by acting quickly and utilizing their resources. Leander
and Malmsten’s entrepreneurship is in this sense self-evident; they engage
in entreified actions, that is, entrepreneurship and reification
simultaneously.
 3  Notes on a Fetishist War Machine  43

At the same time, it is clear that the entrepreneurs at this stage have
neither lost their sense of agency nor the insight that use value must be
approached in a relational manner. Without the opportunity for the cus-
tomer to be able to try on a garment, the website will be of no value—for
the customers and for the entrepreneurs themselves. The entreification
can therefore be seen as a productive means of converting use value into
exchange value.

(2) The set-up

How much money do you need to “democratize the fashion world”—

$10 million? $20 million? Leander and Malmsten have no idea, and
therefore decide to seek cooperation with Patrik Hedelin, an investment
banker who helped them close the Bokus deal, in order to raise the needed
capital. With Hedelin on board, the financial viability of the project
becomes a key issue, as well as making contact with potential investors.
British investor Jeffrey Leeds, however, hardly believes his ears as they
approach him, suggesting that they probably will need $2 million. His
message to them is loud and clear: “If you want people to take you seri-
ously you can’t go looking for unserious money” (Malmsten et al. 2002,
p. 30). You have a unique background, a unique idea, there is Internet
hysteria: raise your aim!
The trio get the message, and a feverish hunt for investors begins in
which only the best are good enough: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley,
Deutsche Morgan Grenfell… After a lot of ifs and buts, JP Morgan
strikes a deal with Boo.com in August 1998, and the strategy is to attract
$100 million over the upcoming 18 months and secure contracts with
“key partners”. JP Morgan is to get 7% of all the capital they manage to
raise, but this “success fee” is to be converted to shares in Boo.com to be
sold after the initial public offering (IPO).
Based in London, the entrepreneurs begin to set up their company by
contracting headhunters, tax consultants, IT suppliers and advertising
agencies. In October 1998, the first recruits are hired—a number of
young, well-educated, and well-paid executive assistants. In February
1999, 15 employees work in the office in Carnaby Street and offices are
quickly established in Stockholm, Munich and New  York. In July, the
44  D. Ericsson

company has 200–300 employees, “the cream in every sector” (Malmsten

et al. 2002, p. 209), and offices in Paris and Amsterdam. In January 2000,
the company has over 400 employees in ten countries (Lindstedt 2001,
p. 253).
The expansion costs—and the contracts with employees and part-
ners—are, to say the least, extravagant (Lindstedt 2001, p.  189). The
employees are even encouraged to live a jet-set life and to be the “coolest
in London” (Lindstedt 2001, p. 101). A rumour has it that one of the
executives managed to spend $250,000  in travel expenses in only one
month (Lindstedt 2001, p. 190).
Behind the luxury façade, however, the technological platform does
not develop as planned. In August 1999, 18 subcontractors are working
to link together all the databases into a coherent online platform without
anyone coordinating their work (Malmsten et al. 2002, p. 231), and the
idea of 3-D body scanning seems impossible to realize. This is also the
case with the idea of having a virtual shop assistant, Miss Boo.
Miss Boo is Kajsa Leander’s ewe lamb, and she is supposed to carry the
brand. As such she must fully symbolize the company, and great efforts
are therefore made to give her the right personality. Working closely with
the design team, Leander wants her to be street smart and healthy—but
not too healthy! She should look as if she had just come out of the Betty
Ford clinic, without being “a junkie” (Malmsten et  al. 2002., p.  197).
Her hairstyle is in this regard given specific attention (Malmsten et al.
2002, p. 211), and the world’s leading hairdressers are called in to style
her so that she follows the fads, without, for that matter, looking as if she
is trying to adapt: “She’s such a fashion victim that she’s always on top of
what’s going on”, Leander concludes (cited in Malmsten et  al. 2002,
p. 259).
Looking cool is however just one part of Miss Boo’s appearance. She
has to talk in a cool manner as well. Therefore, a stable of journalists,
copywriters and translators are hired to develop her language. Leander is
searching for a transatlantic hip language, but not too idiomatic:

How old are you Miss Boo?

None of your business, but I’m legal, I’m a registered voter, and this is my
natural hair colour.
 3  Notes on a Fetishist War Machine  45

What’s your background?

For somebody two-dimensional my background is remarkably deep. I’ve
been educated in all the best stores and television commercials. I have a
degree in taboo violation. I’ve been around the world many times, I went
around it today in fact, and I speak seven languages including English and
American.
Do you like boys or girls?
Naturally.
What are your measurements?
Don’t get fresh with me. How big is your screen? (Malmsten et  al.
2002, p. 260)

It wasn’t exactly Chekhov, Malmsten admits (Malmsten et al. 2002,

p. 260), but it was fun. It created engaged debates about where she came
from, what type of TV shows she liked and so on. This commitment also
spread to the technology department where they tried to develop her
personality on their own: “Someone in the tech team created a program
that made her wink when you passed the cursor across her breast”
(Malmsten et al. 2002, p. 211).
Also in the press, Miss Boo becomes something of a pet. Her picture is
suddenly everywhere, and it’s considered only to be a matter of time
before she knocks Nicole Kidman off the cover of Vogue. Most often,
commentators highlight her striking resemblance to Leander, but when
she is likened to the big-breasted action heroine Lara Croft, Leander
becomes upset. Miss Boo is supposed to help the customers, she argues,
not shoot them, and certainly not make love to them (Malmsten et al.
2002, p. 197).

* * *

Initially, the entreification is not entirely perfect; the duo haven’t yet mas-
tered the language of capital. The alliance with Patrik Hedelin speaks in
favour of such an interpretation, as does the meeting with the British
investor. As they gradually learn to speak—and live—in accordance with
the (dis)position they are appropriating, brought closer to the market by
the help of JP Morgan, Boo.com turns into a matter of capital
46  D. Ericsson

requirements, risk, liquidity and success fees. Soon enough, the company
becomes a commodity, an enigma, which obscures the use value and its
relation to the social context. In this perspective, Miss Boo appears as the
ultimate capitalist fantasy from which grotesque ideas evolve—not for
nothing an externalization of a former model: an object to worship, to be
tickled and seduced by. An object which, in all its mystery, not only
eludes its creators, who submissively do everything to try to “understand”
her and capture her personality, but also the market. The entreification is
in this sense intertwined with a market-adapted entrepomorphization, a
process of anthropomorphizing entrepreneurship. The entrepreneurial
thing comes to life, with a language, a look, a hairstyle and a temper. Miss
Boo becomes a fetish.

(3) Money, money, money…

Due to the high ambitions of their project, and its subsequent techno-
logical problems, the entrepreneurs are constantly on the move in search
of investors. London, San Francisco, New York, Stockholm, and Jeddah
quickly pass by, as they go from one venture capitalist to the other, from
one fashion house to the other and from one banker to the other. In the
first investment round organized by JP Morgan, the trio make 40 presen-
tations to prospective investors, like a rock group on tour (Lindstedt
2001, p. 85).
Their target is primarily investors who can contribute not only finan-
cial capital, but also skills in sales and marketing of consumer goods. In
this respect, the French luxury goods conglomerate Louis Vuitton Moët
Hennessy (LVHM) is considered to be of key importance. With LVHM
on board, they would have bait to attract other investors (Lindstedt 2001,
p.  93). But such relationships cost. LVHM is therefore offered a 10%
discount; however LVHM’s main owner, Bernard Arnault, is not easy to
please. He thinks Boo.com is already valued too high, and does not even
bother seeing them.

What were they to do? The only possibility was to try to persuade Bernard
Arnault in person. He was 55 and a Frenchman—how to get in contact
with him? Now it was all about taking advantage of the situation. A
 3  Notes on a Fetishist War Machine  47

Frenchman like Arnault could of course be flattered by a beautiful, young,

blonde woman. (Lindstedt 2001, p. 94, my translation)

JP Morgan and the three Swedes thus agree that it must be Kajsa
Leander who takes the initiative, and after a lot of persuasion she finally
gets an audience at the LVHM headquarters. “Dressed for success” with
a watch from Cartier, Hermès scarf and Gucci shoes, Leander presents
the company’s vision and the prototype website (Malmsten et al. 2002,
pp. 96–98). As Miss Boo is shown, there is a devilish silence—until it’s
broken by Leander.

“So what do you think?” she asked.

Her simple candour seemed to catch Arnault by surprise.
“I like it,” he said, with a faint smile. (Malmsten et al. 2002, p. 97)

In financial terms, Arnault’s words mean that LVHM invests $3.8 mil-
lion. And with LVHM on board, Sedco invests $5 million and Benetton
$3.2 million. As the round closes in February 1999, Boo.com has an
estimated value of nearly $40 million.

* * *

As a fetish, Miss Boo has, as all fetishes have in “the mist-enveloped

regions of the religious world” to use the poetic language of Marx
(1867/1952, p. 31), a use value. Used properly, the fetish can make the
gods (read: the venture capitalists) dance. Kajsa Leander’s meeting with
Bernard Arnault hereby reveals the intended purpose of entrepomor-
phization, to convert exchange value into surplus value and estimates of
ROI. In this capitalization process, Miss Boo appears as an extravagant
subject, only to be subordinated by the capitalist’s “invisible hand” and
devilish glances—which is a fate she shares with many under the capital-
ist regime, and which not even the renowned serial entrepreneur Kajsa
Leander can escape. If anthropomorphization was placed in the service of
the proletariat in Lukács’ class struggle, then entrepomorphization is here
placed in the service of capitalism.
48  D. Ericsson

(4) … and even more money…

The result of JP Morgan’s efforts in the second investment round in April

1999 is a disappointment. Despite expenses of a small fortune, they only
manage to persuade one investor, Eden Capital, to invest $7 million
(Malmsten et al. 2002, p. 175). Patrik Hedelin therefore starts to act on
his own, and by using his personal contacts, he gets Bain Capital to put
up another $6 million. The relation with JP Morgan now becomes
strained, and even more so as Boo.com is appraised in both the Industry
Standard and the Financial Times. It is believed that Boo.com soon will
be introduced at the Nasdaq, and perhaps also on the London or Frankfurt
exchange (Malmsten et al. 2002, p. 178).
During the summer of 1999, it becomes clear that the entrepreneurs
disagree on how the financing is to be handled. Leander and Malmsten
recommend continued confidence in JP Morgan, while Hedelin would
like to see a collaboration with Goldman Sachs, which has shown good
faith in the company by agreeing to invest $3 million to the contested
valuation of $170 million. Such faith leads Leander and Malmsten to
accept Hedelin’s proposal to arrange a so-called “beauty contest” between
Goldman Sachs and two other leading investors who have shown inter-
est, Morgan Stanley and Crédit Suisse First Boston.
On August 6, 1999, the beauties are lined up, downtown Manhattan.
First up is Morgan Stanley which plays its trump card; Mary Meeker,
Queen of Wall Street. “When she supports a company, she has the total
confidence of the market,” they are assured (Malmsten et  al. 2002,
p. 225). Then it is Goldman Sachs’s turn, the investment firm that has
handled more Internet companies than Morgan Stanley and Crédit Suisse
First Boston together, and only works with the very best, such as America
Online, Yahoo and eBay. Goldman Sachs’s presentation totally over-
whelms them, but Crédit Suisse First Boston has something up their
sleeve that the other beauties lack: an IPO valuation of the company of
$690 million.

The dollar signs were still in our eyes when they led us out an hour later.
But it was a tough decision. As the sleek, black Lincoln town car whisked
us off to the airport I thought of Paris trying to make up his mind about
 3  Notes on a Fetishist War Machine  49

which of the three goddesses should have the golden apple. (Malmsten
et al. 2002, p. 229)

In retrospect, Malmsten concludes that Boo.com’s faith was not all

Paris’s, but Tantalos’s (Malmsten et al. 2002, p. 230). Not only was their
achievement illusory, their pursuit was unattainable. Even before the
beauty contest in New York, he knew that Boo.com’s technology was cor-
rupt. The launches had been postponed five times, and the consultant
firm Viant, hired to analyse the situation, had just presented their verdict:
the whole platform is flawed, and the only way out is to ask the investors
for more money and start all over again. At best, the website could be
launched in nine months (Malmsten et al. 2002, pp. 230–231).
Not only is the source code full of bugs and no systematic work is
being undertaken to correct it, but the databases intended to integrate
the product catalogues, customer stock and distribution are set up in
such a way that customers either will not be able to place orders or will
get the wrong items delivered. “A nightmare,” Malmsten recalls (Malmsten
et al. 2002, p. 231).
In response to the situation, employees in London are called to a crisis
meeting on August 18. The rumours have spread in the organization, and
Malmsten is preparing an encouraging “speech to the people”. Instead of
sticking to the planned “Friends, Romans, Countrymen”-rhetoric, he
finds inspiration from the world of literature:

“I’m an insect,” I began. It was rather an unconventional line. I had been

thinking of Gregor in Kafka’s story, “Metamorphosis”, the man who wakes
up one day to find that he is a beetle. Our predicament, it occurred to me,
was similar. While we grappled with the technology problems, we were on
our backs unable to move. Like Gregor, we had to try to turn ourselves
over. (Malmsten et al. 2002, p. 236)

The speech is engaging and enthusiastic, and it is met with resounding

applause. It’s been tough so far, but that’s just the beginning. Now we have to
work even harder to do what no one else has done before. The whole world is
waiting for Boo.com. So runs the message, and a new deadline is
50  D. Ericsson

presented: November 1. “This time we’re going to stick to it”, Malmsten

promises (Malmsten et al. 2002, p. 237).
It’s a race against the clock. The company’s reputation is severely dam-
aged due to all the cancelled launches, but 230,000 pre-registered users
still impress the market. The recently closed investment round is reopened,
and investors queue up to place their money. Although $23 million is
now raised, it doesn’t conceal the fact that the company is leaking like
a sieve.

* * *

In the service of capitalism, the entrepreneurs slowly but surely become

graven images, enchanting both the capital market and themselves. In the
dialectic between the objects of entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial
subjects, future exchange values are discounted in such a manner that the
future is mistaken for the present, and a feeling of invulnerability, or even
immortality, arises. For a second, capitalism’s gender regime is even
reversed; it is the feminized “beauty” that gets to pick and choose among
the cavaliers. Behind the façade, the beauty is turned into a Kafkaesque
beast, a beetle—which symbolically speaking is a particularly appropriate
circumscription of the seed of destruction that the technology represents.
Ever since the conception of Miss Boo, her source code has been full of
“bugs”. Symptomatically, Malmsten’s entrepreneurial (dis)position offers
only one answer to the situation: the beast shall be conquered with more
entrepreneurship. For anyone who knows Kafka, the agency is, however,
now forever lost. Gregor Samsa, the protagonist of Kafka’s novel The
Metamorphosis (Kafka 1915/1996), did indeed manage to turn himself
over as he woke up one morning transformed into vermin, lying on his
back, but he never regained his forlorn powers. Severely harmed by his
father, and disowned by his entirely family, he finally withdrew himself to
die. Just as Gregor Samsa loses his agency, the entrepreneurs no longer
own Boo.com; it is Boo.com that owns the entrepreneurs.

(5) The ending

On October 5, 1999, Boo.com makes a “soft” launch (Malmsten et al.

2002, p.  265). A limited number of “friends and acquaintances” are
 3  Notes on a Fetishist War Machine  51

invited to test the system on a “secret” domain. It is a minor success. The

technical problems in the form of slow and unreliable customer manage-
ment persist, but the goods seem to reach the customers on time. When
the sales statistics arrives, they show that on October 23, the company
received 528 orders worth $51,538 (Malmsten et al. 2002, p. 268). Such
information causes the entrepreneurs to regain their vitality.
The “hard” launch takes place on November 3, at 8.59 am. It is Ernst
Malmsten himself who, to the great excitement of the employees, presses
the button to make Boo.com go public: “we had finally achieved our
goal—to transform boo from an exciting idea into a living, breathing
internet company” (Malmsten et al. 2002, p. 277).
The excitement however quickly vanishes. When the statistics from the
first six hours are analysed, it turns out that Boo.com has had 25,000 visi-
tors, but only received 80 orders. And the day after the launch, Boo.com
receives severe criticism from James Ledbetter at the Industry Standard:

Eighty-one minutes to pay too much money for a pair of shoes that I’m still
going to have to wait a week to get? The first time I wrote about boo.com
everyone wanted to know what the name meant. Now I know: it’s the
sound a reviewer makes. (cited in Malmsten et al. 2002, p. 279)

The next setback comes at the end of November, when yet another
investment round is planned. Federated Department Stores, owners of
more than 400 department stores, including Macy’s and Bloomingdales,
has been identified as the primary strategic target this time, and the idea
is to offer Federated’s owners a $10 million investment at a value of $410
million. Federated’s owners are, however, highly concerned about the
company’s high burn rate and low sales figures, and therefore decide to
wait and see how things develop over the upcoming Christmas holidays
(Malmsten et al. 2002, p. 296).
At the same time, a heated board meeting is held at Boo.com. It is
revealed that the company is not able to handle more than a couple of
weeks of operations without immediately raising capital in the order of
$20 million. The board members are upset, but eventually assign JP
Morgan to try to persuade the existing shareholders to continue their
support. As an incentive, the valuation is now lowered to $285 million.
52  D. Ericsson

But the incentive backfires, and JP Morgan returns with a long list of
demands on the company: the burn rate must decrease, the technical
problems must be solved, and Malmsten and Leander must themselves
invest $3 million. In addition, the shareholders demand that Hedelin is
fired (Malmsten et al. 2002, p. 300).
The entrepreneurs counter by suggesting an IPO, but both Goldman
Sachs and JP Morgan declare that Boo.com is not yet ready for the
Nasdaq. Panic is now starting to spread, and Malmsten hastily presents
an action program that involves the closure of a number of side projects,
layoffs, and $27 million in savings.
The action program is in vain. The downsizing is not enough, and the
funds raised in the spring of 1999 are used to keep the company barely
afloat. The valuation of the company sinks like a stone, and as the ulti-
mate proof of the company’s crisis, key professionals start to leave the
company voluntarily. A last hope is tied to Texas Pacific, an American
company specializing in making non-profitable companies profitable
through aggressive cuts. The owner Abel Halpern is willing to contribute
$50 million—but to a humiliating zero valuation (Malmsten et al. 2002,
p. 356). The offer is rejected by the shareholders.
On the morning of May 17, 2000, Leander and Malmsten make a last
effort to save their company, as they sit down in the company’s “war
room” to call on old and new investors for help. No one responds to their
distress. The very same day, Boo.com goes into liquidation. At night, an
anxious Ernst Malmsten calls his parents in his hometown of
Lund, Sweden:

“It’s a catastrophe,” I lament. “I’m finished.”

They’re shocked, but try to offer comforting words.
“Nobody is dead. It’s just a company, not a human being,” my mother says.
“Think of it as a Harvard MBA,” suggests my father. (Malmsten et  al.
2002, p. 384)

* * *

More entrepreneurship means continued, and intensified, entreification

and entrepomorphization. The actors around Boo.com continue to
 3  Notes on a Fetishist War Machine  53

confuse use value with exchange value and exchange value with surplus
value; the focus on the use value of bringing the latest fashion to ordinary
people is bit by bit replaced by a hunt for sales—which in turn is replaced
by an obsession with ROI. At the same time, the social significance of the
work laid down in the product melts into air. The markets are gradually
being prepared for “more entrepreneurship” and Boo.com transforms, in
the words of Ernst Malmsten, “from an exciting idea into a living, breath-
ing internet company.”
That the breathing is largely artificial is something that Malmsten sup-
presses—or simply does not acknowledge. It might be a cynical interpre-
tation, but Malmsten actually admits that the goal was not to create use,
exchange or surplus values. The goal was anthropomorphization: no
more, no less. Boo.com was, from beginning to end, about breathing life
into an idea.
As the inflated idea finally is punctured every allegation of false con-
sciousness among entrepreneurs, employees and investors about the
ontological “state of affairs” is devoid of meaning and consequences. No
one is dead. It was “just” a company.

The Secret of the War Machine

And so the story continues; the discourse on entrepreneurship remains
intact. No harm is done, and no casualties taken. The war machine con-
tinues to (re)produce entreification and entrepomorphization: on one
hand, entrepreneurship is (re)produced as an object in a deterministic
manner; on the other hand, the entrepreneurial “things” are endowed
with life, as if they were agents acting of their own will. With the rise and
fall of Boo.com in perspective, three tentative propositions on the fetish-
ist war machine can be discerned.
First of all, entrepreneurship is enabled and constrained by entreifica-
tion. Appropriating a socially reified entrepreneurial (dis)position, entrei-
fication is (re)productive, at least at the first stage. In and through
entreification, the actors and their actions, expectations and strategies are
formed in such a way that they are entitled to produce “things” for a
market without a priori inscribing use or exchange values into the “things”
54  D. Ericsson

themselves. However, at a later stage in the process, closer to the market,

when the actors subjectively have appropriated, and by others objectively
been assigned, a legitimate entrepreneurship (dis)position, the entreifica-
tion process turns counterproductive. The entrepreneurs lose their sense
of agency. On the one hand, they objectify themselves; on the other, they
objectify their actions, becoming increasingly abstract and enigmatic in
relation to the “things” they do, both to themselves and to others. The
concrete and relational use values are obfuscated by abstract and intrinsic
exchange values—which in turn function as glittering prizes on the mar-
ket for entrepreneurship.
Secondly, entrepreneurship presupposes entrepomorphization.
Without entrepomorphization, no entrepreneurship, and without entre-
preneurship, no entrepomorphization. Under the conditions of the mar-
ket, life is breathed into the entrepreneurial “things”; they are
entrepomorphized into fetishes to worship, invest in, and perhaps most
importantly, to capitalize upon. And in the service of capitalism, this also
becomes the faith of the objectified actors. The entrepreneurs are no lon-
ger humans of flesh and blood; deprived of their agency, they reappear as
gods, larger than life yet at the same time beyond life.
Thirdly, the product of entrepreneurship seems to be (more) entrepre-
neurship. If the intended consequence of entrepreneurship is to convert
exchange values into surplus values, then the unintended consequence is
to promote (more) entrepreneurship. When utility values, exchange val-
ues and surplus values melt into air, just like the actors, all that is left solid
is the entrepreneurial (dis)position—conveyed by the entrepreneurial
war machine. And therein lies its secret—and the reason for being against
entrepreneurship—it (re)produces entrepreneurs without free will
and agency.

Note
1. An earlier version of this chapter was previously published in Swedish
(Ericsson 2004). The empirical part is here edited, condensed and revised,
whereas the Marxist reading of the case is elaborated upon to fit the theme
of the book.
 3  Notes on a Fetishist War Machine  55

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 4
Keep the Machine Running:
Entrepreneurship as a Practice
of Control in the Neoliberal Economy
Kenneth Mølbjerg Jørgensen and Ann Starbæk Bager

Introduction
We begin this essay on entrepreneurship with a quote from Pablo Picasso
which can be seen when visiting the Picasso Museum in Malaga:

Every act of creation is first an act of destruction

The point is that genuine and socially responsible entrepreneurship is

an act of creation as well as an act of destruction. We argue against the
current neoliberal and capitalistic notions of entrepreneurship. We argue

K. M. Jørgensen (*)
Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark
e-mail: kmj@business.aau.dk
University West, Trollhättan, Sweden
A. S. Bager
University of Southern Denmark, Sønderborg, Denmark
e-mail: bager@sdu.dk

© The Author(s) 2020 57

A. Örtenblad (ed.), Against Entrepreneurship,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47937-4_4
58  K. M. Jørgensen and A. S. Bager

that there is little if no act of creation in dominant discourses of entrepre-

neurship. There is no destruction either. There is no destruction because
entrepreneurship as it is being understood in dominant economic dis-
courses does not break with neoliberalism. Therefore, the act of creation
is a continuance of the destructive rationales of capitalism without chang-
ing anything. Instead it often amplifies dominant economic order, capi-
talism, and therefore reproduces and amplifies some of its worst
consequences: Ruthless relations of consumption and production that
produce the athropocene. Entrepreneurship is a “repair” discourse that
represents a capitalist answer to the problems created by capitalism.
To be more specific, the role of entrepreneurship is framed to save capi-
talism so that capitalism can continue ruthlessly on its path towards even
more production and even more consumption. When we argue against
entrepreneurship our criticism is pointed explicitly towards the neo-liberal
discourse on entrepreneurship and its market orientation in general
together with the discursive structures that an entrepreneur has to navi-
gate. We have nothing particular against entrepreneurs or entrepreneur-
ship per se. On the contrary we find entrepreneurship important for
creating new beginnings, such as more sustainable and socially responsible
organizational practices. Our argument is, however, that the dominant
discourses on entrepreneurship do not invite for such new beginnings.
A capitalist can be depicted as a “white man” who assumes no respon-
sibility for the problems he creates. This “white man” is a metaphor for a
male-dominated Western colonial logic of neoliberal economic rational-
ity, which claims that we are only responsible for ourselves and our own
happiness. Entrepreneurship is a narrative hoax that covers up assuming
no responsibility. Between the lines, this narrative entails that capitalism
has no responsibility for social, cultural or ecological problems. Milton
Friedman (2007) famously claimed that the only responsibility of capital-
ism is to increase the corporation’s profit. Toni Morrison once said that
“[t]here is no bad luck in the world but whitefolks” (Morrison 2010,
p. 89). But such whitefolks need entrepreneurship in order to stay out of
trouble and assume no responsibility. Secondly, the aim of a narrative of
entrepreneurship is to glorify an ultra-liberalist version of capitalism
where these whitefolks do not have to assume responsibility for the earth
and for its people and communities.
 4  Keep the Machine Running: Entrepreneurship as a Practice…  59

Subsequent deregulation, cut-down of the public sector, rising inequal-

ities and rising uncertainties are important consequences. When indi-
viduals are driven out in precarious situations, they tend to be willing to
work more for less money and they become more politically docile. The
discourse on entrepreneurship serves the people with capital while those
without capital suffer the consequences. Again, the narrative that reads in
between the lines is to assume no responsibility for the earth, communi-
ties and societies. This is happening while the clock is ticking towards
irreversible climate changes and while more and more people are being
put in precarious situations in growth-mania economies that only bene-
fits the most privileged parts of the population.
This dark narrative of entrepreneurship serves two functions. Firstly,
environmental and social problems are diverted away from the corpora-
tions, which have produced them. Second, entrepreneurship is the narra-
tive that covers up the loss of a number of employee privileges in the
private and public sector. Secure jobs become more performance depen-
dent and employees are increasingly assigned to time limited and part-­
time positions. Employers can ask more from the employees for less
money. The welfare state, which provided safety and security for all is
gradually dissolved in favour of a model, where people are their own
enterprises where they sell their services on a competitive market and
where they are framed as the masters of own fate.
The social democratic government in Denmark—yes it was the social
democratic government—invented the term the competitive state and
downsized the public sector and privatized a number of public welfare
services. In the midst of these change stands the innovative, flexible,
hard-working and always smiling entrepreneur. Two cases illustrate the
points concerning entrepreneurship. One is the call for entrepreneurship
to create a circular economy (CE) within the plastic sector. It is typical for
capitalism to reduce an environmental problem to a problem of entrepre-
neurship. Plastic pollution is in this case presented as a great business case.
The second case is about immigrants as exposed citizens who are expected
to find their entrepreneurial spirit and become self-sufficient within an
institutional system, which is at the same time hostile and do not really
recognize them as proper citizens with other cultural norms and heritage.
Immigrants comprise in this case especially refugees and workers from
60  K. M. Jørgensen and A. S. Bager

Eastern Europe as citizens, who are in many ways in liminal situations:

They find themselves in a foreign country, which in many ways is hostile to
them. They experience culture and language gaps and they are left to the
alienating welfare system, which affords assimilation to Danish culture
rather than integration processes with respect to their cultural differences.
In many ways they have to conform to the Danish welfare system’s rules
and norms with little or no assistance. Yet they are expected to become self-
sufficient and entrepreneurial. Dominant discourse seems to speak the nar-
rative: “help them as little as possible because they are here to take advantage
of the welfare system”. This is a narrative, which is similar to the societies of
control narratives of the sick, unemployed or otherwise marginalized and
exposed people as lazy and irresponsible.
Agamben coins the term the state of exception, which he believes has
become the normal condition in Western societies because it is a way of
legitimizing the suspension of rights and obligations (Agamben 1998).
Today we witness that these so-called crisis situations have material con-
sequences for many people. Older people have to reinvent themselves at
50+ (Tomlinson and Colgan 2014; Garcia-Lorenzo et al. 2019). People
in liminal situations are forced into becoming entrepreneurs (Garcia-­
Lorenzo et al. 2018) and critical employees in public organizations have
absolutely no space to debate whether new entrepreneurial setups are rea-
sonable (Abildgaard 2017).
The chapter is organized as follows. First, we discuss entrepreneurship
and its current popularity in public policy discourses. Second, we describe
the case of circular economy innovation with a particular focus on the
plastic economy. Theoretically, we incorporate Benjamin’s (Benjamin
1999) notion of anthropological materialism to explain the character of
capitalism as fundamentally destructive at its core. We follow up with a
case concerning immigrants and entrepreneurship which spotlights some
of the exclusive and unifying mechanisms of municipal entrepreneurial
processes. Finally, we draw out the conclusions and argue for the need for
a critical scrutiny of entrepreneurial practices and its current ultra-liberal
circumstances in a capitalist economy. Such critical scrutiny gives rise for
a discussion that challenges the current ultra-liberal ethos of our Western
society and towards an entrepreneurial ethics that foregrounds a collec-
tive, earthly and sustainable future.
 4  Keep the Machine Running: Entrepreneurship as a Practice…  61

 hat Is Entrepreneurship and Why Is There

W
a Focus on Entrepreneurship?
Schumpeter’s theory of creative destruction (McCraw 2009) put innova-
tion and entrepreneurship in the centre of economic growth. Rather than
the equilibrium focus of traditional economics, focus was redirected
towards innovation and change. Since the 1990ies organizations like
OECD and the economic policies of states began to emphasize technol-
ogy, science and innovation. Product and process innovation, organiza-
tional and social innovation etc. are now a central part of economic
policies. In the midst of such economic logics stands the entrepreneur,
who create new start-ups, or find innovative solutions in existing compa-
nies and organizations. He, because in most cases, the entrepreneur is
portrayed as a man (Berglund 2012), is flexible, dynamic, mobile, com-
municative and visionary whether he works in private or public organiza-
tions, whether he begins a new company or is engaged in transforming
and reforming established practices. To be an entrepreneur is to be sexy.
To be part of a bureaucracy is to be grey and boring.
Generally, entrepreneurship has been defined to be when individuals
perceive anomalies in dominant narratives and generate counter narra-
tives to challenge and alter dominant practices and stories. These indi-
viduals may shape new practices in the domains of business, government,
and/or society. This definition of entrepreneurship puts the focus on
individual qualities and resembles the notion that liberalism is the path
towards entrepreneurship while states, public organizations and institu-
tions should be reduced to a minimum in order to ensure maximum
motivation and competition. The neoliberal ethos that we know today
follows this logic in its praise of entrepreneurship. Competition, deregu-
lation, privatization and slogans like the competitive state follow the neo-
liberal order of neoclassical economics where the dynamics of the market
place provide the law of leadership of both private and public organiza-
tions (Osborne 2010). In this world, nothing counts outside of econom-
ics and markets. This argument about entrepreneurship does not merely
serve the rich and the powerful. It is also outright deceptive and wrong.
The idea that entrepreneurship is shaped by superior individuals, who are
62  K. M. Jørgensen and A. S. Bager

motivated by necessity and competition, is a myth. In fact, it is often the

state that drives most innovation and entrepreneurial activities
(Mazzucato 2013).
But the state is not and cannot be a grand hero of economics. Instead
it has to be the successful entrepreneur. As noted by Bager et al. (2018),
successful business leaders that started out as entrepreneurs are greatly
admired and recognized. The “Heathrow School of Business” or other
“Airport Business Schools” boom with successful stories about entrepre-
neurs, autobiographies of the lives of Sloan, Iacocca, Jobs, Ferguson and
so forth. These are examples of the images of heroes that accompany
entrepreneurship discourse (Berglund 2012). It is interesting to see how
much shell space in airport book stores that is actually reserved for that
kinds of books. This is a reflection, we think, of the hero image of entre-
preneurs. The entrepreneur is then located within what is called the Great
Man theory (Spector 2016) while it is rarer to look at the complex inter-
actions and social conditions of events that surround entrepreneurial
engagement.
As noted by Bager et al. (2018) the economic success of such people
often overshadows serious ethical flaws which are part of complex busi-
ness histories. The dark sides of Disney (Boje 1995), Microsoft, Apple or
Facebook are often overshadowed by the economic success of such busi-
nesses and the entrepreneurs who put these corporations where they are
today. Jeff Bezos, the founder of amazon and the world’s richest man,
wants to have people travelling in space while he does not pay taxes of the
many billions that he makes (Hamilton 2019; Huddleston jr 2019).
Hannafey (Hannafey 2003, p. 99) has in fact argued that entrepreneurs
are often willing to do anything in order to succeed. She also notes that
entrepreneurs face unique conditions of business and moral uncertainty.
The moral flaws that many also attribute to entrepreneurs is perhaps in
fact caused by such conditions of high risk and uncertainty that for many
self-enterprising entrepreneurs is a personal risk where the stakes are high.
In that sense, ethical flaws are something created and maintained in
the material-discursive networks that surround entrepreneurial action.
Many times, entrepreneurs have to make ethically flawed decisions in
order to succeed. Competition drives this situation to the extreme and
seems to produce this thoughtlessness that characterizes the banality of
 4  Keep the Machine Running: Entrepreneurship as a Practice…  63

evil (Arendt 1971, 2006). Entrepreneurs are then neither superior, nor
ethically flawed in comparison with other “normal” people. Ethical or
non-ethical action belongs just as much to problematic and often extreme
situations rather than to the moral character of individuals. Judith Butler
defines the term precariousness for capturing an exposed, insecure, uncer-
tain and vulnerable position in society (Butler 2006). Butler uses the
term to describe people who constantly have to fight for food, shelter and
other basic conditions of life.
But precarity can also be used as an organizational and disciplinary
device. Performance management, job insecurity, constant organizational
changes like mergers and acquisitions, outsourcing, technological
changes, assessment and control systems etc. are means to keep people on
their toes, constantly and all the time. Deleuze (1992) has framed this
type of governance and power as typical for control societies, which he
distinguished clearly from disciplinary types of control. The characteris-
tics of the modes of control in relation to economic thinking, organiza-
tional and employment characteristics are summarized in Table 4.1 (see
Jørgensen and Klee 2014).
Accordingly, entrepreneurship is part of a neoliberal control society,
which has become inscribed in most economic policy and practices in the
Western world. People are not framed as human beings but human capi-
tals who are associated with financial expectations and investment oppor-
tunities (Brown 2015). Deregulation, mobility of money and people,
performance-based wages, competitiveness are some of the means of a
highly affective economy that should leave us naked and vulnerable to
the forces of the market economy. Even well-educated and experienced
academics find it difficult to accommodate to neoliberal universities
(Valero et al. 2019; Jørgensen 2018).
This neoliberal notion of entrepreneurship is far away from societal
entrepreneurship that takes place through the infrastructures provided by
the state (Berglund et  al. 2012). Societal entrepreneurship would thus
imply a different policy concerning entrepreneurship, while the neolib-
eral policies strip people of every protective layer to become entrepre-
neurs. Neoliberal discourses dominate entrepreneurship as it serves a
neoliberal economy of deregulating and down-sizing the public sector
while individualizing responsibility. This discourse serves only the rich,
64  K. M. Jørgensen and A. S. Bager

Table 4.1  Disciplinary power versus societies of control

Disciplinary power Societies of control
Economy Production economy Global device economy
Strategy Planning and optimization Emergent strategizing
Organization Factory, bureaucracy Corporation
Governance Hierarchy, standardization, Performance management
mechanism writing and surveillance in and assessment according to
regard to correct numerical standards
performance
Core Discipline, reliability and Entrepreneurship, innovation
competences accuracy and risk willingness
Control Direct surveillance from Internalization of control
principles supervisors and managers through mechanisms for
self-governance and
management
Motivational Sanctions and punishment Competition and precarity
driver
Market value Experience Measured according to
performance here-and-now
Principles of Long term stable contracts, Flexible arrangements,
employment stable career patterns, individual agreements and
collective agreements negotiations, short term
temporary contracts
Source: Author

who are then not supposed to take responsibility for societal problems or
issues. The only responsibility is to increase the profits of the corporation.
Next we will loke at the case of plastic pollution to illustrate how the
concept of entrepreneurship is being used to make sure that companies
do not become accountable for the problems they create.

Entrepreneurship as a Response
to Plastic Pollution
An entry into a critical analysis of the policies concerning solving the plastic
pollution is found in the writings of Walter Benjamin (Benjamin 2016).
Benjamin has been described as an anthropological materialist with an
intense interest in arrangements of spaces, artefacts and materiality.
 4  Keep the Machine Running: Entrepreneurship as a Practice…  65

Materialism is for Benjamin central for understanding the relations between

people and the world. Humans work and interact with physical things.
Materialism questions the practices and the relations in which such work
and interaction takes place. Modalities such as artefacts, spaces and materi-
ality are perceived as being integral and inseparable parts of being human.
In questioning practices, Benjamin focuses on waste, in particular “…the
commodity trash of mass production” (Leslie 2008, p. ix), for questioning
our relations of consumption and production.
Since Benjamin’s death in 1940, consumption and waste quantities
have increased almost exponentially. Technological achievements and
economic growth have led to continually growing consumption. This
tendency has also resulted in increased awareness of scarce resources.
Waste has gathered considerable political attention. However, this seems
to be out of distress rather than of desire. There is no desire to fundamen-
tally break with existing economic systems. So prevailing economic dis-
courses turn a problem into a resource of which private companies can
create jobs, profit and economic growth. Benjamin would probably see
this as an elegant way to derive attention from the problem, which basi-
cally stems from excessive use of resources and consumption. By describ-
ing the amount of waste as a resource, attention is directed away from
political regulation and intervention and toward the many potentials in
waste. The entrepreneur plays an important role in this political agenda.
In fact, instead of political regulation and reduction of plastic produc-
tion, the entrepreneur is the figure and hero who is going to solve the
problems of plastic pollution.
Plastic waste is an excellent case since many of the issues of Western cul-
ture and the ruling economic mindset are reflected directly in plastic use and
plastic waste. Two characteristics of plastic hit the nail here concerning plas-
tic pollution. First, plastic is a synthetic product. Second, it is slowly degrad-
able. Thereby, focus is placed on two key issues, which are immanent in the
Western economy. One concerns the actual use of resources. Plastic prod-
ucts are primarily produced from oil, which means that they are made from
raw materials that cannot immediately regenerate themselves—at least not
at the required speed to keep up with plastic production.
Subsequently, it is difficult to get rid of plastic, as it is nonorganic
material. Therefore, it ends up as waste in industry, households and
66  K. M. Jørgensen and A. S. Bager

nature including the oceans. Today we have 8 giant plastic “islands” float-
ing in the oceans. Plastic is cheap and easy to produce. According to
sources, more than half of the plastic has been produced in the years from
2004 to 2017 (DAKOFA 2017). They expect that this number will be
quadrupled in 2050. Furthermore, by 2050 it is estimated that there is
going to be as much plastic in the oceans as there are fish (Festersen
2018). Marine life as well as our lives are severely endangered by plastic.
According to our interpretation of the policies of the EU and the Danish
government, the solution to this global crisis is not regulation or prohibi-
tion but entrepreneurship.
This is evident from the new plastic plan from EU, which was pub-
lished in January 2018 and the Danish plastic plan, which was published
in December 2018 (European Commission 2018a; Miljø- og
Fødevareministeriet 2018). It has been argued in another article (Jørgensen
and Svane 2020) that the discourse of the plastic plans reflects the CSR
strategy “Shared Value” where focus is to turn societal problems into
business opportunities (Porter and Kramer 2011). This may be a more
softer approach than Milton Friedman’s infamous statement that a cor-
poration’s social responsibility is to increase its profits (Friedman 2007).
“Shared Value”, however, stays firmly within a neoclassical approach to
CSR where the autonomy of business companies is emphasized above all.
Social innovation and entrepreneurship, which are concepts that belong
to the shared value discourse, have to be seen in this light.
Both the plastic plan from EU and the Danish translation of this plan
into a Danish plan emphasize that they do not believe in regulation.
Instead they appeal to reason and collaboration among stakeholders and
above all the plastic pollution is a “great business case” where solving
plastic pollution can go hand in hand with business, jobs, growth and
profit. The means is among other things to think in terms of circular
economy where plastic waste is considered a resource instead of a prob-
lem. So, within the plastic economy we are looking for entrepreneurs for
recycling, so that we can keep production and consumption going at the
same or even a higher pace than before. The headline from the EU is as
follows: “Plastic waste: a European Strategy to protect the planet, defend
our citizens and empower our industries” (European Commission 2018a).
Thus, the plan:
 4  Keep the Machine Running: Entrepreneurship as a Practice…  67

…will protect the environment from plastic pollution whilst fostering

growth and innovation, turning a challenge into a positive agenda for the
future of Europe. There is a strong business case for transforming the way
products are designed, produced, used, and recycled in the EU and by tak-
ing lead in this transition, we will create new investment opportunities
and jobs. Under the new plans, all plastic packaging on the EU market
will be recyclable by 2030, the consumption of single-use plastic will be
reduced and the intentional use of microplastic will be restricted.
(European Commission 2018a, p. 1, emphasis added)

Even if the plan also contains regulation, it is the positive narrative

about growth, investments and jobs, which dominates. Plastic waste is
recognized as a very big problem. The following numbers give some indi-
cations of the problem (European Commission 2018b, pp. 6–7):

• 49 million tons plastic is demanded every year in the EU;

• 1.5 million people are hired in the plastic industry. They generate a
turnover of 340 billion Euros;
• Plastic recycling is very low compared to glass, paper and metal;
• Plastic waste was about 26 million tons in 2015. Packaging is by far
the largest (59%);
• Less than 30% of plastic waste is collected for recycling;
• Landfill and combustion is still very high (31% and 39%). While
landfill is falling, combustion is increasing. The value of plastic pack-
aging is lost after a very short amount of time;
• The demand for recycled plastic is only 6% of total demand in Europe;
• Plastic production and combustion increases the CO2 emissions with
400 millions of tons every year;
• Globally it is estimated that between 5 and 13  million tons plastic
waste (1.5–4% of total production) end in the ocean every year. In the
EU it is about 150,000–500,000 tons of plastic waste that end up in
the ocean.

It is concluded that neither in Europe, nor on global scale, has recy-

cling of plastic been a sufficiently strong business case. Plastic recycling is
very low compared to other sectors. Yet, EU presents a vision of a circular
68  K. M. Jørgensen and A. S. Bager

economy within the plastic industry, which is based on what they call
reason and common sense rather than regulation. This is a strategy that
the Danish action plan also reproduces (Miljø- og Fødevareministeriet
2018). The vision of EU and the Danish Government is to create a circu-
lar economy. Among others the visions from the EU are formulated as
follows (European Commission 2018b, p. 9):

• In 2030, all plastic packaging must be recyclable and reusable in a

cost-effective manner;
• Changes in production and design should make it possible to get
higher recycling and reuse rates on all key applications. By 2030, more
than half of the plastic waste generated in Europe should be recycled;
• EU’s recycling capacity must significantly expand and modernized. It
must be quadrupled by 2030, which should lead to 200.000 more jobs;
• Recycled plastic must be seen as an attractive resource for industry;
• The plastic value chain should be much more integrated.

The visions sound great but these must be seen in the light of a produc-
tion, which is expected to grow exponentially. Furthermore, it is remark-
able how few demands, that the EU policy and the Danish government
put on the industry. EU and the Danish government do not seem to
believe in regulation but emphasize reason and common sense. In other
words, transformation is voluntary. The Danish plastic action plan con-
tains a stunning number of 27 different initiatives to reduce the plastic
pollution but the amount of money that they set aside for fighting the
plastic plan is stunningly low also, only 50 million DKK. Subsequently,
the plastic action plan is criticized heavily for its lack of ambition by a
number of NGOs (Plastic Change 2018).
In regard to our focus in this article, it is entrepreneurship along with
reason and common sense, which are going to solve the problems. To
dramatize the point, the life of the oceans is put in the hands of the entre-
preneurs while those industries, which have created the problems in the
first place are left untouched. They do not face hard regulation but can sit
down and wait. This interpretation that remarkable few demands are put
on the industry is supported by the fact that many of the 27 different
initiatives in the Danish action plan are devoted to research and
 4  Keep the Machine Running: Entrepreneurship as a Practice…  69

knowledge creation. This implies that Denmark is not taking immediate

action to a very high degree. Instead the government sits back and waits
until the entrepreneurs have solved the problem, until we have forgotten
the problem or hope that the problem turns out to be much smaller than
what everybody say it is. Entrepreneurship is in this case part of a narra-
tive hoax of capitalism, which reformulates a disastrous or at least poten-
tially disastrous problem into an entrepreneurial business case.

 unicipalities Engaging People in Liminal

M
Situations into Becoming Entrepreneurs
Our second case is from an EU-supported project on entrepreneurship
and job creation for people of foreign descent (Netværk for Iværksætteri
og Jobskabelse i KASK, 2020). The overall project was a co-creative col-
laboration between municipalities, educational centers, business centers
and entrepreneurial hubs in the Kattegat-Skagerrak area, which is the seas
between Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Researchers from Aalborg
University also took part in the project. We analyze the part of the project
that aimed to support integration of citizens of foreign descent into the
labor market by engaging them in one-man, micro- and new established
companies.
Part of the quest was to create jobs and retain qualified staff in periph-
eral regions in a Danish municipality where they experience depopula-
tion problems and worker shortage. At the same time the municipality
housed a range of unemployed immigrants that experienced integration
issues and were a financial strain to the municipality. So, the project
aimed to kill more birds with one stone: on the one side to take on the
social responsibility and help unemployed immigrants into the labor
market for instance through entrepreneurship; and on the other side to
secure a relevant and qualified labor force in the peripheral region. The
researchers’ job was to provide relevant presentations on storytelling and
facilitate co-creative workshops involving the collaborators to help foster
sustainable collaborations between the involved stakeholders. The
researchers were inspired by the Scandinavian dialogic tradition of Action
70  K. M. Jørgensen and A. S. Bager

Research (AR) and its aim to provide dialogic spaces in which organiza-
tional and other relevant stakeholders co-create scopes and activities in
the project according to their own experience and needs (Frimann and
Bager 2012; Gustavsen 2005). The concept that was applied is called a
“Workshop for the Future” (in Danish: “Fremtidsværksted”) and consists
of three phases: the critique-, utopia- and realization phase (Duus
et al. 2012).
In the following we will display stories from these co-creative work-
shops. The stories are derived from empirical data (audio recordings and
transcripts) and posit how immigrants, municipality, educational center
and business center employees reveal frustration and issues of deperson-
alization and alienation as a consequence of the (municipal and political
governed) conditions for integration and entrepreneurial job creation
processes in the neoliberal economy.

The Workshop of the Future

In the first workshop the researchers created a space in which different

perspectives and experiences from diverse stakeholders were investigated.
The overall aim was to listen to voices of relevant actors with experiences
from integration and job creation processes involving entrepreneurship
together with the co-creation of new avenues for future practices. The
workshop involved municipal job and integration consultants, an
employee from the local business center, a local entrepreneur with 35
years of experience with different startups together with experience as an
employer of immigrants. Besides, two immigrant women from respec-
tively Russia and Africa and two facilitative researchers were involved.
In the process it quickly became clear that all participants had experi-
enced frustration and critical issues in relation to job and integration
processes involving immigrants and entrepreneurship.
In the critique phase, issues of the provided conditions for immigrants
in entrepreneurship quickly became the main subject of the conversation.
The two women told stories of how their educational degrees and skills
gained in their native countries were not accepted in Denmark due to
legislative requirements.
 4  Keep the Machine Running: Entrepreneurship as a Practice…  71

The Russian woman told how she tried to open a hairdresser and
beauty salon in her house in Denmark but very quickly encountered lim-
itations and resistance from the Danish system as her educational compe-
tencies gained in Russia was not accepted in Denmark. Therefore, she
couldn’t live up to the Danish legislative requirements to be an entrepre-
neur and run a hairdresser salon and had to give up her dream. Instead,
she was encouraged to enter into an educational program to become a
nursery assistant that she later dropped out of due to issues of cultural
barriers, and because she couldn’t take care of her children at home. She
told that taking care of the children at home is a central value to her and
her Russian culture.
The African woman told a similar story of how she wanted to become
an entrepreneur and run a tailor shop in her home in Denmark as she
used to do in her home country, so that she could look after her children
from home. Again, Denmark legislative requirements put a stop to the
project and she was encouraged into a social and health care assistant
educational program in order to keep her social security. As a conse-
quence, she did not thrive and went through a period of depression fol-
lowed by a divorce after which she dropped out of the educational
program.
Both women accepted the invitation to the workshop as they haven’t
given up their entrepreneurial dreams and wanted to help others through
contributing with their experiences to the project.
Both women expressed a strong desire and willingness to be integrated
in the Danish society. Nevertheless, they told stories about feelings of
alienation and frustration due to the conditions and the governmental
demands that they had to fit in to in order to gain municipal support.
They further told stories about huge personal losses and states of depres-
sion as consequences of a depersonalized process.
The local entrepreneur added similar stories and provided aspects from an
employer perspective. He told how he in his different companies have had
three immigrants employed over time. In the beginning of the employments
he gained assistance from the municipality in the form of economical sup-
port. All three times he spent a huge amount of time to deal with formal
issues in order to live up to bureaucratic and municipal requirements of for
instance evaluation and documentation. He further tried to help the
72  K. M. Jørgensen and A. S. Bager

immigrants start up their own businesses but they gave up due to similar
aspects as the two immigrant women. He told how he was familiar with
other business owners who wanted to help immigrants and help them either
by employing them or help them become entrepreneurs but have given up
due to time consuming and complicated demands from the municipality
and business center. He further explained how the immigrants struggled
with language and cultural issues where they did not get any help.
The municipal job and integration consultants expressed similar frus-
trations toward the government-imposed regulations and conditions that
they are to navigate and enforce in their meeting with immigrants. They
expressed frustration toward the conditions that they can provide together
with the scarce economical resources they can offer. Data from the work-
shops reveals how they experienced identity dilemmas concerning how
they want to meet and help the immigrants, while regulations at the same
time prevent them from helping them.
Data from diverse co-creative workshops disclose similar stories of
frustration and insufficiency from the governmental and business center
workers. Furthermore, they show the precarious and challenging condi-
tions that immigrant entrepreneurs face in the Danish system. While
municipalities, consultants, business centers and private persons wanted
to help immigrants becoming job owners or entrepreneurs, strict regula-
tions worked against entrepreneurship. The point is thus that on one
hand there is a huge push that immigrants should become entrepreneurs.
On the other hand the system does everything to make it difficult for the
immigrants to become entrepreneurs. One of the employees from the
municipality in Denmark told at one point that the minute that immi-
grants just mentioned that they were thinking about starting their own
business, the municipality was obliged to take the monthly integration
support away from them. So immigrants are pushed into entrepreneur-
ship to take care of themselves. On the other hand, the system does a lot
to prevent them from becoming entrepreneurs. Immigrants thus become
caught in a narrative of entrepreneurship.
 4  Keep the Machine Running: Entrepreneurship as a Practice…  73

Conclusions
We have presented arguments and two cases which spotlight some of the
flaws and consequences that we detect in entrepreneurial practices in an
neoliberal capitalist economy.
We have argued how entrepreneurs historically have been forced into
making ethically flawed decisions due to states of competition, profit-­
orientation, precarity and high risk. Such critical conditions are embedded in
the current capitalist ethos of our Western society that permeate and govern
the structures and arenas that entrepreneurs are forced to maneuver. We have
further highlighted how the entrepreneur is depicted as the hero that are lead-
ing our society toward a better world by offering new and seemingly sustain-
able innovations. Nevertheless, the capitalist market conditions prevent the
entrepreneur to grasp the nettle and actually provide innovations that take
our planet’s social and material resources and communities into account.
The plastic waste case shows how governmental discourses frame and
enact waste as a resource that are covering up discourses, that are less appeal-
ing for businesses and corporations, leaving aspects such as political answer-
ability and regulation to be a pipe dream. Instead, trust is placed with
entrepreneurs and the goodwill of and collaboration between multiple stake-
holders in the name of capitalistic growth and market competition values.
Here, circular-economy is playing an important role in the narrative hoax (of
plastic as a resource) that shifts focus away from the source of the problem:
that we keep producing plastic and maintain capitalist market values.
The immigrant case highlights how people in liminal situations are
excluded from entrepreneurial processes due to de-humanizing and strict
government-imposed regulations and requirements. Such requirements
leave little space for kindness and humanizing aspects and favour capitalist
values of profit optmization and economic growth. The chapter have spot-
lighted some of the current states of entrepreneurial practices. As stated by
Bager et al. (2018), time is up for taking an ethics perspective toward entre-
preneurial business that shifts focus away from maintaining the capitalist
machinery and toward a more collective and earthly ethics.
We are against entrepreneurship discourse because as we have illustrated
entrepreneurship is a narrative which protect corporations from taking
responsibility from the problems they have created. Instead of plastic
74  K. M. Jørgensen and A. S. Bager

pollution being a matter of strict regulation, prohibition and restrictions, the

entrepreneur is brought in as a figure who can solve the problem and repair
capitalism without changing what causes the problems in the first place. In
the second case, entrepreneurship is used as a “bait” for the immigrants while
in reality they are being excluded by the regulations in the Danish system.

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 5
Fetishizing the Entrepreneurship
Frederik Hertel

Introduction
This chapter is critical towards entrepreneurship and even more towards
the contemporary discourse on entrepreneurship. A departure from Marx
(1990) makes it almost too comfortable to criticize entrepreneurship as
the very backbone of capitalism. However, instead of repeating the obvi-
ous, we will concentrate on developing a critic of the contemporary dis-
course on entrepreneurship. We will aim to present the thesis that the
present discourse on entrepreneurship contains a unique form of worship
transferred from the phenomenon Marx (1990) once called the fetish of
the commodity. Marx’s concept describes how the social relations between
people involved in the production are being hidden when the commod-
ity is being introduced at the market. Here, at the market, the relation
between people involved in the production is being transformed into a
relation between commodity and money exchanged in a market. We will

F. Hertel (*)
Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark
e-mail: fhl@business.aau.dk

© The Author(s) 2020 77

A. Örtenblad (ed.), Against Entrepreneurship,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47937-4_5
78  F. Hertel

aim to illustrate how the worship of the commodity reaches a new form
in the contemporary discourse on entrepreneurship. It is a phenomenon
we provisional will name the fetishism of entrepreneurship. The fetishism
of entrepreneurship runs from rationality and our analysis shows how
relations not only in the entrepreneurship organization but also the entre-
preneur’s privacy sphere are being handled in terms of cost-benefit. The
remarkable aspect of the phenomenon, fetishism of entrepreneurship, is
that it uncovers the social relations and while doing so implicitly legiti-
mates and praises the rationality which forms its worldview. We are criti-
cal to this discourse on entrepreneurship since it legitimates a utility
value, which produces unequal social relations based on the logic of profit
maximization. We furthermore identify profit maximization as the main
driver in contemporary sociological and ecological crises.
Jesper Buch is in a Danish, and to some extent, a European context a
well-known millionaire, business angel, a former top entrepreneur and
author to several Danish books on entrepreneurship. He founded the
global internet-based food order and delivery service company named
“Just Eat” but cashes in after disagreements with the new CEO he hired.
On Facebook, Buch (2018a) defends his latest book (Buch 2018b) based
on his own start-up case as a suitable handbook for future entrepreneurs.
The Danish Master of Science (MSc) in Economics and Management,
Master of Arts in Philosophy and journalist Rune Selsing (2018), who
reviewed the book for a major Danish newspaper, does not share Jesper
Buch’s opinion, and consequently criticizes the book for being poor and
for offering useless advice on entrepreneurship. Jesper Buch states that
the sales figure speaks for themselves and concludes that Selsing’s review
is sadly mistaken. Buch and Selsing disagree on quality, on who can con-
duct a review, and on the criteria suitable for a review of a book on entre-
preneurship. Despite these disagreements, they both implicitly recognize
the book as a non-fiction handbook for future entrepreneurs. They both
explicitly identify Jesper Buch, the author, as the narrator of the book.
We should probably underline that we will differentiate between the nar-
rative voices applied in Buch’s (2018b) book. However, Ricoeur (1992,
pp. 150–151) explains that the autonomy of written discourses produces
a breakaway from the author’s original intentions. It is a decontextualiza-
tion of the written discourse, which makes re-contextualization an
 5  Fetishizing the Entrepreneurship  79

essential part of the reading process (Ricoeur 1992). The autonomy of

the written discourse enables us to produce a critical hermeneutic analyze
(Ricoeur 1992) of the handbook on entrepreneurship as a novel and a
narrative construction which contains important ideological elements of
the discourse on entrepreneurship. The intention is not just to present a
critic of the discourse on entrepreneurship but to reveal how written dis-
courses (narratives) contribute to the production of hegemonic discourse
on entrepreneurship in contemporary society.
All in (Buch 2018b) contributes to the signification connected with
entrepreneurship as part of a general discourse on entrepreneurship in
society. The book is part of a literary genre produced by contemporary or
former entrepreneurs. The authorship plays an important role since it
produces a strong ethos (Aristoteles 2007), which appeals to wannabe
entrepreneurs. The French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu (2005, 2007)
describes how people in a specific field gain different symbolic capitals.
He describes symbolic capital produced because of wealth, social connec-
tions and educational background, but he also states that other types of
symbolic capital could exist in specific fields of society. We argue that
Jesper Buch gains e.g. symbolic capital because of the economic capital he
got from selling shares in Just Eat. However, he also gains a new symbolic
capital from being known as a former successful entrepreneur. We argue
in the following that this new symbolic capital results from a symbolic
exchange with the fetish of the commodity (Marx 1990). The symbolic
exchange means that the fetish character of the commodity (Marx 1990)
successfully introduced to the market becomes a new symbolic capital
being attached as a sticker to the entrepreneur. The target group of read-
ers connects this symbolic capital to the narrative voices while re-­
contextualizing (reading) the book (Buch 2018b). This produces as we
shall see some interesting paradoxes in the reading process. One of these
paradoxes is portraying the narrator as successful despite his claims of not
having what it takes to become an entrepreneur. This is an example of
how the entrepreneurship literature produces a mythical image of entre-
preneurship which legitimates the social relations between people
involved in the production of goods or services offered to the customers.
We are against the contemporary discourse on entrepreneurship mainly
since it produces an unrealistic image of the entrepreneur and while
80  F. Hertel

doing so legitimates social relations based on utility value and profit

maximization.

The Content of the Narrative

This section summarizes the very essence of the narrative (Buch 2018b)
we are analyzing. The first pages of the book introduce the climax, which
is the narrator purchasing a brand new Porsche 911/996. This event
marks, in the narrative structure, the completion of the narrator’s (hero’s)
project. It is therefore also the climax of the narrative and a transmission
(Greimas 1974) of the ultimate gift to the hero (narrator). Greimas
(1974) identify 6 basic narrative elements (object, subject, helper, receiver,
opponent and sender) that form three different axes: desire, power, and
transmission. The desire axis is the aim of the hero, while the power is the
conflict between the hero, the helper, and the opponent. Finally, the
transmission axis is the reward being transferred from the sender to the
receiver (hero/narrator).
In this narrative, we are dealing with a narrator having a desire to
become a successful entrepreneur. The narrator explicitly states that
Porsche is a reward (gift) offered to the narrator for proving to be a full-­
scale entrepreneur. The Porsche functions as a metaphor for an extraordi-
narily wealthy, successful bachelor with a unique upper-class position in
society. Presenting the Porsche as a gift or reward on the transmission axis
already during the book introduction enables the narrator to build a
stronger ethos as an entrepreneur and coach for wannabe entrepreneurs.
However, as we shall see in a short while, the Porsche is mainly a substi-
tute for the actual reward or gift.
Introducing the climax on the first pages creates a reversed narrative
home-out-home structure. The home-out-home structure refers e.g. to a
novel starting at the hero’s home location and where plot events force the
hero to leave his home to face some challenges (out) enabling him to
return home at the end of the story. However, after the teaser follows a
presentation of the narrator (hero) and his project, which is becoming a
successful entrepreneur. The conflict axis is whether the narrator has the
luck and can develop the competences, skills, and knowledge required to
 5  Fetishizing the Entrepreneurship  81

fulfill his project. Several characters such as the co-founders, employees

and close family take a double position as the narrator’s opponents and as
helpers. The drivers and progressive plot element of the narrative is a
combination of e.g. an upcoming competitor, the breakdown of the com-
pany’s IT system, etc. Briefly described are challenges solved by merging
the competing companies and by organizational developing, internation-
alization, management, business economics (managerial economics,
financial economics), etc. More important for the development of the
narrative is the recruitment of a new “corporate” CEO who slowly reduces
the power and influence of the narrator and founder of the company.
Several crying bouts and a major breakdown force the narrator to cash in
and return to home. In the home-out-home narrative structure is the
home position divided between the narrator’s early dream about becom-
ing an entrepreneur and his later dream about his previous life as an
entrepreneur. The crying bouts and the major breakdown can be per-
ceived as a transitional narrative stage leading to a spiritual quest involv-
ing the Camino. The Camino walk, also known as the Way of St. James,
is a pilgrimage route to the Santiago Cathedral in Galicia, Spain. However,
the spiritual quest is not limited to a transitional stage but is an essential
theme involving previous descriptions of the narrator’s inner conflicts
and fight for personal development and growth. The book is undersur-
face an existentialistic bildungsroman about a narrator developing from a
child to adulthood (entrepreneur). The bildungsroman is a term used for
describing a novel or short story describing the development or educa-
tion of the principal character from childhood to maturity. The young
narrator perceives entrepreneurship as a road to end-pleasure but entre-
preneurship is for different reasons unable to help the narrator proceed
from fore-pleasure to end-pleasure (Freud 1985, p. 108). In the Freudian
theory, fore-pleasure is the excitation and sexual tension while end-­
pleasure describes the pleasure of gratification (Freud 1985). Our point is
that the narrator somehow feels forced to cash in before he reaches the
point where his entrepreneurship produces the desired redemption. This
means that the narrator experiences tension and fore-pleasure but never
reaches the point of gratification. So, when the narrator cashes in he turns
away from the fore-pleasure of entrepreneurship which could lead to the
redemption and end-pleasure. He can dream about his previous life as an
82  F. Hertel

entrepreneur and he can get close to wannabe entrepreneurs, but he can-

not return to his previous life as an entrepreneur. He is, like a Sisyphus
character, doomed to dream about being an entrepreneur. In Greek
mythology, Sisyphus cheats the Gods and is being convicted to push
stones to the top of the hill just to see them rollback down-hill again
(Mikalson 2009, p. 321).
The essence of the narrative can be cut back to a social-realist story on
how a son of an alcoholic father breakaways from his background and
gains success as an entrepreneur. The narrative adds ideology to the dis-
course by perceiving entrepreneurship as a possible road to redemption.
One could, therefore, expect the narrative to have either a happy end
where the narrator’s project is achieved or a sad end where opportunities
are missed and redemption stays unfulfilled. However, the narrative
negates both opportunities and introduces an unsatisfied end where the
narrator finds himself forced to cash-in and leave the business. Cash-in
means leaving the (entrepreneurial) road to redemption, and the conse-
quence is a narrative with an unsatisfied end. To sum up; our analysis
shows that the narrative on the surface-level contributes to the predomi-
nant discourse on entrepreneurship in society but undersurface reveals
the unsatisfied end that cannot offer the narrator the desired redemption.

The Old Man’s Tale

In this section, we will analyze the role of the Porsche in the narrative.
Porsche is in the narrative an important metaphor since it signifies new
money produced by the upcoming entrepreneur. The Porsche is being
introduced at three different points of the novel, but the author intro-
duces it in a reversed narrative order. The right order would start with
goal setting (get a Porsche), continue with goal achievement (receiving
the keys), and end with adjusting/changing goals (exchange the Porsche
with a family car). First, in the teaser, the narrator signs the contract,
receives the keys, and drives away at high speed. This forms the second
point in the narrative structure of plot elements, and here the Porsche is
a metaphor for the successful entrepreneur. Second, the Porsche intro-
duced as a target or aim defined by the narrator as a child and pursued
 5  Fetishizing the Entrepreneurship  83

during the narrator’s strive for a breakthrough as an entrepreneur. Third,

the Porsche is during the aftermath and end of the narrative exchanged
with an Audi station wagon. The exchange symbolizes the end of the
period as an entrepreneur and results in adjusting values. It is important
to notice that the narrator adjusts, but he does not significantly change
his values.
On the surface level, the Porsche is a rather trivial sign signifying suc-
cess, nouveau riche, and a unique position in society. However, at the
subsurface level, the Porsche plays a tricky role since it implicitly presup-
poses that the expression produces identical signification for the boy, the
youngster, and the mature man. If this was the case, then the boy, the
youngster, and the mature man would share the same coding system or
interpretant (Peirce 1998). The coding system or interpretant refers to
the way we as human beings produce meaning while interacting with
others and/or with meaningful signs in our surroundings. However, this
is not possible since the production of meaning depends on the context,
influenced by the person’s attitude and continually changed because of
experience (Mead 1984). Here it is important to acknowledge that it is
the mature man who just exchanged his Porsche for an Audi who presents
the childhood dream of a Porsche. The meaning of the primordial child-
hood dream differs from the dream now presented by the mature man.
We could probably exemplify this by imagine the meaning of a Porsche
in mind of a child growing up in a home with an alcoholic father.
Alcoholism has a tendency to occupy a whole family, not leaving much
room for the nurturance or attention to the children. In this situation
could the boy’s dream of a Porsche signify his wish of getting attention,
care, and nurturance. However, to assume that the boy, the young man,
and the mature man produce identical meaning is nothing but a con-
scious or unconscious attempt to create a similarity between dissimilar
objects (Adorno 2017) and it is, therefore, a matter of ideology. Besides,
is it also a matter of reducing the boy, the youngster, and the mature man
to the same person.
Benjamin (2007, p.  92) once wrote that “…traces of the storyteller
cling to the story the way the handprints of the potter cling to the clay
vessel”. The handprints of the mature man cling to his description of his
own boyhood dream and reduce its complexity to a phenomenon
84  F. Hertel

identical to the mature man’s ideological tale on entrepreneurship. The

mature man’s tale is not only running from but also contributing to the
reproduction of the hegemonic discourse on entrepreneurship found in
society.

Sensus Communis
The Viconian philosophy uses the concept of sensus communis describing
the common, often unconscious and shared values, norms, and under-
standing in a certain society and sometimes across societies. From sensus
communis is the concept known as common sense developed, but since
it has a different meaning, we will here stick to the Viconian sensus com-
munis. Here in this section we will use the concept to describe the discur-
sive norms and social practices required for turning the narrator into a
full-scale entrepreneur. The narrator has to build an organization to
become an entrepreneur. We argue that the narrator’s use of “I” and “We”
covers a division or conflict between the entrepreneur and the members
of the organization he builds, his family, etc. Our main method is track-
ing the author’s use of deixis. Deixis describes a pointing function in the
language (Halliday 2004, p.  39). Deixis anchors the content and the
speech situation in a context. Deixis reflects the attitude of the speaker
(Wille 2011, p. 208) and it helps the reader to understand e.g. who the
author refers to, the time, and place of an event.
The obvious place to start this analysis is undoubtedly at the beginning
of the novel where the narrator receives the keys to his new Porsche
911/996. The narrator explains through the use of personal pronominal
(deixis) but also through references to places (deixis), that the car results
from his development, his journey, and his company. Afterward, the
author changes his style of writing and starts addressing the reader
directly. This is comparable with films where the fiction breaks down
since the actor suddenly starts communicating directly with the camera.
Here another narrative voice, the teller, normatively claims that whenever
an entrepreneur succeeds, his/her perception of his/her approach and aim
will change (Buch 2018b). The entrepreneur will realize that he/she
strove not only for himself alone but also for the family, blood brothers,
 5  Fetishizing the Entrepreneurship  85

and society (Buch 2018b, p. 13). The novel contains a paradox between
a bragging, selfish first-person narrator and the voice of a teller claiming
that the reader should perceive the narrator’s selfishness as a matter of
altruism. However, it is neither a real-world division nor a division in
psychological terms but a dreamlike image of an ascetic entrepreneur
who is succeeding, almost on his own, like a modern Robinson Crusoe
and still capable of producing a divine service to consumers. It helps pro-
duce a discourse including an altruistic narrator fighting for his family,
blood brothers, and society. The narrative transforms the act of a selfish-
ness narrator into a matter of altruism. This transformation is only pos-
sible since the narrative situates the entrepreneur in the very center and
all others, e.g. the family, the people involved in the production of ser-
vices etc., in the story’s periphery.
While describing the relation to team members, who are mainly
employees, the narrator uses the inclusive “we”. It is suddenly not the
narrator’s travel, walk or development but a united team without division
(Buch 2018b, p. 64). However, the illusion of the undivided team is in
contrast to the author’s typology of employees, a leading co-founder and
an advisor supervising the narrator. The author follows this division
between actors by a discourse on how an entrepreneur strategically can
motivate his/her employees by using social activities or by offering social
capital (Portes 1998).
At the very end of the novel, the narrator is suddenly phrasing the
rhetorical question: Has the company made any difference? The answer
offered is unsurprisingly “yes”. However, the confirmation does not con-
tain an inclusive “we have made a difference” but a strange first-person
singular: “I have saved many people a lot of time” (Buch 2018b, p. 131,
our emphasis). The novel expresses what seems to be the narrator’s sincere
wish of being a team member. However, the relation between the narra-
tor and the main characters are being described in strategic terms rather
comparable to Buber’s (2004) I-It relation. The I-It (Buber 2004) relation
describes a mechanic and rationalistic approach to the other. We here
conclude that the discursive norms and social practices produced in the
narrative covers the relation between people involved in the narrative and
thereby reflects Marx’s (1990) description of the fetishism produced
when a commodity is being introduced to the market.
86  F. Hertel

Cosmology
In anthropology, the concept of cosmology refers to “…the theory of the
universe as an ordering whole, and the general laws which govern it”
(Barnard and Spencer 2005, p. 129). We can explain it as the very ontol-
ogy of a certain group of people. Here we will understand cosmology as
the narrator’s basic beliefs that build on his perception or understanding
of reality. The narrator describes the close family as a disturbing element
and on the latent level, the narrator believes that his success is a conse-
quence of his ability to avoid being disturbed by the family (Buch 2018b,
p. 20). The relation to the family is later in the novel followed up by a
remark about the narrator’s relation to the early fiancé which seems to be
a superficial relationship built on the narrator’s need for supper and a
place to sleep (Buch 2018b, p. 36). The narrator’s understanding of the
relation to the fiancé can appear slightly twisted while he claims that he
is doing it all for “them” (Buch 2018b, p. 36).
While analyzing the novel, it becomes clear, as previously mentioned,
that the narrator has several visible helpers, such as business angels, busi-
ness partners, friends, and co-workers. These are essential for the success
he achieves, but they are not enough to become an entrepreneur. To
become a successful entrepreneur, the narrator must prove that he con-
tains several characteristics that comprise rational and supernational
components. The supernational components are basically the paradox
produced when the narrator claims that he had the ability to succeed
despite his lack of what it takes of resources, know-how, etc. But it is also
the ability to make the right decisions despite limited knowledge. The
narrator claims that his entrepreneurship starts with an idea and despite
that; It is strong and sustainable is it not enough to ensure success. A
great number of people, the narrator states, develop sustainable ideas but
still fail as entrepreneurs.
Among the characteristics, the narrator has knowledge of the field of
operations. This description results from the narrator’s reconstruction of
his own life story. However, the narrator’s knowledge learned at work in
bars and in the restaurant-industry is valuable while analyzing the poten-
tial market and developing a business model producing a surplus. The
 5  Fetishizing the Entrepreneurship  87

narrator concludes, from a retrospective perspective, that his knowledge

and competences were insufficient but the reader is paradoxically some-
how left to conclude that the narrator’s knowledge and competences were
suitable for creating a successful business. This paradox is a parallel to the
common saying that bumblebees cannot fly but they still do since no one
told them otherwise. The ability to achieve the impossible is an essential
part of the discourse or riddle on entrepreneurship, where the entrepre-
neur, like bumblebees, gods or wizards, do what others consider impos-
sible. In the discourse are entrepreneurs presented as people with a very
poor understanding of their own abilities combined with divine insight
into consumer behavior, product innovation, etc. We link the discourse
on entrepreneurs to the fetish character of the commodity the entrepre-
neur introduces at the market (Marx 1990). When the entrepreneur
shows success, he somehow gains a new form of symbolic capital
(Bourdieu 2005, 2007). It is a new form of symbolic value not included
in Bourdieu’s sociology. However, the symbolic exchange means that the
fetish character of the commodity (Marx 1990) successfully introduced
to the market becomes a symbolic capital or attribute attached to the
entrepreneur enabling him to do what others consider the supernatural,
magic, and impossible.
After getting the business up and running, the narrator develops
detailed descriptions of procedures in the organization and he develops
Key Performance Indicators (KPI) required for managerial accounting.
We can describe these and comparable elements as part of a rational
approach to entrepreneurship. However, despite its importance, the
rational approach is not a guarantee for success. The narrator must be
eloquent, self-confident, and stay enthusiastic about the business plan.
The combination of rational and irrational elements is the essence of the
narrator’s belief-system and cosmology. Entrepreneurship is in this narra-
tive (Buch 2018b) presented as the eccentric’s existentialistic battle for
success and survival. The skilled and quick-witted entrepreneur gains suc-
cess despite an unfair fight against his opponents; The community, com-
peting companies, and other entrepreneurs. In the discourse on
entrepreneurship, society is an opponent producing several obstacles such
as taxes, toll, and legislation. Ordinary people appear envious and fight
against the entrepreneur with a who-do-you-think-you-are attitude.
88  F. Hertel

Competing entrepreneurs and companies produce comparable tripping,

which the narrator must defeat if he wants to gain success. Undersurface
is the novel a tale about the unequal existentialistic battle between the
subject, its opponents, society and envious fellow citizen.

The Replicated Fetishism

In this section, we will return to the results of our previous analysis of the
narrative construction and discuss what it can teach us about the dis-
course on entrepreneurship in society. Our main argument will be that
“All in” (Buch 2018b) not only fetishizes entrepreneurship but replicates
or double the fetishism. The first sign of fetishism appears while reading
the book as a narrative construction while analyzing the book on a meta-­
level as a concrete example of entrepreneur-ship reveals another layer of
fetishism. Selsing (2018) might be right about the book offering poor
advice on entrepreneurship. However, Buch (2018b) might also be right
while claiming that Selsing’s review is badly mistaken since the book is
not a self-help book on entrepreneurship; it is a concrete example of
entrepreneurship and it implicitly produces a new fetishism of entrepre-
neurship. We will first return to our analysis and catch up and explain the
first-order level of fetishism, thereafter we will return to the second-­
order level.
The narrative construction analyzed in this chapter was Jesper Buch’s
handbook on entrepreneurship and our analysis revealed a narrative con-
struction that shortly described is a social-realist novel about a boy per-
ceiving entrepreneurship as a tool for breaking away from a troubled
background involving, probably among other difficulties, an alcoholic
father. The novel neither introduces a happy end where the protagonist
succeeds nor a sad end where the protagonist fails. The end of the novel
is an unsatisfied end which leaves the narrator unable to reach end-­
pleasure. Our analysis reveals a contradiction between the surface level
where entrepreneurship is the road to end-pleasure and the undersurface
level where the narrator is being caught in a dead-end somehow in-­
between fore- and end-pleasure. Where the narrative on the manifest
level pays a tribute to and consequently fetishizes entrepreneurship, the
 5  Fetishizing the Entrepreneurship  89

undersurface level contradicts the fetishism and reveals an ideological

aspect of the entrepreneurship discourse in society.
The narrator claims that the main aim to strive for is actually not one’s
family but wealth (Buch 2018b, p. 37). Wealth in the pure sense is the
motivation factor, and this is clear while describing the closest family
(Buch 2018b, p. 20). According to the narrator should an entrepreneur
inform his girlfriend or fiancé and children that he will have no time for
anything else than his firm in the following five years (Buch 2018b,
pp. 125–126). Succeeding as an entrepreneur will, according to the nar-
rator, change everything and the entrepreneur will afterwards be eco-
nomically independent. The narrator argues that the economically
indepen-dent entrepreneur will have the ability to fulfill the dreams of his
girlfriend or fiancé. The narrator states (Buch 2018b, p. 125) that chil-
dren are affected by an absent father. It is nevertheless claimed that finan-
cial independence will enable the narrator to compensate for the previous
absence. It is important to notice that the description of the relation
between the narrator and his family is being described in terms of eco-
nomic exchange. The narrator receives food, a place to sleep, and nurtur-
ance for his child in exchange for the ability to fulfill the girlfriend’s future
dreams. It is an alienation of relations between human beings, which
reflects the exchange of commodities in society.
When the mature man repeats the youngster’s dream of a Porsche, it
produces a reinterpretation of the original dream. The reinterpretation
functions as a Viconian metaphor (Vico 2013) since it focuses on the
similarity between different things and it, therefore, leaves a residue of
otherness. More important to us is how the unconscious reduction of the
meaning originally included in the youngster’s dream contributes to the
narrative construction. Here, it helps to establish progressive plot ele-
ments involving experiences from boyhood, manhood, and maturity.
However, it is an artificial construction and an example of the ideology
involved in the discourse on entrepreneurship.
We agree with Buch (2018b) that Selsing’s review of the book “All in”
(Buch 2018b) is mistaken. The book is not a traditional self-help book on
entrepreneurship, and it is probably right that it cannot offer any sub-
stantial advice on entrepreneurship. However, the production of the book
is entrepreneurship, and it exemplifies how the innovative entrepreneur
90  F. Hertel

(Jesper Buch) introduces a new commodity at the market. The sales fig-
ures (Buch 2018b) show that the new product is a major success. Selsing
is right in claiming that the book’s target group, wannabe entrepreneurs,
cannot learn much from the guidelines and advice presented by Buch.
However, wannabe entrepreneurs can learn a lot from observing how
they become customers in Buch’s entrepreneurial book-project. The abil-
ity to reduce wannabe entrepreneurs to consumers adds new plot ele-
ments to the ongoing story about the entrepreneur. The narrative (Buch
2018b) and the story about the successful entrepreneur add new meaning
to the discourse in society on entrepreneurship. It is a discourse estab-
lished by transferring meaning from the phenomenon described by Marx
(1990) as the fetishism of the commodity. The fetishism of the commod-
ity is a matter of hiding the social relation between the people involved in
the production and adding new meaning or symbolic value to the com-
modity. Our argument is that the discourse transfers part of the value
produced because of the fetish of the commodity is being transferred to
the successful entrepreneur and this is the phenomenon we call the new
fetishism of entrepreneurship. This analysis shows that the discourse on
entrepreneurship produces a negation of the negative image Marx (1990)
includes in his fetishism of the commodity. Here, social relations reflect
the logic of the market and the entrepreneur takes the spotlight while
employees in the production are being marginalized. We are against the
contemporary discourse on entrepreneurship since it legitimates the logic
of profit maximization produces inequality and causes an ecological crisis.

References
Adorno, T. W. (2017). Negativ dialektik. Aarhus, Denmark: Klim.
Aristoteles. (2007). Retorik. Viborg, Denmark: Museum Tusculanums forlag.
Barnard, A., & Spencer, J. (2005). Encyclopedia of social and cultural anthropol-
ogy. Cornwall, UK: Routledge.
Benjamin, W. (2007). Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books.
Bourdieu, P. (2005). Udkast til en praksisteori. Gylling, Denmark: Hans
Reitzels Forlag.
Bourdieu, P. (2007). Den praktiske sans. Gylling, Denmark: Hans Reitzels Forlag.
 5  Fetishizing the Entrepreneurship  91

Buber, M. (2004). Jeg og du. Gylling, Denmark: Hans Reitzels Forlag.

Buch, J. (2018a). En lille respons på en anmeldelse af min nye iværksætter hånd-
bog “All in” skrevet af en mavesur jantelovs filosof på vegne af Berlingske!.
Retrieved October 27, 2019, from https://www.facebook.com/jesperbuch/
videos/10156479871536122/.
Buch, J. (2018b). All in. København (Copenhagen): People’s Press.
Freud, S. (1985). Afhandlinger om seksualteori. København (Copenhagen): Hans
Reitzels Forlag.
Greimas, A. J. (1974). Strukturel grammatik. København (Copenhagen): Borgen.
Halliday, M.  A. K. (2004). An introduction to functional grammar. London:
Hodder Education.
Marx, K. (1990). Capital (Vol. I). Suffolk, UK: Penguin Books.
Mead, G. (1984). On social psychology. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Mikalson, J. D. (2009). Ancient Greek religion. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
Peirce, C.  S. (1998). The essential Peirce. Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press.
Portes, A. (1998). Social capital: Its origins and applications in modern sociol-
ogy. Annual Review of Sociology, 24, 1–24.
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Selsing, R. (2018, April 5). Sådan bliver du røvrendt som iværksætter.
Berlingske, p. 9.
Vico, G. (2013). New science. Suffolk, UK: Penguin.
Wille, N. E. (2011). Fra tegn til tekst. Gylling, Denmark: Samfundslitteratur.
 6
Entrepreneurship ad absurdum
Anna-Maria Murtola

Introduction: Skin for Sale

In early 2017, the national media in Aotearoa New Zealand reported the
case of a “solo mum” who put up for auction a part of her skin for tattoo
advertising purposes. In her sales pitch, she explained that “You are get-
ting the chance to own a piece of my body with your name, business
name, your own design, or hey, even just ‘brand’ me” (Wynn 2017a). The
purpose of the auction was to raise NZ$4,000 towards tuition fees for a
law degree, which in turn would enable her to provide her young daugh-
ter with “the best start in life”. It was reported that she “needed to get
creative if she wanted to avoid student debt” (Wynn 2017a). Thus, she
announced: “Tattoos are obviously for life so who could resist a unique
and unusual chance of lifetime advertising?”
This is not the first time skin has been put up for auction in this way
on this online platform. In 2012 one woman was paid NZ$12,450 to

A.-M. Murtola (*)

Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand
e-mail: amurtola@aut.ac.nz

© The Author(s) 2020 93

A. Örtenblad (ed.), Against Entrepreneurship,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47937-4_6
94  A.-M. Murtola

have the logo of a local strip club tattooed on her buttock. Her first
attempted listing a couple of years earlier had been removed by the web-
site before the auction could proceed. In 2016, another woman was paid
NZ$6,500 to have an artist’s website address tattooed in the same place.
This is also not the first time that the practice of tattoo advertising appears
globally. In the early 2000s there was a wave of such offerings of skin for
sale in the wake of the dot-com boom, leaving scores of people with per-
manent tattoos on their foreheads, faces and elsewhere, often of now
defunct companies. These tattoo recipients involved men as well as
women. The most famous case is “Billy the Human Billboard” who
amassed 39 permanent corporate tattoos across his body, including sev-
eral on his face (Watt 2012).
The enthusiasm for this permanent tattoo practice soon waned, and
most tattoo advertising campaigns since have used temporary tattoos.
Every now and then, however, cases of permanent tattoo advertising con-
tinue to appear, most recently in 2018 of a homeless man who was offered
and accepted 100 euros for having a British stag party tattoo the name
and address of the groom on his forehead. The homeless man character-
ized the experience as akin to “winning the lottery” (Jones 2018).
Both the skin, and tattoos as inscriptions on the skin, are symbolically
important (Body and Society 2018). The skin operates as a symbolic
boundary between inside and outside (Patterson and Schroeder 2010).
Tattoos often function as important signifiers (DeMello 2000). As per-
manent inscriptions on the body they are often acquired for a specific
symbolic purpose. They can operate as important markers of identity and
group affiliation, of deviance or rebellion, or of social position and
achievement. Tattoos can act as markers of agency, anchorage, belonging
and ownership. They play a prominent role in many religions. Above all,
they are instruments of communication (Wymann 2010).
My concern here is in this practice of entrepreneurship, in which peo-
ple see bringing their skin to market for the purposes of tattoo advertising
as an entrepreneurial opportunity. It is a matter of entrepreneurship in
terms of the seizure of a perceived opportunity to create a new good or
service. Here I want to emphasize the context of the entrepreneurial act.
It is important to note that a practice such as selling areas of skin for
someone else to use as an advertising canvas involves clear gender and
 6 Entrepreneurship ad absurdum  95

class elements. My argument here is that although “entrepreneurial” in

the abstract can sound great, it is always enacted in specific contexts,
within specific limits. It is these contexts and limits that at times render
the entrepreneurial imperative absurd. The analysis here therefore high-
lights the need for caution in the universal push of entrepreneurial ideol-
ogy into all corners of life.
In sum, there is reason to be against entrepreneurship when entrepre-
neurial ideology and practice serve to hide underlying structural asym-
metries of power and privilege, as if such underlying conditions had no
bearing on the kinds of opportunities available and likely to be seized in
particular contexts. There is reason to be against entrepreneurship when
its discourse of freedom and opportunity serves to obscure material and
structural constraints, attributing individual responsibility for success
and failure where much broader social dynamics are at play.
This chapter is structured as follows. The first section outlines the con-
temporary entrepreneurial imperative, not merely in terms of the eco-
nomic but moreover the social importance of entrepreneurial behavior
today. The second section establishes the centrality of entrepreneurship to
the discourse of neoliberalism, and shows how this plays out in terms of
a neoliberal subjectivity. The third section analyses tattoo advertising in
terms of entrepreneurial opportunity and investigates the conditions in
which skin is brought to market in this way, highlighting the prominence
of the neoliberal discourse in the practice. The final section questions the
entrepreneurial imperative and its ideological accompaniment by turning
received ideas of market liberalism on their head.

The Entrepreneurial Imperative

In a mundane sense, entrepreneurship merely refers to new business cre-
ation. In broader terms, entrepreneurship is about “the discovery, cre-
ation, and profitable exploitation of markets for goods and services”
(World Bank 2011, p. 7). Shane and Venkataraman importantly define
“the field of entrepreneurship as the scholarly examination of how, by
whom, and with what effects opportunities to create future goods and
services are discovered, evaluated, and exploited” (Shane and
96  A.-M. Murtola

Venkataraman 2000, p. 218). This is then not an analysis of the traits of

an individual entrepreneur but of the connection between the individual
and the context in which they operate, the so-called “individual-­
opportunity nexus” (Shane 2003).
Beyond new business creation, entrepreneurship has today come to
play an important role in the social and cultural organization of life.
Entrepreneurship has been touted as the cure to many social ills (Marttila
2012) from poverty (Bruton et  al. 2013), to unemployment (Yunus
2017), to financial crisis (Jones and Murtola 2012) and even as the answer
to the decline in American hegemony (Schramm 2006). Entrepreneurship
is today widely seen as crucial for wealth creation and the development of
national economies. The Global Entrepreneurship Index, which mea-
sures the “health of the entrepreneurship ecosystem” in different coun-
tries, opens with a testament to the importance of entrepreneurs:
“Entrepreneurs improve economies and people’s lives by creating jobs,
developing new solutions to problems, creating technology that improves
efficiency, and exchanging ideas globally” (Ács et al. 2017, p. 3).
Above all, entrepreneurship is seen as a source of economic growth.
According to Audretsch et  al. (2006), entrepreneurship has long been
recognized as crucial in developed economies. They identify the roots of
today’s “entrepreneurial economy” in the mid-1970s, but argue that it
really “took off” in the 1990s. Developing countries are now following
suit. In China, for example, entrepreneurship plays a key role in the
country’s national economic strategy (Tse 2016). In the words of China’s
Premier Li Keqiang, “Mass entrepreneurship and innovation, in our eyes,
is a ‘gold mine’ that provides constant source of creativity and wealth” (Li
2015). No wonder, then, that entrepreneurship has received so much
attention as a kind of holy grail of economic growth as a proxy for devel-
opment. As Sørensen (2008) argues, there is often a profoundly religious
undertone to entrepreneurial discourse. This is important for grasping
the generalized imperative to be entrepreneurial.
The perceived economic importance of entrepreneurship has lead to its
increasing role in other spheres of life. For example, a need has been iden-
tified to “infuse” education with entrepreneurship (Lackéus 2015).
Students need to be made entrepreneurial: “How to make students more
entrepreneurial is probably the most difficult and important question in
 6 Entrepreneurship ad absurdum  97

this domain” (Lackéus 2015, p. 6). Instilling an entrepreneurial ethos is

thus a conscious social and political project (Bröckling 2015).
Entrepreneurship has become not just an economic but also a social and
moral imperative.
As Steyaert and Katz point out, “entrepreneurship in the last quarter of
the twentieth century became a model for introducing innovative think-
ing, reorganizing the established and crafting the new across a broad
range of settings” (2004, p.  182). They therefore argue for a broader
understanding of entrepreneurship beyond its traditional context.
According to them, entrepreneurship can be found in many unexpected
places in society: in “the pursuit of the new, better or innovative; the
identification of market needs or opportunities; the pursuit of gain or
improvement of situation; and the use of exchange with others as a basis
for all of the above” (Steyaert and Katz 2004, p. 191). Hence the need to
study “the geographical, discursive and social dimension of the space in
which entrepreneurship becomes inscribed” (Steyaert and Katz 2004,
p.  193). Here I will analyze entrepreneurship in the context of
neoliberalism.

The Entrepreneur as Neoliberal Subject

Neoliberalism pertains to a set of politico-economic ideas implemented
across the world since the 1970s, including policies aimed at the liberal-
ization of trade, privatization of public amenities, deregulation and the
idea of a “small state”, in essence amounting to the so-called “free” mar-
ket. It has been described as “politically assisted market rule” (Peck 2010,
p. xii). The implementation of neoliberal policies has gone hand in hand
with a cultural change, radically changing the social fabric. Here the fig-
ure of the entrepreneur has taken pride of place.
Drawing on Foucault, Wendy Brown (2015) describes neoliberalism
as a “governing rationality”, which rearranges categories available for
experiencing everyday life. Particular categories become naturalized
through a general shift in consciousness. “A governing rationality like
neoliberalism organizes and constructs a great deal of conduct and a great
many values without appearing to do so. It produces ‘reality principles’
98  A.-M. Murtola

by which we live without thinking about them” (Brown 2018). It makes

certain decisions, actions and life choices appear better or more logical
than others. Neoliberal rationality is “productive of certain kinds of social
relations, certain ways of living, certain subjectivities” (Dardot and Laval
2013, p. 3).
Neoliberalism operates not by disciplining the body, but rather by
“governing the soul” (Rose 1999). It does not involve anyone directly
forcing anyone else to do anything. Instead, it organizes around the
theme of freedom—what Rose describes as governance “in the name of
freedom”—and is based on the ideal of “the autonomous individual ‘free
to choose’” (Rose 2017, p. 304). The neoliberal subject takes responsibil-
ity for themselves and does not rely on the state or any other outside body
for help, akin to the historical figure of the cowboy as “the archetype of
the self-reliant individual” (Solnit 2018, p. 44). This self-reliance, how-
ever, essentially builds on a “hatred for dependency” (Solnit 2018, p. 46);
a hatred still identifiable in contemporary neoliberal rationality. In con-
trast to the freedom of the cowboy, however, neoliberal freedom is
strongly tied to “the market” and the plethora of commodities it has
to offer.
Today, the entrepreneur has become “the neoliberal role model of
social subjectivity” (Marttila 2012, p. 5). The market is at the heart of
neoliberalism, and the entrepreneur is today the quintessential market
actor. Dardot and Laval stress that neoliberal rationality seeks “to shape
subjects to make them entrepreneurs capable of seizing opportunities for
profit and ready to engage in the constant process of competition” (2013,
p. 103). Likewise, Scharff explains how “entrepreneurial subjects relate to
themselves as if they were a business, are active, embrace risks, capably
manage difficulties and hide injuries” (2016, p. 108). Neoliberal subjects
are market actors, standing alone and against their competitors, hoping
that their risk-taking will pay off.
However, neoliberal entrepreneurship extends beyond opportunity
recognition as such. It has turned inwards and become a project of self
management, involving an “intense preoccupation with the self ” (Rose
1999, p. 219). Here, “Individuals are to become, as it were, entrepreneurs
of themselves, shaping their own lives through the choices they make
among the forms of life available to them” (Rose 1999, p.  230). The
 6 Entrepreneurship ad absurdum  99

freedom of the neoliberal subject builds on the injunction to improve

one’s life chances through entrepreneurship. This boils down to the level
of the body: “The body is now the product of a choice, a style, self-­
fashioning. Everyone is accountable for their body, which they reinvent
and transform as they please” (Dardot and Laval 2013, p. 285).
This neoliberal entrepreneurship of the self is often played out in a
financial register, following the model of financial portfolio management.
It has become a matter of “adding value” to yourself, “a process of self-­
valorization” (Dardot and Laval 2013, p. 266). There are numerous self-­
help books, such as Entrepreneurial You, which promise to help you “build
your brand”, “monetize successfully”, and teach you “how to amp up the
earning potential of a ‘portfolio career.’” (Clark 2017, p. 7). O’Flynn and
Petersen (2007) argue that “the subject who masters the neoliberal reper-
toires of self, will most probably be recognised as more competent, mar-
ketable, and desirable in a society where neoliberal discourses are
dominant” (O’Flynn and Petersen 2007, p. 461).
This entrepreneurial ethos spills over into the sphere of work, which is
now recoded through the figure of the entrepreneur. Dardot and Laval
argue that the neoliberal discourse means that “individuals must no lon-
ger regard themselves as workers, but as enterprises that sell a service in
the market” (2013, p. 266). From an investment point of view, it means
that “the entrepreneurial self must market its human capital in such a way
as to find buyers for the skills and products it has on offer” (Bröckling
2015, p. xvii). This involves thinking of oneself as a business to invest in,
marketize, nurture and grow, and often involves some form of “personal
branding” (Vallas and Hill 2018). Rarely does this branding, however,
take place in a literal sense as in the practice examined here.

Tattoo Advertising
as Entrepreneurial Opportunity
If entrepreneurship involves the seizure of opportunities to create new
goods and services, as discussed above, the women here seeking to sell
their skin for advertising purposes are entrepreneurs. Following
100  A.-M. Murtola

neoliberal rationality they are, above all, entrepreneurs of themselves,

seeking to improve their life situations. They bring to market what they
have to trade, in terms of “capital”: their skin. The language in the tattoo
auction listing of a “unique and unusual chance of lifetime advertising”
indexes the perceived entrepreneurial opportunity. These women have
discovered a potential market opportunity for a new commodity that
they believe they can exploit. This is entrepreneurship, if not of the most
groundbreaking and innovative kind. Previous cases involving tattoo
advertising also explicitly identify it as an entrepreneurial act, such as in
the US in 2005 where a recipient of a temporary facial tattoo explained
of his auction that one could say that it “caused me to catch the entrepre-
neurial bug, but you could also say that I had it before and that the auc-
tion was just a byproduct of that itch” (Fischer 2017).
What, then, are the conditions that surround, encourage and enable
people to perceive bringing their skin to market as an entrepreneurial
opportunity? What kind of an individual-opportunity nexus is involved?
What enables and encourages a person to advertise the opportunity for
someone else to “own” a piece of their body, or “hey, even just ‘brand’
me”? This analysis is not of the women involved but rather of the cultural
elements surrounding them, both in terms of the discourses deployed by
the women themselves in their descriptions of their entrepreneurial acts
and in the media coverage of them. It is focused on analyzing the broader
conditions that frame, enable and encourage particular acts of entrepre-
neurship. It is in the context of these that reasons for being against entre-
preneurship can be found.
Although the motivations of those seeking to carry tattoo advertise-
ments differ, there are common elements such as paying off debt, educa-
tion, providing for one’s family, helping others, and hopes for a better
future. In all three cases analyzed here, the women had other tattoos from
before and a part of the proceeds from the auctions were to be donated to
others. Despite the similarities, there are also marked differences in the
media reporting on the cases. In the two earlier cases, some of the money
earned was to be spent towards repaying debt. The first woman was
reportedly made redundant twice in the year preceding her auction. The
second was presented as a “blond bombshell” and a “wild girl” who liked
“mooning” in public (Wynn 2017b). This is in stark contrast to the
 6 Entrepreneurship ad absurdum  101

narrative of the third woman, the responsible “solo mum”. Whereas the
reporting on the first two cases was full of “butt jokes” (reports of the
woman receiving “cheeky offers” of more than “bottom dollar”), the tone
of reporting on the third auction differed completely. It was much more
serious in tone and more respectful of the woman involved.
From this brief overview it is clear that both class and gender play a
role here. Acknowledgment of debt to be paid and “solo” motherhood
mark socio-economic position. The few websites promoting (now mainly
temporary) tattoo advertising as a way to “make money with your body”
are covered in click-advertisements of other ways to “earn easy extra cash”
(Kennedy 2018). Although men can be bearers of tattoo advertisements,
it is not by chance that the three cases addressed here are of women. In
the first case, gender does not directly come to play in the discourse
around the auction advertisement, but does in the eventual tattoo being
of the logo of a strip club. In the second and third cases gender plays a
strong role; in the second in terms of the deployment of sexuality (“blond
bombshell who likes mooning in public”), and in the third in terms of
responsible motherhood. These descriptions reveal a chronological pro-
gression between the cases from woman portrayed as victim (multiple
redundancies), to empowered woman who takes charge of her life, to
fully neoliberal subject.
In all three cases, but in particular the third one, the neoliberal dis-
course is strong. All have identified a market opportunity that they try to
exploit in order to improve their own position in life. They do not turn
to the state for help but instead “get creative” in order to take responsibil-
ity for themselves and make the most of the entrepreneurial, market-­
based freedoms they have. In the third case in particular, the reasons
given for entrepreneurialism reveal the archetype of neoliberal subjectiv-
ity. Not only is the move intended to enable investment in the self
through education (a law degree), but also investment in the future of
their family (giving a daughter “the best start in life”, as if life were a
competitive running race to be won). These women take their fate into
their own hands, are not afraid of taking risks and “capably manage dif-
ficulties” (Scharff 2016, p. 108). Bringing their skin to market is their
chosen way of expressing their market-based freedom. This is where ques-
tions need to be asked about the societal ideas surrounding such a choice
102  A.-M. Murtola

of action, about asymmetries of power between buyers and sellers, and

about actual alternatives available.
The charity clause in the auction advertisements warrants attention.
This is, after all, not an entirely socially condoned practice. Despite the
general mainstreaming of tattooing, buyers of tattoo advertising tend to
be more at the margins than the centre of society: strip clubs, gambling
parlors and porn hubs rather than universities or supermarkets. There
seems to be a need for atonement in the practice. Again, the buyer (not
the seller) is given the freedom to choose their lucky charity. On the other
hand, others express their “cheers for the noble human billboards of the
21st century” who are willing to make such a profound “sacrifice” beyond
most others, “for their families or a good cause” (Xavier 2015). Either
way, being tattooed for advertising purposes does not appear to be a gen-
erally desirable or socially admired career option.
Finally, it is important to note the role of the media in successful tattoo
advertising attempts. On the one hand, there is something comforting in
the fact that in this age of generalized commodification the idea of some-
one bringing their “hide to market” for a tanning (Marx 1976, p. 280)
still bears shock value. On the other, this shock value is instrumental to
the auction itself, in raising awareness and pushing up the bidding price.
The US-based auction of facial tattoo space mentioned above involved
considerable media work, including an eventual invited appearance on
Good Morning America, resulting in a winning bid of US$37,375. But,
as the tattoo recipient here also made clear, after one successful stint the
forehead tattooing strategy became “old news” and was unlikely to work
out again. As he put it, “It’s difficult to create something so profound and
innovative that every top morning show in America wants to have you
on” (Fischer 2017).
From all of the above, the class elements in perceiving and pursuing
tattoo advertising as an entrepreneurial opportunity should be clear. It is
arguably a sacrifice, and even more so in the context of the neoliberal
injunction to hone a portfolio self. It is not elites and the privileged who
bring their skin to market. Their entrepreneurial freedoms and opportu-
nities lie elsewhere, enabled by the broader range of “capital” at their
disposal. Yet entrepreneurship continues to be pushed indiscriminately as
a universally positive force without attention to discrepancies in the
 6 Entrepreneurship ad absurdum  103

underlying conditions enabling and encouraging particular forms of

entrepreneurship, or potential effects of such entrepreneurship on the
entrepreneurs themselves (such as potential impact of visible—say
facial—permanent tattoos on job prospects and mental health).
The stratification of societies along class, race and gender lines has
important implications for the freedoms and opportunities available to
specific groups of people. Although I have primarily developed my analy-
sis here along class lines, it is important to keep in mind that entrepre-
neurial freedoms are also circumscribed by gender elements. For example,
the clear Madonna-whore dichotomy identifiable in the media treatment
of the three women above has been associated with the reinforcement of
patriarchy, and thus has clear bearings on women’s freedoms and agency
(see Bareket et al. 2018; de Beauvoir 2011). This applies to entrepreneur-
ial opportunities also. For reasons of limited space, however, the in-depth
analysis of gender aspects of the topic required to do it justice will need
to take place elsewhere.

Refusing the Entrepreneurial Imperative

There is something profoundly disturbing about tattoo advertising pre-
cisely in the context of a widespread social injunction to appreciate one’s
“human capital”. Although the education to be bought with the proceeds
from the tattoo auction may be perceived as an investment in the
portfolio-­self, the auction also involves a certain relinquishing of control
over one’s body. If neoliberal rationality involves a certain optimization of
the body and mind, tattoo advertising involves limits on the freedom to
“reinvent and transform” one’s body as one pleases. It involves allowing a
stranger control part of one’s appearance, with their choice of design
etched into one’s skin. Of course, according to the neoliberal injunction,
technically this is a free choice of the tattoo recipients, who choose to
treat the skin of their bodies as a canvas that can be brought to market to
be put to profitable use.
A savvy neoliberal subject treats their entire being as a collection of
resources to be managed in the most profitable manner. This involves an
internal split between the subject managing the collection of resources
104  A.-M. Murtola

and the object of resources to be managed, thus involving an element of

externalization of the self. Wacquant (1995) gives an account of the
“body work” that goes into developing the body, physique and skills of a
professional boxer. He explains how “The fighter’s body is simultaneously
his means of production, the raw materials he and his handlers (trainer
and manager) have to work with and on, and, for a good part, the soma-
tized product of his past training and extant mode of living” (Wacquant
1995, p. 67). Here the boxer essentially works on his “human capital”
that then will determine his value in the boxing circuits and his chances
of success.
In contrast, tattoo advertising involves the opposite: just skin, with
little value-added involved. Or, a part of the self (skin) is sacrificed in
order for investments in another part to take place (education), in an
effort to increase the value of “the human capital portfolio”. This is a mat-
ter of enterprise, of marketing one’s resources, in order to find a buyer for
the product (skin) and service (advertising) on offer. It is a case of what
has been identified as “corporeal entrepreneurialism” (Hofmann 2010).
Those who have limited “human capital” to marketize—in terms of lim-
ited value-added assets to rent out or sell on a market—can instead rent
out or sell the raw material of their body. To be clear, there are ongoing
struggles around these kinds of bodily practices. These include attempts
to code them not in terms of mere commodities for sale, but as forms of
skilled rather than unskilled labour, for example in the contexts of clinical
labour (Cooper and Waldby 2014), sex work (Grant 2014) and gesta-
tional surrogacy (Vora 2015).
It is important to read the tattoo advertising practice in light of the
neoliberal policy changes resulting in reduced social security and more
precarious forms of work, such as the “gig economy”. Entrepreneurship
is a perfect material and ideological accompaniment to cutbacks to the
welfare state. There is a fine line between the language of entrepreneurial
opportunity and the reality of restricted choice, sometimes more a matter
of semantics and outlook than anything more tangible. This constitutes a
retreat into a laws-of-the-jungle kind of sociality where everyone is
expected to fend for themselves, rather than a form of advanced civiliza-
tion. The easy neoliberal rhetoric of choice requires more detailed
 6 Entrepreneurship ad absurdum  105

scrutiny as to both the range and quality of actual choices available in

particular situations.
The neoliberal rhetoric of market freedom, including the current ide-
ology and practice of entrepreneurship, is based on an abstract idea of
independence. Against this, Cockburn (2018) points out that depen-
dence is not something out of the ordinary but a basic fact of all social
life. Some dependencies, however, become more visible and get culturally
coded more negatively than others. Developments over the past few
decades, in particular, have involved a demonization of welfare-state
dependency. Against this Cockburn provocatively asks, “which of us is
not economically dependent? Isn’t reliance on inter-generational transfers
of wealth also a form of dependence” (2018, p. 5)?
Cockburn notes that participation in markets has become perceived as
a proxy for independence as such. Hence the important illusion of the
“independent entrepreneur” (Jones and Murtola 2013). The problem is
that, viewed from the other side, market liberalism is a form of depen-
dence: market dependence. This is “dependence of people who are denied
access to resources except through markets: housing, workplaces, even
food” (Cockburn 2018, p. 18). As Wood (1994, 2002) points out, mar-
ket dependence is an integral part of capitalism. She argues that “the
distinctive and dominant characteristic of the capitalist market is not
opportunity or choice but, on the contrary, compulsion. Material life and
social reproduction in capitalism are universally mediated by the market,
so that all individuals must in one way or another enter into market rela-
tions in order to gain access to the means of life” (1994, p. 15).
Having limited alternative options for subsistence and well-being
means that “market opportunity” in reality quickly turns into market
imperative (see also Wood 2002). What matters, then, is how a society
politically organizes not its freedoms but its webs of dependence, and in
whose interests.
106  A.-M. Murtola

Concluding Remarks
One of the winners of the tattoo auctions declared that he was “reaching
the masses using other people’s asses” (Wynn 2017b). This contains more
than a kernel of truth. If this is the form that freedom takes in the twenty-­
first century, then surely we have taken a wrong turn somewhere down
the road? Despite the liberal rhetoric to the contrary, the entrepreneurial
efforts here are better analyzed in the broader social and cultural context
of limited choice rather than that of endless opportunity, as generally
pushed by the relentlessly optimistic entrepreneurial discourse. This
offers a more grounded analysis of the actual, material conditions of
entrepreneurship rather than an idealized and sanitized version com-
pletely removed from its reality.
To reiterate, there is reason to be against entrepreneurship when bring-
ing your hide to market for a tanning comes to be perceived as an entre-
preneurial opportunity, on par with any other entrepreneurial opportunity,
and as a socially encouraged means to escape forms of dependence, such
as debt in the tattoo advertising cases discussed here. There is reason to
question the broad-based push towards entrepreneurship as a generic
social and economic practice, coded positively as a great way to take indi-
vidual responsibility, when it entirely overlooks inequalities of opportu-
nity, power and privilege that constrain both the range and types of
opportunities identified and seized in specific contexts, and their poten-
tial effects on specific entrepreneurs. Questions need to be asked about
who gets to use other people’s asses for their purposes and, in contrast,
whose asses become instruments to be used. The freedom involved in
these two positions is not identical, regardless of the rhetoric of freedom
of choice in which entrepreneurship is often entangled. These kinds of
inequalities must be at the heart of any analysis of entrepreneurship and
its individual-opportunity nexus.
 6 Entrepreneurship ad absurdum  107

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 7
Against Entrepreneurship: Unveiling
Social Inequalities for Minority
Entrepreneurship
Kiran Trehan, Priyanka Vedi, and Alex Kevill

Introduction
This chapter explores the ontological differences between normative
assumptions of entrepreneurship which place emphasis on economic
growth, promoting wealth, prosperity and that militate against inequali-
ties, and critical perspectives which draw attention to the political, struc-
tural and social inequalities of entrepreneurship. Popular rhetoric often
glamorizes the entrepreneurial opportunity, positioning it as a path

K. Trehan (*)
University of York, York, UK
e-mail: kiran.trehan@york.ac.uk
P. Vedi
University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
e-mail: Priyanka.Vedi@nottingham.ac.uk
A. Kevill
Leeds University Business School, Leeds, UK
e-mail: A.M.Kevill@leeds.ac.uk

© The Author(s) 2020 111

A. Örtenblad (ed.), Against Entrepreneurship,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47937-4_7
112  K. Trehan et al.

towards the alleviation of social exclusion and inequalities. We argue

against entrepreneurship based on neoliberalism ideals which focus on
the ideas of agency, free markets, and new venture creation as mecha-
nisms for individuals to attain economic wealth and rewards.
Entrepreneurialism is advocated as an escape from the economic con-
straint faced by labor markets. In contrast we challenge this positive rhet-
oric surrounding entrepreneurship, and the merits of existing policy
initiatives encouraging entrepreneurship as a career of choice against a
backdrop of structural and economic discrimination. The case of ethnic
minority entrepreneurs can challenge such rhetoric.
Rather than being a panacea, entrepreneurship is often thrust upon
ethnic minority entrepreneurs due to economic necessity caused by labor
market disadvantage and the “double disadvantage” of racism and
resource disadvantage on the supply side. At the same time, entrepre-
neurship typically fails to overcome structural forces within wider society
that disadvantage migrants/ethnic minority groups and push them into
entrepreneurship in the first place. As such, whilst being positioned as a
source of emancipation for minority entrepreneurs, it often does little to
free them from societal oppression. Furthermore, entrepreneurship offers
an inherently precarious and vulnerable living for minority entrepre-
neurs, with ethnic run businesses being more likely to have the survival
of the business threatened than non-ethnic run enterprises (Wishart et al.
2018). This can push these individuals into further poverty rather than
alleviating the poverty they face, as can the fact that migrant entrepre-
neurs are forced into market sectors that are over-concentrated in low
entry threshold activities where the scope for up-scaling or diversification
into mainstream markets may be limited. Migrant entrepreneurs can also
be driven to operate in the informal economy mainly because of lack of
formal finance mechanisms, and limited mobility and access to informa-
tion and networks. This again hinders scalability and means such busi-
nesses offer an inherently vulnerable living to these entrepreneurs. Policies
and programs aimed at ethnic minority entrepreneurs are also often
developed based on overly positive assumption.
The chapter illuminates the dark side of entrepreneurship. Embedded
within the context of critical entrepreneurship, we seek to expose the
taken-for-granted norms of scholarship in this field, including its
 7  Against Entrepreneurship: Unveiling Social Inequalities…  113

ideologies, assumptions and narratives that posit entrepreneurial activity

and practice as largely positive. Despite the phenomenon of entrepre-
neurship being very diverse, calling for divergence and multiplicity in its
understanding, it is fair to contend that most of the available entrepre-
neurship research is functionalist in nature (Perren and Jennings 2005;
Tedmanson et al. 2012). With only little exception, the extant discourse
surrounding the notion of entrepreneurship positions it as a “positive
economic activity” within the market (Calás et al. 2009). In this light,
entrepreneurship as a field of scholarship has mostly been dominated by
those interested in it as being a purely market-based, individualistic activ-
ity, which should significantly contribute to the economy (Verduijn et al.
2014). From theoretical perspectives in fields of psychology and econom-
ics, entrepreneurs are generally considered to possess special traits or an
important set of behaviours which sets these individuals aside from the
rest and drives the creation of new business. The focus on entrepreneur-
ship activity as perceived as desirable and unquestionably positive
obscures important questions which challenges traditional literature and
discourse. The case against entrepreneurship raises questions of identity,
ideology and unequal relations of power (Curran and Blackburn 2001;
Johnson et  al. 2001; Tedmanson et  al. 2012; Verduijn et  al. 2014).
However, only few studies have aimed to counter the extant positive lit-
erature on entrepreneurship and explore the potentiality for the dark side.
In making the case against entrepreneurship, we unveil entrepreneur-
ship by exploring the paradoxes, tensions and ambiguities from the per-
spectives of minority entrepreneurs—those groups whom can be
considered as socially excluded and marginalized from society (e.g.
migrants/ethnic minorities). The entrepreneurial context of advanced
economies is increasingly being shaped by the growing and dynamic
presence of ethnic minority-businesses (EMBs hereafter). Ethnic entrepre-
neurs in the US are more than twice as likely as native-born citizens to
start new businesses, and 28% of all US companies started in 2011 had
immigrant founders (Fairlie 2013). In the UK, ethnic entrepreneurs cre-
ate one in seven companies and are twice as entrepreneurial as the British-­
born working age population (Centre for Entrepreneurs 2014). Evidence
from the US (Anderson and Platzer 2007), UK (Nathan 2015; Nathan
and Lee 2013) and mainland Europe (Baycan-Levent and Nijkamp
114  K. Trehan et al.

2009) also notes the trend for EMBs to be innovative and

growth-oriented.
Minority entrepreneurs tend not to be the focus of mainstream litera-
ture on entrepreneurial activity, which instead focuses on the mystifica-
tion of the entrepreneur as white and male (i.e. European) (Essers and
Benschop 2007, 2009; Verduijn et al. 2014). These essentialist conceptu-
alisations have come under increasing challenge in recent years—places
and spaces have been created which allow room for a concerted focus on
what has been termed Critical Entrepreneurship Studies (CES). Similarly,
authors including Down (2006, 2010), Hjorth and Steyaert (2009),
Nodoushani and Nodoushani (1999) and Ogbor (2000) have implied
that more critical applications to the study of entrepreneurship are now
crucial. Rehn and Talaas (2004), alongside several others, have also paved
the scope in challenging dominant entrepreneurial scholarship by explor-
ing alternative, often marginalised, narratives. And other key scholars
have begun to challenge the entrepreneurial assumptions that are taken at
face-value by shedding an important light on the experiences of minority
entrepreneurs (Naudé et al. 2015; Ram and Trehan 2012).
In this chapter, we begin by introducing being against entrepreneur-
ship, in order to counter the positive discourse on entrepreneurial schol-
arship to date, we embed our understanding of the increasing shadow
sides to this notion in the context of critical entrepreneurship—our focus
primarily helps to shed light on the activities and experiences of minority
entrepreneurs. A focus on the shadow side reveals that entrepreneurs
become entrepreneurs for more reasons than simple choice. For example,
often it is the result of marginalization, discrimination and unemploy-
ment within the market that drives such decisions. We also introduce the
importance of alternative theoretical perspectives and highlight the added
value of these theories in exploring the dark sides of entrepreneurship. In
contrast to traditional theories on entrepreneurship, these perspectives
help to shed light on the unequal power dynamics, social relations and
the importance of social cohesion amongst minority groups of entrepre-
neurs. We conclude by arguing for more integrated and nuanced
approaches to the study of entrepreneurship in theory and practice.
 7  Against Entrepreneurship: Unveiling Social Inequalities…  115

Against Entrepreneurship:
An Institutional Perspective
An institutional perspective of entrepreneurship enhances our under-
standing of the phenomenon for several reasons. Firstly, entrepreneurship
is a multifaceted concept—in order to appreciate the institutional con-
text in relation to entrepreneurial activity, it follows that multiple and
diverse means/units of analysis are required (Rath and Kloosterman
2000). Secondly, given that the study of entrepreneurship has been con-
sidered from competing traditional perspectives, for example, economic,
psychological, sociological resource-based entrepreneurship theory, there
is currently no complete paradigm that is able to shed light on both the
positive and the negative experiences of entrepreneurial activity.
Mainstream literature has focused primarily on positive experiences,
whilst ignoring the negatives. There is, therefore, little understanding of
the dark sides of entrepreneurship. The dark sides might be associated
with entrepreneurs who respond to the institutional environment in light
of increasing control by the state and their experiences of marginaliza-
tion/discrimination at levels of the organization and society. It is impor-
tant to explore and appreciate how minority entrepreneurs navigate these
conditions.
Further to this, the institutional perspective helps to show that there
are both “push” (necessity) and “pull” (opportunity) factors for the prac-
tice of entrepreneurship (Kloosterman 2010; Williams 2007). It shows
that for social groups whom might be considered as socially excluded, the
choice to become an entrepreneur is not necessarily driven by opportu-
nity but, instead, by an economic need to survive (Harding et al. 2005;
Maritz 2004; Williams 2007). This notion challenges the core of entre-
preneurial scholarship and raises important questions.
Unlike traditional theories of entrepreneurship, an institutional per-
spective provides insight into the cultural and emotional aspects of eco-
nomic activity—influencing individual decision-making and personal
reasons for choice (Kristensen 1994). Changes within an institution
shapes the organization and how economic and social aspects evolve
through time/space (Thornton and Ocasio 2008)—these institutions are
116  K. Trehan et al.

thus key to understanding the nature of entrepreneurship in our current

climate. In this light, an important aspect of institutional theory consid-
ers the perspectives of institutional logics as providing a promising ana-
lytical lens into the experiences of social phenomena (Thornton and
Ocasio 2008; Reay and Hinings 2009)—and there has been some aca-
demic consideration given to this perspective in the context of “institu-
tional entrepreneurship” (e.g. Misangyi et al. 2008; Tracey et al. 2011).
In addition, an important strand of the dark side of entrepreneurship
considers the use of emotion, unequal power relations and social cohe-
sion as informing the work of minority entrepreneurs. For example,
within the context of institutional logics, the concept of social embed-
dedness provides a fruitful means of analysis (e.g. Zukin and DiMaggio
1990; Kloosterman 2010; Uzzi 1996, 1997). Social embeddedness, origi-
nally coined by Granovetter (1985), reflects the institutional logic of
community orientation (Thornton and Ocasio 2008). The concept sug-
gests that economic activity cannot be understood outside of the social
context within which it takes place. Economic actors, therefore, are
involved in a series of personal relations. In this light, migrant entrepre-
neurs are embedded within a (relatively) concrete network of social rela-
tions—customers, suppliers, banks, competitors, law enforcers etc.
(Kloosterman 2010)—therefore, helping to highlight the importance of
social capital, social relations and a sense of shared experience as central
to migrant entrepreneurial work as a means of navigating other compet-
ing, institutional conditions (e.g. control by the state).
Academic scholarship has considered the notion of entrepreneurship
from an institutional lens (Veciana 1999; North 1989; Hodgson 1998),
shedding an important light on the influence of institutions on entrepre-
neurial activity. Limited attention, however, has been given to the dark
side of entrepreneurship from an institutional perspective. Given the
inter-disciplinary nature of institutional theory, allowing insight from
disciplines including politics, sociology, psychology and other sciences,
then a dialogue provided by institutional analysis to understanding the
multidimensional texture of the dark sides to entrepreneurship can pro-
vide strong theoretical insights.
In this light, it is essential that (minority) entrepreneurship is consid-
ered from a wider perspective, scoping the way to critically explore the
 7  Against Entrepreneurship: Unveiling Social Inequalities…  117

negatives associated with entrepreneurial activity, specifically in relation

to minority-group entrepreneurs.

Against Entrepreneurship:
Unveiling Inequalities
Much policy attention is given to the promotion of enterprise in disad-
vantaged areas and amongst under-represented groups. For example,
Marti and Mair’s (2009) study of entrepreneurship in a context of pov-
erty illuminates the resourceful and effortful practices of individuals to
overcome adversity. This kind of work has echoes in the more celebratory
accounts of minority entrepreneurship. It reminds us that of the resil-
ience of such communities, and their potentially valuable contributions
to the urban economies, but studies of the everyday political communi-
cative practices of migrant businesses are scarce. This section seeks to
illuminate how systems psychodynamic can contribute to our under-
standing of the political, emotional, and relational work performed by
minority entrepreneurs. In applying a systems psychodynamic lens, we
explore the relationship of the organization as a system, specifically how
diversity, power relations and emotions are experienced in the daily work-
ing lives of minority business owners. The political view of the small
enterprise recognizes that the business owner is embedded in a web of
social and economic relationships that both enable and constrain his/her
scope for action. Systems psychodynamic—with its heightened sensitiv-
ity to emotional and political context—is particularly well-placed to elicit
the complexity and multi-layered nature of diversity in small firms.
The lived experience of ethnic minority business owners is often
neglected in small firms, organizational and management theory (Kets de
Vries et al. 2007; Vince 2002; Trehan and Glover 2019). Psychodynamic
theory can help us to explore the unconscious nature of entrepreneurial
work by studying the extent to which ethnic minority entrepreneurs are
constrained by organizational arrangements and their capacity to disrupt
the status quo to effect change. Furthermore, the approach offers an addi-
tional view to the rational and economic approaches to work (Sievers
118  K. Trehan et al.

2009). “Diverse minority entrepreneurship is an emotional and political

endeavour and not simply about resourcing and planning, but rather
about intervening in the emotions and emotionality of organisation life”
(James and Arroba 2005, p. 302). Finally, it is important to understand
how minority entrepreneurs take up personal authority to manage power
dynamics by mediating, manoeuvring and negotiating various manifesta-
tions of emotions and the discomfort of learning how to operate in new
environments while simultaneously experiencing the adventure of ven-
turing into new markets. In the next section, we explore the role of self-­
employment and entrepreneurship to illuminate the dark sides of
entrepreneurship in the context of the lived experience of migrant
entrepreneurs.

Self-employment and Entrepreneurship
Over the past 50 years there has been growing participation of migrants
in entrepreneurship in the UK, especially in establishing small businesses
(Fairchild 2010). Migrant businesses contribute at least £40 billion a year
to the UK economy, a contribution that is continually increasing as new
national and international markets are opened up. Migrant entrepreneurs
often provide employment, particularly in deprived areas, and play a
highly visible and dynamic role in sustaining neighborhoods and trans-
forming the economic and social landscape of cities in the UK. Small
businesses have experienced an on-going process of transformation as
they cope with austerity, new forms of competition, and the changing
nature of work driven by new technologies, enhanced diversity, migra-
tion inflows, mutable local infrastructure, and alterations in the make-up
of families and households. Self-employment is a necessity for some
migrants. Waldinger (1986), Kloosterman et al. (1999) and Kloosterman
and Rath (2001) have identified key motivating reasons why entrepre-
neurship is critical for migrant businesses.
Migrants may be pushed into entrepreneurship due to the discrimina-
tory practices of employers, who either will not employ them, or fail to
offer opportunities for progression (Light and Gold 2000). Parker (2009)
reveals factors which prevent migrants from finding employment,
 7  Against Entrepreneurship: Unveiling Social Inequalities…  119

including employers’ refusal to validate overseas qualifications, govern-

ment regulation of the legal right to work, and cuts to funding for lan-
guage classes. Entrepreneurship becomes a necessary option because
other labor market opportunities are restricted. Equally important are
pull factors, related to migrants’ willingness and capacity to take advan-
tage of economic opportunities. Business opportunities for migrants can
include enterprises to meet a demand for goods and services which are
specific to particular migrant groups. Portes (1995) suggests that such
niche markets are frequently fulfilled by migrant businesses.
Tight-knit community relations among migrants have often brought
together social networks which provide informal finance arrangements,
entrepreneurial experience, and emotional bonding to share common
strategic goals in business (Vershinina et  al. 2016). The notion of the
“corner shop” migrant entrepreneur’s willingness to work long hours and
invest social capital in making a family business may be a stereotype, but
it is nonetheless rooted in evidence (Vershinina et  al. 2011). When
migrants are faced with limited employment opportunities, entrepre-
neurship can be a necessary vehicle for upward mobility.
For migrant entrepreneurs the drive into entrepreneurship can be seen
in large part as a survival mechanism in response to job losses which, in a
discriminatory job market, affect migrants even more heavily than other
workers. It is also important not to underemphasize the barriers facing
migrants in the wider job market, which may lead them to set up their
own businesses. For example, a recent OECD report found:

Immigrants tend to be more likely to do temporary and part-time jobs—in

Spain, more than half of immigrants, about 56%, have only temporary
work, compared with 31% of locals. And, increasingly, immigrants are
becoming self-employed. The reasons for this vary: It could indicate that
immigrants are becoming more well established in their adopted countries
and have the financial means to set up businesses; or it could be a sign that
the barriers to finding a job are so high that it’s easier for them to work for
themselves. (OECD 2014, p. 90)

In order to understand entrepreneurial activity, we need to acknowl-

edge the majority of academic attention has been given to resource-based
120  K. Trehan et al.

and opportunity-based theories of entrepreneurship—which tend to

focus primarily on opportunity as being central to the success of entre-
preneurial activity (Bates 2011; Van Praag and Versloot 2007).
Considerably less attention has been paid to institutional theory in
unveiling the dark sides of entrepreneurship.

The Darker Side of Entrepreneurship

Scholarship in the field of entrepreneurial activity has considered the
dark side of the entrepreneur (in relation to one’s behavioural traits and
personal characteristics that can make working for him/her difficult) (see
Beaver and Jennings 2005; Osborne 1991; Kets de Vries 2002; Klotz and
Neubaum 2016) and the dark side of social entrepreneurship (e.g.
Williams and Kadamawe 2012). However, academic attention has not
yet shifted to the dark sides of entrepreneurship as a means of economic
survival (as opposed to growth). Here, we aim to expose these dark sides
and shed light on the potential reasons for scholars being against entre-
preneurship. As mentioned above, traditional theories on entrepreneur-
ship emphasise a positive discourse on the topic that positions
entrepreneurial activity in an unquestionably positive light (Tedmanson
et al. 2012). This is because the archetypical entrepreneur—white, male
and middle-class—is considered as an economic engineer, creating new
business, creating new employment opportunities and contributing sig-
nificantly to the economy (Bouncken et  al. 2018; Tedmanson et  al.
2012). Little academic attention has focused on the lived experiences of
minority entrepreneurs who turn to entrepreneurship as a result of struc-
tural factors: unemployment, employer discrimination, poor access to
national/international markets and feelings of social exclusion/marginali-
sation within institutions/society. There has also been little recognition of
the cultural factors that help to bind these minority groups together:
specific values and characteristics of the minority group, social solidarity
amongst in-group members, informal networks, loyalty and flexibility
and a sense of community/shared experience etc. (Baycan-Levent and
Nijkamp 2009; Naudé et al. 2015). Setting the agenda for the various
theoretical models addressing the late twentieth century rise of ethnic
 7  Against Entrepreneurship: Unveiling Social Inequalities…  121

minority entrepreneurship in many advanced Western economies is

Light’s (1972) insight that racialized minorities can achieve a surprising
degree of entrepreneurial success by deploying the informal business
resources of their own ethnic communities. Gradually, however, research-
ers became aware that this valuable explanation of the ready supply of
entrepreneurs needed to be balanced by enquiry into the market demand.
A critical approach to minority entrepreneurship elucidates that self-­
employment is often a response to economic necessity as opposed to eco-
nomic growth. Importantly, although this stream of literature is currently
limited, it does facilitate our understanding that not all entrepreneurs
respond to opportunity, not all entrepreneurs can be responsible for cre-
ating significant new business/new jobs in the market in the context of
increasing social inequality (Williams 2007; Levie et al. 2006).

Thriving or Surviving
In recent years, it has become increasingly common for scholars to distin-
guish between push (necessity) factors—entrepreneurs who are forced
into entrepreneurial activity as a result of absent/unsatisfactory employ-
ment options or blocked opportunities (Borooah and Hart 1999), and
pull (opportunity) factors—entrepreneurs who respond to the conditions
of the market and exploit business opportunity because they are attracted
by the economic gains and financial independence that business owner-
ship offers (Harding et al. 2005; Maritz 2004; Williams 2007). Whilst
these notions have been explored within the context of informal sector
entrepreneurs, they have not considered the experiences of individuals
within the context of minority entrepreneurship. The importance of a
“contextualized understanding of ethnic business formation and develop-
ment” (Sepulveda et  al. 2011, p.  491) is multi-faceted. Opportunity
structures differ according to time periods, as Sepulveda et  al. (2011)
show in their study of EMBs in London. Minimal migration regulation
and an economic regulatory regime that favoured globalization in the 90s
and early 2000s were conducive to the arrival of EMBs with a diverse set
of legal statuses. Today, there are restrictions which affect the access and
growth potential of EMBs. Additionally, migrant entrepreneurs
122  K. Trehan et al.

(specifically new wave migrants) are affected by a “historical persistence

of powerful structural limitations” (Nitu-Antoine and Feder 2013, p. 72).
“For all their novelty, diversity and indeed potential creativity, new wave
migrants do not enjoy immunity from the rules obeyed by their predeces-
sor entrepreneurial minorities” and are confined to the very activities
which have traditionally been an immigrant business domain (Nitu-­
Antoine and Feder 2013, p. 79). In this light, entrepreneurial minority
groups may find themselves surviving as opposed to thriving with their
businesses within an institutional context.
It is important to understand the motivations behind minority groups
turning to entrepreneurship. From an institutional perspective, research
finds that first generation migrants were forced into entrepreneurship in
response to racial discrimination as opposed to presenting opportunities,
combined with the need to feel independent and in control of their work/
life. External institutional conditions, therefore, have pushed/pulled
migrants into entrepreneurship (Light and Gold 2000; Ram et al. 2017)
in light of other restricted labor market options (Borooah and Hart
1999), and thus this is not always a simple response to (blocked) oppor-
tunity by the minority entrepreneur. There are several reasons why
migrants may be pushed into entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial activ-
ity—usually these are to combat economic and social disadvantage. One
of the most common reasons implicates the discriminatory practices of
employers—who either choose not to employ these individuals or do not
offer adequate opportunities for career progression (Light and Gold
2000). As Parker (2009) suggests, factors have been uncovered which
prevent migrants from finding suitable employment, including the refusal
of employers to validate the merit of overseas qualifications, government
regulation of legalities surrounding their work rights and funding cuts to
language classes. By these measures, self-employment becomes an eco-
nomic necessity for migrant entrepreneurs (and others!) given that the
pursual of alternative labor market opportunities are significantly
restricted.
On the opposite side, also important in the context of minority entre-
preneurship are the pull factors which are related to the willingness/
capacity of migrants to take advantage of economic opportunities that
present themselves (sometimes, in the face of blocked opportunities). For
 7  Against Entrepreneurship: Unveiling Social Inequalities…  123

example, business opportunities for migrants often require the firms to

meet an exclusive demand for goods/services, specific to particular groups
of ethnic minorities. Portes (1995) has implied that these niche markets
are often fulfilled by the entrepreneurial activity of migrants—the process
is facilitated by social networks and personal ties in various communities,
and national/international connections for shared resource, capital/
finance (Kloosterman 2010).
Following the above, then, as noted by Vershinina et al. (2016) there is
also strong, “tight-knit” community sense amongst migrants that binds
them together, socially and emotionally—helping to socially embed
minority entrepreneurs within the local context in which they reside/
work. This sense of community brings with it a network of informal
finance, shared experience and social cohesion signifying to the migrants
that they share a common strategic goal in business (Vershinina et  al.
2016). In this light, when minority entrepreneurs are faced with limited
employment opportunities, blocked career paths or discrimination within
the market, then it is a common finding amongst these social groups that
they turn to self-employment/entrepreneurial activity as a means of
upward mobility and to economically survive within society.
In addition, research has noted that despite the recognition that several
minority entrepreneurs do take advantage of opportunity when it pres-
ents itself and initiate small businesses in the context of the UK and
Europe (Levie et al. 2006), this contribution is disproportionate and they
are still more likely than their white counterparts to face additional bar-
riers which may prevent their business potential from realisation (Ram
and Trehan 2012). One such barrier, for example, refers to the perceived
failure of mainstream business services to offer support to small/medium
sized migrant enterprises. Often, migrant entrepreneurs fear that main-
stream providers of business support are inaccessible to their business
ventures and this support is therefore viewed as irrelevant to the context
of migrant businesses (Carter et al. 2015). In addition, owners of small
businesses are often reluctant to take advantage of public sector business
support. In this light, research suggests that migrant entrepreneurs are
much less likely to exploit local sources of capital, material and output
markets, in addition to information regarding specific markets and
124  K. Trehan et al.

localised knowledge (Kalantaridis and Bika 2006). Indeed, the reverse is

found to be true for native entrepreneurs.
In light of the above discussion, then considering an increasingly vola-
tile, racially discriminating job market, migrant business owners are often
pushed into entrepreneurship as an economic survival mechanism. They
are often responding to blocked opportunities, job loss or inadequate
career progression and these issues can affect migrants much more heavily
than other workers. Importantly, whilst there is an acknowledgement
that some migrant entrepreneurs have become well established in their
adopted countries, and secure adequate financial means to set up their
own businesses out of an increased desire for autonomy and control, for
the majority of entrepreneurs there are increasing institutional barriers
and challenges to finding suitable employment opportunities and there-
fore it becomes easier to work for oneself (OECD 2014).

Conclusions
The preceding discussions posit a twofold rationale for being against
entrepreneurship. Firstly, we are against entrepreneurship discourse, arguing
against popular rhetoric of the entrepreneurial opportunity as a panacea.
Instead, entrepreneurship is often thrust on individuals from ethnic
minorities due to unequal power relations (e.g. control of the state/dis-
crimination by employers). Often (minority) entrepreneurs are surviving
as opposed to thriving and turn to self-employment due to economic
necessity. Instead of being an overwhelming force for good, we argue
against entrepreneurship as it can economically disadvantage minority
entrepreneurs, whilst failing to overcome negative social structural con-
straints faced by them. Entrepreneurship also typically offers an unstable
living to minority entrepreneurs, who become trapped in businesses with
little opportunity to scale. Research suggests that there are dark sides
associated with the experience of several entrepreneurs—these dark sides
only become darker when considering the perspectives of minority group
entrepreneurs (namely migrants/ethnic minorities) (e.g. Baycan-Levent
and Nijkamp 2009).
 7  Against Entrepreneurship: Unveiling Social Inequalities…  125

Secondly, we are against entrepreneurship research that paints an overly

positive picture of entrepreneurship. It is essential that entrepreneurial
scholarship focuses on the experiences of socially excluded entrepreneurs
and that it continues to remain critical of entrepreneurship as a means
associated with only choice and opportunity. To support this, we have
outlined the importance of alternative theoretical perspectives to those
associated with mainstream entrepreneurial scholarship—highlighting
the merit of both systems psychodynamic and institutional perspectives
to the exploration of the dark side of entrepreneurship. Thirdly, we also
argue that critical entrepreneurship studies importantly enable us to sur-
face tensions, paradoxes and ambiguities present within the current lit-
erature. If entrepreneurship as a field of research is to reach its potential,
it must engage with the full reality of the phenomenon of entrepreneur-
ship, something that it currently fails to do comprehensively. At times,
this may mean surfacing uncomfortable truths and challenging domi-
nant discourses of the value of entrepreneurship to individuals, commu-
nities and societies. Remaining critical and shedding continuous light on
the dark sides associated with entrepreneurial activity will allow scholars
to ask important questions, raise important issues and uncover the unex-
pected in relation to entrepreneurial life for specific social groups.
Entrepreneurship is a multifaceted concept—the ethnocultural back-
ground of the entrepreneur is an important one to recognize when explor-
ing the associated push/pull factors. Considering the above-mentioned
theoretical perspectives and the literature to date, it is possible to explore
the underlying reasons for the migrants’ decisions/rationales behind
entrepreneurial work; and scholarship in this field will contribute mean-
ingfully to our current understanding of migrant entrepreneurship. In
the long term, then, the emphasis on dark side of entrepreneurship is not
only fruitful from the perspectives on the migrants/small business owners
in an increasingly advancing economy, but also for the emancipation of
those scholars who conduct research on this topic.
126  K. Trehan et al.

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 8
The Fairytale of the Successful
Entrepreneur: Reasons and Remedies
for the Prevalent Ideology
of Entrepreneurship
Fabiola H. Gerpott and Alfred Kieser

 Never-Ending Story: Defining

A
the Successful Entrepreneur
Entrepreneurs are occupying an important role in our societies. They are
heroes who bravely fight for the economy’s growth. In spite of many sto-
ries about brilliant entrepreneurs that we daily read in the press, it does
not seem easy to define what it is that makes an entrepreneur an entrepre-
neur. As Cole (1969, p.  17), a pioneer of entrepreneurship research,
observed: “[F]or ten years we ran a research centre in entrepreneurial
history, for ten years we tried to define the entrepreneur. We never suc-
ceeded”. Fifty years later, we still encounter difficulties when trying to

F. H. Gerpott
WHU—Otto Beisheim School of Management, Düsseldorf, Germany
e-mail: fabiola.gerpott@whu.edu
A. Kieser (*)
University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany
e-mail: kieser@bwl.uni-mannheim.de

© The Author(s) 2020 133

A. Örtenblad (ed.), Against Entrepreneurship,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47937-4_8
134  F. H. Gerpott and A. Kieser

find out what such different characters as Steve Jobs, founder of Apple,
Sam Walton, founder of Walmart or Ingvar Kamprad, founder of IKEA,
all successful entrepreneurs, have in common to get united under the
label “successful entrepreneur” or “charismatic entrepreneur” (Gerpott
and Kieser 2017).
In light of these ambiguous definitions, one is inclined to take refuge
to a pragmatic solution like the one offered by Shaver and Scott (1991,
p. 24) who suggested that “entrepreneurship is like obscenity: Nobody
agrees what it is, but we all know it when we see it”. Relatedly, Jones and
Spicer (2009, p. 37) describe the entrepreneur as a target of projection,
“an empty signifier, an open space or ‘lack’ whose operative function is
not to ‘exist’ in the usual sense but to structure phantasmic attachment”.
As Jones and Spicer (2009, p. 55) conclude, “they [the entrepreneurs] are
not valued because they ‘really’ contribute value to economic activity.
Rather, the entrepreneur is one of the fantasies of economic discourse, a
fantasy which we might have begun to unmask”.
Some scholars have indeed dared to unmask the secret of the successful
entrepreneur by suggesting “that parts of this venturing sphere are funda-
mentally contingent, the possibilities arbitrary, and the guiding logic can
be that of dumb luck and surprising fortune” (Görling and Rehn 2008,
p. 94). Yet, many people would find it extremely difficult to accept that
“Bill Gates is just an ordinary human being, wrought with his perfectly
normal and human neuroticism” (Jones and Spicer 2009, p. 38). Instead,
the public elevates entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates “to heroic status as if
there is something unique to his psyche which is the ultimate cause of his
economic successes” (Jones and Spicer 2009, p. 39). Accordingly, entre-
preneurship scholars continue to search for psychological traits, or genetic
dispositions—the “unique to the entrepreneur’s psyche”—which scien-
tifically justifies elevating entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates to a status dif-
ferent from the status of ordinary mortals. Similarly, politicians continue
to design policy interventions to motivate even more people to start the
(almost-never successful) adventure of entrepreneurship. The broader
public craves for stories of the successful entrepreneurs—all in the hope
to be part of this success story one day. In an environment, where entre-
preneurship is highly valued, showing entrepreneurial interest is a “safe
option” (Brandl and Bullinger 2009). Upholding the entrepreneurial
 8  The Fairytale of the Successful Entrepreneur: Reasons…  135

ideology thus has a stabilizing function in Western societies that serves to

uphold ideals of modern Western societies and techniques of control.
This chapter’s authors take an interest in keeping the discourse about
the ideological functions of the entrepreneur alive and in doing so intend
to continue the project they started with an essay on It’s not charisma that
makes extraordinarily successful entrepreneurs, but extraordinary success that
makes entrepreneurs charismatic: A second-order observation of the self-rein-
forcing entrepreneurial ideology (Gerpott and Kieser 2017). Luckily, the
authors are not the only ones to take such a more unpopular view on
entrepreneurship. Like the little gallic village in the comics on “The
Adventures of Asterix” (Goscinny and Uderzo 2004), a small but growing
number of scholars resist the opinion of the majority. These scholars are
concerned about the notion that the low success rates of entrepreneurs—
on first sight—stand in stark contrast to the glorification rates of success-
ful entrepreneurs. For example, the likelihood of surviving with a business
five years after beginning the effort is less than 50% (Yang and Aldrich
2017). In contrast, the likelihood of students wanting to become an
entrepreneur is more than 50% in many countries across the globe
(Zetlin 2013).
This mismatch is a reason to consider being against entrepreneurship:
What the majority (hyped role models), the popular (and often also the
scientific press) tells us about entrepreneurship does not match the reality
as clarified in many (much less hyped) studies. For example, the common
conviction that startups contribute to economic prosperity by creating
jobs is not supported by evidence. For example, Shane (2008, p. 154)
argued that start-up founders are lonely riders who work on their own:

Estimates show that only about one-third of all start-up efforts result in the
creation of a new firm. […] But because just under one-fourth of firms (24
percent) employ anyone, we will need 12.5 people to try to start a new firm
to get one new firm that employs anyone. Carrying this further, only 29
percent of new employer firms live ten years, and so 43.1 start-up efforts
are needed today to have one new firm that employs anyone ten
years from now.
136  F. H. Gerpott and A. Kieser

Even if entrepreneurship results in new jobs, these jobs are often lower
in quality because they tend to be part-time, offer few development per-
spectives and are not well-paid (Reynolds and White 1997). As we argue
in Gerpott and Kieser (2017), startup entrepreneurs are only in rare cases
engines of growth; most of the times, they are closer to being free riders
who benefit from an economic upturn (Scott Shane 2009).
To preview the structure of this chapter, we first offer a brief review of
critical research that discusses the successful entrepreneur as part of a
larger ideology of entrepreneurship. We then turn to the majority view of
scholarly researchers who still try to find the success recipe of entrepre-
neurship and elaborate on recent findings related to the mentally disor-
dered entrepreneur. We elaborate on how-to-guides as a means to try to
convince potential entrepreneurs (i.e., everyone in society) to engage in
entrepreneurial activities. Lastly, we turn to entrepreneurial teams as one
possible way out of the disarray. We close by critically reflecting while this
still may not outweigh reasons to be against entrepreneurship—at least if
established in the current world order.

Critical Perspectives
on the “Entrepreneurial Ideology”
A decade ago, Brandl and Bullinger (2009) published an essay on
Reflections on the societal conditions for the pervasiveness of entrepreneurial
behavior in Western societies. In their work, Brandl and Bullinger (2009)
outline that the pervasiveness of entrepreneurship is grounded in the fact
that entrepreneurship has become an institution in Western societies,
which entails that the successful entrepreneur possesses legitimization for
all his/her behaviors without questioning its justification. Ever since then,
a (non-main)stream of research has developed that continues to question
the pervasiveness of entrepreneurship both among academics and the
broader public. We illustrate the most characterizing aspects of this dis-
cussions on the “heroic entrepreneur” by summarizing the book of
Campbell Jones and André Spicer entitled Unmasking the entrepreneur
(2009). This book asks in a highly original way what lies behind the
 8  The Fairytale of the Successful Entrepreneur: Reasons…  137

positive face of the entrepreneur and challenges the popular idea that
entrepreneurship is a necessary and good thing.
Tracing the history of entrepreneurship, Jones and Spicer (2009) point
out that the entrepreneur enjoyed a short conceptual existence as an eco-
nomic “adventurer” in Jean-Baptiste Say’s A treatise on political economy
(1971). About a hundred years later, Say’s adventurer experienced a resur-
gence as entrepreneur in Schumpeter (1934/2012, p. 132) The theory of
economic development in which one reads that entrepreneurs

have not accumulated any kind of goods, they have created no original
means of production, but they employed existing means of production dif-
ferently, more appropriately, more advantageously. They have “carried out
new combinations”. They are entrepreneurs. And their profit, the surplus,
to which no liability corresponds, is an entrepreneurial profit.

Notably, this understanding of an entrepreneur has nothing to do with

the heroization of contemporary entrepreneurs. In Schumpeter’s
(1934/2012) eyes, the entrepreneur is a temporary phenomenon only
existing during the formation of a business. After completing this task,
the entrepreneur becomes an ordinary manager again, fulfilling the tasks
necessary to run the business. In the contrary, contemporary descriptions
of entrepreneurs have fundamentally changed. As Jones and Spicer (2009,
p. 57) illustrate “the journalists’ behavior at the Financial Times and the
Economist do not recount stories of entrepreneurs as rational, calculating
machines trawling the seas of financial capital. Instead, their shanties
about entrepreneurs tell of unruly and elusive creatures who do not obey
the rules of logical economic behaviour”.
Today, entrepreneurs fascinate not only through their economic
achievements but even more spectacularly through their adventurous
activities:

When entrepreneurs are presented in the media and television, … there is

a persistent fascination in their seemingly unique personality, lifestyle, or
individual foibles—anything but their economic calculations. This is mir-
rored in entrepreneurship research, which equally seems to both assume
138  F. H. Gerpott and A. Kieser

and disavow the place of economics in the designation of the category of

“entrepreneurship”. (Jones and Spicer 2009, p. 82)

Notably, the image of the extraordinary, unique and successful entre-

preneur that is drawn in the scientific and popular press stands in stark
contrast to the working life reality of and expectations for most people.
As Jones and Spicer (2009, p. 111) state “[i]f the ideology of entrepre-
neurship is, at the most basic, the idea of the self-made man, the one who
fights against all the odds, then this idea is out of touch with the realities
of cooperative labour today”. The entrepreneur is depicted as a lonesome
rider, someone who on his or her own “creates relatively stable and coher-
ent patterns of interpretation and meaning” through the “articulation of
story lines, plots and the use of narrative structure” (Jones and Spicer
2009, p. 13). As we will discuss at the end of this chapter, it is this focus
on the individual entrepreneur that makes it so difficult to develop a
counternarrative to the prevalent admiration of the lonely successful
entrepreneur.
Interestingly, not every individual who engages in entrepreneurial
activities and earns high entrepreneurial profit is lucky enough to be cel-
ebrated as a successful entrepreneur. That is, although these individuals
fulfill the definition of entrepreneurship as engaging in activities that
respond to a need by offering a business service or product, they fall out
of the scope of what the ideology of entrepreneurship distributed in the
Western world considers a relevant entrepreneurial contribution. Jones
and Spicer (2009, pp. 86–87) vividly illustrate this phenomenon:

There are many other figures that haunt the contemporary economy who
appear to be very entrepreneurial, but are not likely to gain the title of
being an entrepreneur. These are often shadowy figures who lurk in the
grey or black economy. They include people working without declaring
their income, illegal workers, gamblers, small-time thieves, street hustlers,
pornographers, arms dealers, forgers, prostitutes, drug dealers, and organ-
ised criminals of various kinds. These characters engage in what is highly
entrepreneurial behaviour, that is, they find and create markets, they take
risks, they perceive opportunities, they undertake business ventures […]
However, they are not normally recognised as “entrepreneurs”. […] The
 8  The Fairytale of the Successful Entrepreneur: Reasons…  139

problem is that each of these characters cannot be identified or even

thought about as an entrepreneur. […] This renders us blind to all the
“shady” forms of entrepreneurship that go on in contemporary economies.
This blindness means that we make ourselves largely ignorant of a rapidly
growing and vibrant sector of economic life.

To summarize, as we illustrated by illuminating the work of Jones and

Spicer (2009), the entrepreneurial ideology not only upholds promises of
individual autonomy and public appreciation through entrepreneurship,
but also maintains existing power relationships by establishing clear rules
on who is worth to be celebrated as an entrepreneur. As such, it is not a
very inclusive ideology; it is largely the ideology of the white, male entre-
preneur working in fields that have prestige and that are believed to
require brilliance and genius.

 he Futile Search for Psychological Traits That

T
Make Successful Entrepreneurs
In an earlier article, we (Gerpott and Kieser 2017) compared the entre-
preneurship researchers’ disparate and futile search for psychological
traits that explain a disposition toward entrepreneurship and toward suc-
cess as an entrepreneur with the alchemists’ search for philosopher’s stone.
Being a member of the group of believers and also actively practicing the
rituals that communicate the secret insignia of inclusivity is what counts,
not actual success. In this respect, entrepreneurship researchers are not so
different from their study objects.
In 1956, William Whyte (1956), in his bestseller, The organisation man
argued that companies were so in love with “well-rounded” executives
that they fought a “fight against genius”. Today, as an article in the
Economist (In praise of misfits 2012) found, “many suffer from the oppo-
site prejudice”. Indeed, a common notion among entrepreneurship
researchers is that traits such as overconfidence (Salamouris 2013) or
­narcissism (Mathieu and St-Jean 2013) positively link to entrepreneur-
ship. This raises the question whether people with mental disorders might
have a better chance of succeeding as entrepreneurs than people who are
140  F. H. Gerpott and A. Kieser

considered mentally sane. Indeed, management researchers (Liu et  al.

2019; Lerner et al. 2018; Antshel 2018; Gunia 2018) as well as popular
sources increasingly discuss mental disorders as sources of entrepreneurial
inventiveness. For example, the founders of Ford, General Electric, IBM
and IKEA, not to mention more recent successes such as Richard Branson
(the Virgin Group), John Chambers (Cisco), Steve Jobs (Apple) and
Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) were suspected to suffer from Asperger’s
Syndrome (In praise of misfits 2012). The journal Academy of Management
Perspectives recently organized a symposium on mental disorders and
entrepreneurship in which Lerner et al. (2018, p. 266) stated:

the search for micro-level drivers has led scholars to investigate the role of
dispositions and conditions that have been traditionally pathologized, such
as attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The potential influ-
ence of ADHD looms large in the field of entrepreneurship as a spate of
recent studies suggests a positive relationship with creativity, entrepreneur-
ial orientation, and new venture initiation.

In their article, the authors suggest that ADHD should be neither stig-
matized nor romanticized in the pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunities,
but that it can—if managed wisely—contribute largely to entrepreneurial
success. Of note, while the authors acknowledge that the differences that
arise as a consequence of ADHD resemble the general advantages and
disadvantages of employee diversity (e.g., age, gender, nation, education),
they also note that “there seems to be something different about the
diversity of perspective that connects ADHD to entrepreneurship”
(Lerner et al. 2018, p. 281). Specifically, they assume larger effect sizes,
more impactful consequences across different stages of the entrepreneur-
ial process.
When considering this recent trend to study mental disorders as a
potential blessing in the context of entrepreneurship, one is inclined to
ask whether the solution to entrepreneurship researchers’ disparate search
for psychological traits that explain who becomes a successful entrepre-
neur thus ultimately lies in studying social outsiders. Indeed, as Wiklund
et al. (2018, p. 199), discuss “while there are good reasons from the per-
spective of those with a mental disorder to further explore the role of
 8  The Fairytale of the Successful Entrepreneur: Reasons…  141

mental disorders in entrepreneurship, there are also theoretical incentives

for exploring these relationships”. Although the authors remain rather
unspecific about the exact theoretical value, practice has already happily
picked up the focus on social outsiders: By now, tailored entrepreneur-
ship programs for prisoners are available (Patzelt et al. 2014).
Related to the discussion on possible positive effects of mental disor-
ders for entrepreneurs is the discussion “that positive attributes, such as
energy, self-confidence, need for achievement, and independence, may
sometimes devolve naturally into aggressiveness, narcissism, ruthlessness,
and irresponsibility” (Miller 2015, p. 1). DeNisi (2015, p. 101) unveils
the absurdity of Miller’s argument—and thereby that of the whole dis-
cussion about traits fostering entrepreneurship:

[W]e might extend Miller’s (2015) observations to suggest the possibility

that many of the same traits that lead people to become entrepreneurs,
when taken to extremes, can lead to their failure. That is, a person high on
optimism may be more likely to become an entrepreneur, but a person too
high on optimism may be more likely to fail. Therefore, rather than discuss
the “dark-side” of these traits, it may make more sense to think about
“excessively high levels” of these traits as being predictors of failure.

 ow-to Guides for Those Who Want

H
to Become Entrepreneurs
Those who set their sights on the career as an entrepreneur can choose
among a multitude of how-to guides whose authors all claim that they
“made it”—more or less effortlessly—and promise to pass on their talent
and their knowledge to the readers:

I honestly believe that if I did it, you can do it. Why? Because I am any-
thing but your typical businessman. I don’t have a business degree and I’ve
never even taken a business course. But I know exactly how to structure a
business and make it succeed. (That’s why my clients pay me handsomely
to consult with them on their multimillion-dollar businesses.) And I am
142  F. H. Gerpott and A. Kieser

putting it all down in this book as the ultimate guide for entrepreneurs.
(Masterson 2012: Introduction: Success is not a roll off the dice)

Given that entrepreneurship is a desirable goal in Western societies

that highly appreciate entrepreneurs (Brandl and Bullinger 2009), these
how-to-guides have high chances to end up in the bestseller lists, thus
further enhancing the ideology of the successful entrepreneur. Of course,
as this is a very promising path to salvation:

Welcome aboard the good ship Freedom! Maybe you have joined this
happy adventure as a willing passenger. Perhaps this cheery vessel has
heaved-to, to rescue you from the lifeboat of redundancy while your previ-
ous employer sinks without trace. Or maybe you have been rescued, having
being marooned on the dreary island of unemployment. For whatever rea-
son you have decided—or been forced—to accompany us, you have just
joined the finest and most fulfilling way to cruise through life. (Burch
2012, p. IX)

To be one’s own boss, being able to decide when and how long to work
and what kind of work seems to be a most attractive goal that can be real-
ized through the decision to become an entrepreneur. How-to guides
thus also emphasize the role of entrepreneurship in making the aspiring
entrepreneur a better, more complete person:

[A]lthough this book may stray into other territories, its real objective is to
examine how the individual can achieve their true worth and value—both
financially and emotionally—by employing themselves. After all, whoever
you are, you will never find a boss to employ you who will value and trea-
sure you as much as you will for yourself. (Burch 2012, p. VII)

The American company Amway, a multilevel direct sales organization,

demonstrates the power of the entrepreneurial ideology by connecting
the ideologies of the American dream, the Protestant work ethic and cap-
italism as well as redemption through spirituality (Gill 2014). Each year,
Amway turns thousands of individuals worldwide into entrepreneurs—
into entrepreneurs who paradoxically have to follow a highly structured
program. Creative destruction is not what is expected from them. As
 8  The Fairytale of the Successful Entrepreneur: Reasons…  143

“Amway distributors” they receive a very detailed how-to guide and are
expected to purchase products either directly from the Amway organiza-
tion or from another distributor and use these products as their own
customers or sell them face-to-face. Recruiting or “sponsoring” people for
a distributor role is also expected from them (Biggart 1989). Members
are attracted with the promise of freedom which DeVos (1993, p. 334),
the founder of Amway, in his “Credo of compassionate capitalism”, gives
in this way:

We believe that owning our own business (to supplement or replace our
current income) is the best way to guarantee our personal freedom and our
family’s financial future. Therefore, we should seriously consider starting
our own business or becoming more entrepreneurial in our current busi-
ness or profession.

Some Amway distributors make it to millionaires (Holmes 2013).

However, the overwhelming majority of distributors who work hard do
not attain an adequate financial income. According to Amway’s statistics
only about 2% of all active members who sponsor, and 1% of all active
distributors, generate enough sales volume to qualify as a direct distribu-
tor (Pratt 2000, p. 463, FN 8). These statistics also indicate that the aver-
age monthly gross income for an active distributor has been around $65.
Distributors are also forced to buy training material what reduces
their income.
To summarize, these how-to-guides offer an oversimplified image of
the paths to success; an image that (far to) many people willingly accept.
Whereas some of these guides focus on concrete steps to business entre-
preneurship, a large majority even offers advice for all areas of life; one
needs to become an “entrepreneur of the self ” (Bröckling 2016). This
idea culminates in the idea that successful entrepreneurs can become any-
thing, even politicians in the role of head of state.
144  F. H. Gerpott and A. Kieser

The Entrepreneurial Team as a Remedy?

In 1987, Robert Reich (1987, pp.  77–78), Secretary of Labor in the
Clinton Administration, reflected in a Harvard Business Review article:

Like ancient myths that captured and contained an essential truth, they
[stories of enterprising heroes] shape how we see and understand our lives,
how we make sense of our experience. Stories can mobilize us to action and
affect our behavior—more powerfully than simple and straightforward
information ever can. …To the extent that we continue to celebrate the
traditional myth of the entrepreneurial hero, we will slow the progress of
change and adaptation that is essential to our economic success. If we are
to compete effectively in today’s world, we must begin to celebrate collec-
tive entrepreneurship, endeavors in which the whole of the effort is greater
than the sum of individual contributions.

30 years later, entrepreneurship research at an increasing rate finds that

teams successfully take the role of the entrepreneur (e.g. Agarwal et al.
2016). Entrepreneurial teams—defined as two or more individuals who
pursue a new business idea and share ownership (Lazar et al. 2020)—
are often even more effective than the individual entrepreneur (Cardon
et al. 2017; Santos and Cardon 2019; Braun et al. 2018; Akhtar and Ort
2018; Knipfer et al. 2018; Gundry et al. 2016; Kollmann et al. 2017;
Khan et  al. 2015; Mol et  al. 2015). However, so far the discourse on
entrepreneurial teams is not particularly successful in superseding stories
of the good old entrepreneurial heroes. That is, despite the fact that 85%
of high-technology startups have two or more founders (Wasserman
2012), the predominant discourse still focuses on the single founder as a
hero in modern society. The investors in the “investor capitalism”
(Khurana 2002, p. 62) believe in the charismatic hero CEO; the entre-
preneurial community would like to celebrate and “reward a small num-
ber rather than the actually productive force that we now have on our
doorstep” (Jones and Spicer 2009, p. 111). The entrepreneurial hero is
akin to the archetypal hero who experiences rites of passage and has to
wage a perilous journey. The hero’s initial call to adventure usually is pre-
cipitated by a chance circumstance and the most dangerous part of the
 8  The Fairytale of the Successful Entrepreneur: Reasons…  145

journey may be overland or on water but fundamentally it is inward, into

the deepest recesses of the self, where the demons of fear lie in wait.
Finally, the hero emerges transformed, possessing the power to bestow
great benefits on humanity. Upon return, however, he or (very rarely) she
is faced by “uncomprehending opposition” to the message before it is
eventually accepted (Campbell 1949, p. 217). It is this mythical compo-
nent of the entrepreneurial story that likely attracts many scholars and
practitioners.
This mythical aspect was drastically reinforced by the Great Man cult
which developed in the second half of the nineteenth century. A key pro-
motor of this cult in Germany was the historian von Treitschke (1899,
Vol 1: 6) who stated in one of his lectures:

Persons, men, make history. Men like Luther, Frederick the Great, or
Bismarck. This great, heroic truth will always remain true; and how it hap-
pens that these men appear, the right man at the right time, will always
remain a riddle for us mortals. Time is forming the genius but is not creat-
ing it. Certain ideas may well work in history, but how to imprint them
into the brittle material is only granted the genius, which only reveals in
the personality of a certain individual at a certain time.

Carlyle (1841/2013, p.  21), the most influential actor of the Great
Man cult in England in the nineteenth century opened his series of
London talks on heroes, which soon became very popular with the fol-
lowing explanation:

We have undertaken to discourse here for a little on the Great Men, their
manner of appearance in our world’s business, how they have shaped them-
selves in the world’s history, what ideas men found of them, what work
they did—on Heroes.

Carlyle intended to demonstrate how “the great man, with his free
force direct out of God’s own hand” provided the “lightening” that
shaped the world (1841/2013, p. 29).
As Spector (2016) points out, myths and fairytales about heroes might
reflect and nourish basic psychological human needs. In his book Group
146  F. H. Gerpott and A. Kieser

psychology and the analysis of the ego, Freud (1921/1967, p. 37) pointed
out that the need for a single, special leader was essential, arising from the
drive for dependency and love: “A little boy will exhibit a special interest
in his father; he would like to grow up like him and be like him, and take
his place everywhere”. Freud (1937/1967, p.  111) also noted that
“through history, the great majority of people have a strong need for
authority which they can admire”. Thus, a centuries-old tradition of nar-
ratives and basic psychological needs make a considerable contribution to
understanding the persistence of the myth of the hero-entrepreneur
(Whelan and O’Gorman 2007). Actual research on the effects of hero
myths confirms Freud:

Heroes move us, not just emotionally but also behaviorally. They set a high
bar for us and then dare us all to join them. Heroes take us places that give
us rich rewards. They lift our dreams and aspirations. We crave heroes and
identify with them. We want to be with heroes. We want to be like them,
and we want to bask in their successes. … We love to associate with suc-
cessful, heroic people because they make us feel good about who we are.
(Allison and Goethals 2011, p. 173)

This is not to say that newspapers completely neglect entrepreneurial

teams. For example, the three highly successful Samwer brothers—found-
ers of more than 75 companies—are the subject of many press reports.
But these are largely not reports of success celebration. Instead, the
Samwer brothers are described as “despicable thieves” (i.e., a reference to
their business model consists of mimicking the best American e-­commerce
companies), and other entrepreneurs openly state they wonder “How do
they sleep at night?” (Cowan 2012). Interestingly enough, even within
this team of founders, the media often pick one seemingly particularly
charismatic person and focus on this person to continue writing success
stories of individual entrepreneurs (e.g. Ohr 2004). This raises the ques-
tion how realistic it is that the glorification of individual entrepreneurs
will ever be replaced by a more balanced focus on several individuals with
different strengths and weaknesses who together make a successful entre-
preneurial team.
 8  The Fairytale of the Successful Entrepreneur: Reasons…  147

Conclusion
In this chapter, we have briefly outlined the main premises of the ideology
of entrepreneurship and demonstrated examples of research that—against
the knowledge that this is impossible—still tries to uncover the success
principles of the individual entrepreneur. We also illustrated by referring to
“how-to-guides” how the popular press tries to convince everyone of their
potential to become successful entrepreneurs. The reason to be against this
glorification of entrepreneurship is that it largely over-promises; evidence
shows that many start-ups fail and do not contribute much to economic
prosperity. The promises of entrepreneurship cumulate in the idea that
successful entrepreneurs can do and become anything, even the political
leaders of countries. We are convinced that this notion is highly debatable;
it completely neglects the risks of having people in jobs they are not edu-
cated for. The prevalent one-sided description of the pros of entrepreneur-
ship is like showing people only how much they could win in a lottery, but
never ever mentioning somewhere the actual (almost zero) chances of win-
ning. Entering this unfair game is not much better than playing with a
thimble-rigger. Although entrepreneurial teams could be one way out of
the heroization of single entrepreneurs, we are skeptical whether they will
truly be a reason to stop being against entrepreneurship as it is popularized
today. That is, even if eventually, the hero myth of the entrepreneur will be
replaced by the myth of the entrepreneurial team as the hero, this will also
be ideological since this necessarily simplifies a rather complicated process
into an easy success recipe.

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 9
From Entrepreneurship
to Eco-preneurship
Ove Jakobsen and Vivi M. L. Storsletten

Introduction
We stand at a most critical moment in history;

humankind has to decide if its future lies down a track anchored in eco-
nomic models based on the exploitation of nature, a track which is driving
humankind towards ever more serious environmental, social and economic
problems; or a track towards a future characterized by the protection and
valuing of the vitality, diversity and beauty of the Earth’s eco-systems.
(Jakobsen 2019, p. 5)

From this point of view we argue that we need a change in a direction

that is characterized by qualitative development more than quantitative
growth. This change process has consequences for how we define and
practice entrepreneurship. An entrepreneur is an economic actor who

O. Jakobsen (*) • V. M. L. Storsletten

Nord University Business School, Bodø, Norway
e-mail: ove.d.jakobsen@nord.no; vivi.m.storsletten@nord.no

© The Author(s) 2020 153

A. Örtenblad (ed.), Against Entrepreneurship,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47937-4_9
154  O. Jakobsen and V. M. L. Storsletten

develops a business and is responsible for the risks and rewards of his or
her business venture. The business idea typically includes new products
or services rather than shifting the existing business model. Entrepreneurs
are often described as agents of change focusing on growth within a mar-
ket economic system. When we look at the state of the world today we
notice that the major problems could not be understood in isolation.
Entrepreneurship, even if it does lead to increased profits, is a bad idea if
it escalates environmental and social disturbance.
On the one hand we argue against a definition of entrepreneurship
which defends principles such as quantitative growth and competition,
characterizing the dominating market economic business model. Eco-­
preneurship on the other hand represents a revolutionary step towards a
new business model based on qualitative development and cooperation
with humans and nature. What separates eco-preneurs from entrepre-
neurs is basic but divergent ontological understanding. Entrepreneurship
denotes reductionism, focusing on things as such (being), while eco-­
preneurship is based on holism, focusing on processes (becoming). We
propose that it is more likely that eco-preneurship within a holistic pro-
cess perspective is motivated by creating businesses that are far more
socially and ecologically responsible than entrepreneurship anchored as it
is in the reductionistic product oriented business model primarily, if not
solely, driven by profits.
The structure of our critical examination of entrepreneurship vs. eco-­
preneurship is organized in the following way. First, we critically explain
entrepreneurship in a philosophy of science context. Second, we reflect
on the connection between entrepreneurship and the mechanistic world-
view. Third, we define and reflect on eco-preneurship linked to an eco-
logical economic business model. Fourth, we compare and discuss
similarities and differences between entre- and eco-preneurship and con-
nect the two positions to their ability to handle the challenges described
in United Nations’s 17 sustainable development goals. Fifth, we conclude
that entrepreneurship within the market economic business model is not
suitable as a base for solutions to the challenges we are facing today.
Therefore it is necessary to develop eco-preneurship based on the para-
digmatic preconditions found in ecological economics. Finally, dialogue
is introduced as a tool for converting the tension between entrepreneurship
 9  From Entrepreneurship to Eco-preneurship  155

(actuality) and eco-preneurship (potentiality) to powerful energy neces-

sary for finding solutions to the environmental and social challenges we
are facing today, for sure, locally, nationally and globally.

Philosophy of Science
Since no agreed definition exists among scholars of “entrepreneurship”, it
can be described as being in what Kuhn (1962) termed a pre-­paradigmatic
phase. The pre-paradigmatic phase refers to the period before a scientific
consensus has been reached and different schools of thought exist side by
side. In accordance with this definition entrepreneurship research is fre-
quently presented in textbooks as a field that lacks an established ontol-
ogy (a common description of reality) and epistemology (what is it
possible to have knowledge about). As scientists may disagree about the
purpose and fundamental premises of the discipline, fragmentation “hin-
ders the full advance of knowledge, because it creates part without wholes,
disciplines without cores” (Ucbasaran et al. 2001, p. 57).
However, we have indicators that help to make some of the fundamen-
tal preconditions in entrepreneurship research explicit. In textbooks,
articles and reports, entrepreneurship is described as being central to the
functioning of market economics. According the Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report Fostering
Entrepreneurship; “Entrepreneurs are agents of change and growth in the
market economy” (OECD, cited in Westhead et  al. 2011, p.  3).
Competition is inherent to capitalist economy and “capitalism is only
healthy when it is growing” (Archer 2019, p.  248). In order to detect
profitable economic opportunities entrepreneurs are willing to take risks.
Hence, it is reasonable to argue that entrepreneurship shares some of the
dominating paradigmatic preconditions found in the market economic
business model; growth, competition and strategic thinking.
An increasing number of research reports conclude that the global
extraction and consumption of natural resources has reached a level that
is unsustainable. In accordance with this statement Spash argues that;
“The growth economy is leading to an inevitable series of ongoing crises,
creating harm, death and destruction” (Spash 2017, p. 14). The challenge
156  O. Jakobsen and V. M. L. Storsletten

today is how to develop solutions based on qualitative development and

de-growth. In this perspective, entrepreneurship, anchored as it is in the
dominating economic system, represents a problem more than the solu-
tion. UN’s 17 sustainable development goals (SDG’s) represent a gateway
to awareness of the connection between entrepreneurship and capitalist
market economy and consequently to rethink the paradigmatic precon-
ditions on ontological and epistemological levels.
But, being in a pre-paradigmatic stage allows us to find defining para-
digmatic preconditions that make entrepreneurship part of the solution
to the challenges we are facing. To do this we anchor entrepreneurship in
ecological economics and re-name it eco-preneurship. Then we have at
least two contradictory positions that each could develop to be the domi-
nating paradigm in the future, or maybe they might even exist side
by side.

 ntrepreneurship Is Coupled
E
to a Mechanistic Worldview
In order to clarify the alternatives on the ontological level we distinguish
between mechanistic and organic worldviews. On the one hand, a mech-
anistic (atomistic) worldview states that the nature of everything that
exists is composed of parts lacking any intrinsic relationship to each
other. Being is more real than becoming and objects are more important
than relations. Reality is studied as “static variables in isolated relation-
ships” (Hjorth et al. 2015, p. 601). The idea is that the cause of any kind
of activity is influenced from outside factors and not from inside.
According to Capra and Luisi a machine must be controlled by “its oper-
ators to function according to their instructions” (Capra and Luisi 2014,
p. 59). These ideas have great influence in management and leadership
theory referring to efficient operations as top-down initiated.
Entrepreneurship in such a perspective is reduced to no more than a
mishmash of numbers and statistics. Some of the conclusions drawn
about the real world by deduction from conceptual and theoretical
abstractions indicate little awareness of the dangers outlined in UN’s
17 SDG’s.
 9  From Entrepreneurship to Eco-preneurship  157

This means that scholars in entrepreneurship are insufficiently aware of

the fact that all concepts and theories are dependent on nature and the
historical characteristics of the society. Scholars in entrepreneurship sel-
dom criticize the connection to mechanistic market economy as it is
more or less taken for granted. Often when scholars come up with expla-
nations and understanding, they automatically perceive their knowledge
to be universal. Instead, knowledge will change if the context changes.
From an organic (holistic) perspective the nature of everything that exists
is like a living organic whole. Everything is interconnected through a
variety of relations. In Whitehead’s (1985) process philosophy, becoming
turns out to be more real than being, and relations come to be more
essential than objects. According to the theory of autopoiesis, “a living
system relates to its environment structurally—that is, through recurrent
interactions, each of which triggers structural changes in the system”
(Capra and Luisi 2014, p.  135). Social connections are progressively
being constructed and reconstructed through flexible networks rather
than formal organization. Activity is initiated by the organism itself,
from within.

 co-preneurship Is Coupled
E
to Ecological Economics
The idea that all entities are connected in cooperative networks is in
opposition to mechanistic market economy, which postulates atomistic
competition between autonomous actors. Accepting an organic ontology
has important implications for both economic theory and practice. For
example, it leads to an acceptance of the entrepreneurs as being co-­
responsible for the whole life-cycle of the products they develop and pro-
duce. According to process philosophy, human agents are inseparable
from their environment. Even stronger, the environment is immanent in
them, and conversely they are immanent in the environment which they
help to transmit.
Since we are integrated parts of reality, we cannot place ourselves out-
side reality and catch objective knowledge by throwing our methodologi-
cal nets out to catch “reality”. The consequence is that entrepreneurial
158  O. Jakobsen and V. M. L. Storsletten

research and action is focused on “improvement,” defined temporarily

and locally, taking issues of power (which may affect the definition) into
account. Eco-preneurship, based on organic holism, accepts that our
knowledge of the world is always relative to who we are and what we are
doing to acquire understanding. Knowledge of the world is always located
in time and space, historically, socially, and culturally. This illustrates an
essential characteristic of eco-preneurship as it accepts that the connec-
tion to the natural and social reality has normative implications. Process
philosophy is relevant as a frame of reference if we are to understand
many of the challenges of the present; it gives a deeper understanding of
how everything is integrated in self-organizing social end and natural
systems. A consequence of being a co-creator is that agents also become
co-responsible. This means that eco-preneurs are responsible for the con-
sequences at the economic, social, and environmental levels.
On the methodological level eco-preneurship opens up a variety of
research methods in a theoretically coherent manner, becoming aware of
their strengths and weaknesses connected to a corresponding variety of
issues. It recognizes that our access to this world is in fact limited and always
mediated by our perceptual and theoretical lenses. Hence, it is a necessity
to examine and re-think all our taken-for-granted assumptions along with
the conditions that give rise to them. This perspective is more closely related
to Feyerabend’s (1975) slogan “anything goes” than Kuhn’s (1962) rigorous
definition of “normal science”. Reality, according to Feyerabend, involves
human beings and their relations to culture and nature. What we recognize
and understand depends on where and when we are living.

Comparison Between
Entre- and Eco-preneurship
In this section, we illustrate the connection between the two different
perspectives in the following way (see also Table 9.1). Ontology repre-
sents the frame of interpretation; in the perspective of the philosophy of
science it is of the greatest importance to be aware of and to make these
preconditions explicit. All knowledge and all kinds of activity get
 9  From Entrepreneurship to Eco-preneurship  159

Table 9.1   Entrepreneurship in contrasting contexts

Entrepreneur Eco-preneur
Philosophy of science Positivism Critical realism
1. Ontology Mechanical Organic
2. Epistemology Positive knowledge Value based knowledge
3. Methodology Quasi experiments A variety of methods
Levels Market economy Ecological economics
1. System Atomistic competition/ Cooperative networks/
Quantitative growth Qualitative development
2. Actor Economic man Ecological man
3. Practice Strategy Partnership
Source: Author

meaning by reference to the interpretative context. In mechanist inspired

science the parts focused on are all that count while in organic inspired
science reality is an integrated whole.
If we are to solve problems connected to UN’s 17 SDG’s, degradation
of nature, the ever-increasing gap between rich and poor, financial
crashes, such a change process has to be implemented concurrently on
the individual, practical and systemic levels (Jakobsen and Storsletten
2019). Practice depends on systemic conditions and individual con-
sciousness. Entrepreneurial practice within a competitive market eco-
nomic system turns out differently from entrepreneurship with an
ecological economic system. The same counts for the contrasting per-
spectives on human consciousness; are the entrepreneurs calculating
“homo economicus” or are their activities reflecting values based on
solidarity?
Ontology advances a question of change from a mechanical to an
organic worldview. One consequence of this change is that economics
becomes subordinate to ecology. It is essential to adapt economy to the
limits of ecosystems, organic knowledge and understanding. The idea
that natural science should provide knowledge that gives man power over
nature must be replaced by an approach in which the goal is to learn from
nature and develop knowledge that teaches us how we can best work
together with nature, fulfil human needs and improve quality of life. The
implication of this reasoning is that entrepreneurship should strengthen
the life processes on individual, societal and ecological levels. In other
160  O. Jakobsen and V. M. L. Storsletten

words, entrepreneurship has a normative function, concretized to con-

tribute to solve UN’s SDG’s.
Epistemology is concerned with issues having to do with the creation
and spread of knowledge in particular areas of inquiry. Epistemology asks
what is knowledge, how is knowledge acquired, what can people know,
what is the structure of knowledge, and what are its limits. Briefly, we can
conclude that entrepreneurs within a positivist paradigm are searching
for explanations of how entrepreneurs behave and what characterizes cre-
ative entrepreneurs with (economic) success. Entrepreneurship based on
critical realism has a normative goal, how to contribute to the good life in
the good society. Knowledge includes values and could be expressed in
different ways, scientific papers, essays, music or drama. Methodology
within a mechanical worldview very often refers to experiments and quasi
experimental designs in order to come up with objective explanations of
defined connections between different entities. In critical realism differ-
ent methods are used to develop integrated value based knowledge
anchored in practice.
On systems level (macro) the hard-core principle of market economy
tells us that the market is made up of autonomous competing actors, and
that growth is a main characteristic of a healthy economy. A system
anchored in ecological economics describes the market as an integrated
network of interdependent cooperating actors. The focus shifts away
from objects toward relationships. Since the individual has to respect
broad public values, a transition is required away from the egocentric
economic man towards the solidarity characterizing the ecological man.
Ecological economics, inspired by natural growth curves (increasing rap-
idly first, then stabilizing), makes it possible to initiate the continuous
development of quality of life without increasing the consumption of
natural resources. The focus on qualitative development points to major
changes in business; many companies and whole industries will disap-
pear, and new ones, more in line with ecological principles and humanist
values, will take over.
The understanding of human consciousness is radically different in
market economy and in ecological economics. On the individual level,
ecological economics has significant implications for the definition of the
economic actor. Instead of focusing solely on increasing profits (the
 9  From Entrepreneurship to Eco-preneurship  161

economic man), the economic actors put more weight on natural and
social implications of production processes as well as products (the “eco-
logical man”). A practical consequence is that eco-preneurs include infor-
mation about the working conditions for the workers in the entire
production process and the extent to which the production process meets
environmental requirements, requirements for animal welfare, and health
implications for all involved, the consumer included.
On practice level (meso), entrepreneurship within a market economic
context based on positivism focuses on economic growth, anchored in
competition and giving priority to profit maximizing activities. Negative
social and environmental consequences are not taken into account; they
are consequences of strategies where short term profits count. Eco-­
preneurs within the systemic conditions of ecological economics have
close connections to their local culture. In this perspective, culture has
both instrumental and inherent value, instrumental as a source of inspi-
ration and inherent as the glue that connects the parts of society with
each other. A network of creative entrepreneurs based on a partnership
approach has access to superior information locally, nationally and inter-
nationally. By including social values, eco-preneurship helps to create
(optimal) conditions for quality of life.

 gainst Entrepreneurship Escalates the Need

A
for Implementing Eco-preneurship
In Western societies, where the mechanical worldview has dominated
since the eighteenth century, development is interpreted in the form of
measurable indicators such as economic and technological growth. One
of the most important features of mechanical thinking is that technical
solutions can be transferred regardless of the cultural and natural context.
The market economic business model based on competition between
autonomous actors, is an illustrative example of a mechanical system that
is supposed to stimulate growth and increase welfare wherever it is imple-
mented and practiced. The idea is that the business model is universally
applicable and therefore technology and top-down leadership become
the most important tools for social change. Today’s global economy is a
162  O. Jakobsen and V. M. L. Storsletten

network of financial flows that are mechanically constructed without a

culturally conditioned ethical framework. The result is that entrepreneur-
ship is “considered to be one of the critical issues in comprehending
growth” (Braunerhjelm 2010, p. 3). The consequences are the reduced
opportunities for genuine solidarity between people and care for nature.
Worldwide, these problems are challenged through the UN’s definition
of the 17 SDG’s.
Implementation of eco-preneurship, giving priority to solidarity,
requires dialogue processes aimed at increasing the insight into the social,
political, cultural and economic realities. Solidarity rooted in dialogic
practice goes deeper. Eco-preneurship based on such “bottom-up” initi-
ated solidarity helps everyone to be committed to mutual aid principles
(Kropotkin 1909). It questions the assumptions and reasons behind the
problems. We conclude that the time has come to question whether
entrepreneurship rooted in growth, competition, smartness, new public
management and efficiency is long overdue for critical review, and to be
replaced by eco-preneurship which aims to develop societies based on
quality, betterment, cooperation, wisdom, freedom and meaning.
Dialogue between eco-preneurs and the local society is fundamental both
in ecological economics and critical realism. A dialogue based commu-
nity is rooted in processes that give people influence over themselves and
the society in which they live. A dialogue based eco-preneurship involves,
engages and inspires people to contribute in creative processes where
individual and collective potential are clarified and realized. That is, dia-
logue is not primarily a means of finding solutions, dialogue is the very
energy of social development. The goal is to develop communities and
regions in which it is attractive to live. These thoughts are not new and
have been advocated by a number of pioneering philosophers and social
scientists throughout history. What is new is that a growing proportion
of the population is expressing some of the same ideas. In order to create
viable societies characterized by high quality of life in harmony with cul-
ture and nature, eco-preneurs are required at many levels.
Facilitating individual participation and involvement is an important
driving force in eco-preneurship. Dialogue is thus more than a way of
finding good solutions to specific challenges; dialogic relationships
 9  From Entrepreneurship to Eco-preneurship  163

represent an integral part of vibrant societies. Through dialogic interac-

tion, people are interconnected, with each other, with culture and with
nature. Dialogue plays a key role in the development of living communi-
ties characterized by high quality of life for people within the framework
of sustainable ecosystems. The reason is that dialogue contributes to the
establishment of and the development of dynamic ethical frameworks
which are necessary conditions for co-responsible decisions and action.
The starting point is accepting that life is all about relationships; all forms
of life are interdependent. Humans are physically connected to ecosys-
tems through air, water and soil. As social beings, people are connected
through various forms of communication. Dialogues thus become an
important prerequisite for cultural development. In order to develop a
common understanding of norms and values ​​that are both ethical and
political, dialogic interaction is central.
A creative dialogue requires reciprocity and trust between the partici-
pants in connection with the exchange of thoughts, ideas and opinions.
Through the development of judgment and dialogue, participants become
more conscious of their own values and attitudes. By introducing one’s
own and others’ values and assumptions, dialogic processes lead to the
development of a common context for interpreting the challenges society
faces. In order to arrive at the meaning behind what is being said, or the
thoughts behind the words, it is as important to listen to the views of
others as to express oneself. As an example, we can mention that dialogue
helps to increase the ability to reach common understanding through
philosophizing in a qualified way. Dialogues also improves the skills to
express one’s own thoughts and ideas in a clear way so that others under-
stand what is being said.

Concluding Reflections
This chapter contrasts two different perspectives on entrepreneurship:
one is anchored in mechanistic market economy and the other in organic
ecological economics. From these reflections we can conclude that we
are not against entrepreneurship as such but rather we are against
164  O. Jakobsen and V. M. L. Storsletten

entrepreneurship that operates within a business model based on an eco-

nomic system that gives priority to increased growth and competition.
Instead, we suggest that eco-preneurship anchored in a business model
based in ecological economics is right if we are to develop solutions to the
major challenges confronting the modern society. In order to make sure
that the creativity does not take a wrong direction, it is important that
researchers in entrepreneurship take the philosophy of science’s related
preconditions concerning ontology, epistemology and methodology into
account.
To generate the needed energy to implement innovations on all levels,
eco-preneurs have to make the tension between actuality and potentiality
explicit. The aim is to energize the process that strengthens the vitality of
self-contained and autonomous communities by establishing collabora-
tive networking venues for dialogue, creativity, learning and development
of common solutions. The implication of this reasoning is that eco-­
preneurship is not an end in itself but a means to strengthen the life
processes in nature and society. The only valid purpose of eco-­preneurship
is to serve life processes in all kinds of social and ecological systems.

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 10
Entrepreneurial Insouciance (or
Imperiousness), the Big Risk Shift
and the Entrepreneurship Interregnum
Philip Cooke

Introduction
One of the striking features of current evolutionary change in key global
political economy optics is the decline of “entrepreneurship”. Still treated
reverentially in a paradoxically burgeoning research literature, it is nowa-
days widely condemned for its “insouciance” (or disregard of established
social norms of “trustworthiness”, human privacy and common fraudu-
lence, such as identity theft), “imperiousness” (or presumption that it has
sovereign rights to behave egregiously) and failure to manage fraudulent
behavior by entrepreneurs (large and small; Ellson 2019). Like other
parts of the changing capitalist landscape, stocks are also devaluing in
“deregulation”, “outsourcing” and “globalization”. These are the frame-
works that have provided the context of a neoliberal paradigm in which
“entrepreneurialism” with all its ills (as well, no doubt, as some few

P. Cooke (*)
Mohn Center for Innovation & Regional Development, Western Norway
University of Applied Sciences, Bergen, Norway
e-mail: cookepn@cardiff.ac.uk

© The Author(s) 2020 167

A. Örtenblad (ed.), Against Entrepreneurship,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47937-4_10
168  P. Cooke

possible advantages) flourishes. We explore how these require regulatory

reform in response to the negative connotations of large and small firm
“entrepreneurship”. Briefly, the first of these three objects, deregulation,
has had its reputation tarnished initially by the “Big Banks” (with associ-
ated “fintech” supply chains) and their reckless transgression of “moral
hazard” seen in the Great Financial Crash of 2007–2008, then by the
egregious “lawlessness” (Kauffman 2008) of “Big Tech” (e.g. Facebook,
Google and their affiliates). Once “entrepreneurial” start-ups only a
decade or two ago, these have carried over and influenced the gamut of
bad practices described below into the larger corporate “entrepreneurial”
world. They are allegedly associated with inter alia aiding hate mail,
assisting fake news, abetting abuse of minors and minorities, invasion of
privacy, stealing of personal data, interfering with electoral processes and
fomenting (in Burma/Myanmar) at best, ethnic cleansing or, at worst,
genocide of the Burmese Muslim Rohingya people. These specific misde-
meanours are a product of the embedding of an “entrepreneurial culture”
based on extremist liberalism of the kind captured in Facebook’s former
corporate mantra: “Move fast and break things” (Taplin 2017) and one of
Big Tech’s earlier shibboleths—which this author first heard at the UK
HQ of the then prominent Digital Equipment Company (DEC)—
uttered by a corporate interviewee in a telecoms research project (Cooke
and Wells 1991) about innovation; “we preach—‘don’t ask permission,
ask for forgiveness’” (since attributed to Grace Hopper, a computer pro-
grammer on the early ENIAC computer). If true, it has long been in the
culture of software programming, a field notorious for its mistakes, prod-
uct de-bugging crises and frequently “sloppy code” as typical of the Bill
Gates era at Microsoft. So “anything goes” has been the defining principle
of high-tech since the beginning.
In what follows in this brief chapter, the second section outlines three
important, albeit nowadays creaking pillars of the neoliberal edifice that
are described. First a discussion with narrative case material is offered on
deregulation and its free market “entrepreneurial” expression, execution
and effects ranging from corruption to inept implementation, to eventual
but unwilling demise. Second, outsourcing (otherwise “open innovation”
by which large corporate actors often cede ethical, environmental and
economic responsibilities to small and medium-sized firms in other
 10  Entrepreneurial Insouciance (or Imperiousness), the Big Risk…  169

jurisdictions to magnify profits) and its discontents, ranging from

employee suicide, toxic pollution and collusive boundary blurring, are
anatomized and found wanting. Finally, globalization (which is the apo-
theosis and culmination of the other two “entrepreneurial drivers”) itself
is subject to scrutiny for its social depredations and yawning polarization
of wealth and impoverishment that has led belatedly to a sad populist
punctuation point in its brief interregnum. Next, the second section
focuses on entrepreneurship insouciance and “imperiousness” (meaning
being a law only unto oneself ); what is wrong with it and why entrepre-
neurs are voting with their feet such is the profile of entrepreneurship
decline registered in the “business dynamics” of many countries. Such
lawlessness, iconoclasm, imperiousness and—deliberate—insouciance
are justification for being “against entrepreneurship”. Brief discussion
and conclusions follow.

Deregulation, Outsourcing, Globalization

Deregulation has been both hand-in-glove with neoliberal economics
and shockingly complicit with the corporate interests supposedly being
regulated. Probably the first casualty of global importance was the deci-
sion of the Clinton administration to champion “network neutrality” in
the notorious Section 230 of the US Telecommunications Act of 1996.
This exemplar allows us to explore further ways in which established
practices of social and economic illegality and their means of prevention
may bring about “surveillance capitalism’s” demise (Zuboff 2019). First,
with respect to surveillance, it is instructive that in April 2018 it was
announced that a celebrated UK business broadcaster and entrepreneur
had taken steps to open a legal case in the UK law courts to prevent
Facebook from posting illegal “fake” and fraudulent advertising material
on its website. The aim of the court case was for such monopolies to be
governed by a system of notification where they have the responsibility to
inform the subject if an advertisement to ensure it was both genuine and
consented to (Gibb 2018).
Such legislation was never mimicked in the UK legal code and like
much else in US “digital capitalism” is taken as entitled practice by US
170  P. Cooke

firms anywhere, informed by the hubristic Ayn Rand “Objectivist” exis-

tential boasts: “Who will stop me?” (Rand 1943). To clarify: Rand’s main
character in “The Fountainhead” is a modernist architect, Howard
Roarke, whose creative designs are not accepted by the established acad-
emy. Rand’s “Objectivist” assumption was opposed to any kind of
Determinism and valued the creative contribution of the individual over
the collective. It was thus a forerunner of neoliberal dogma, made popu-
lar by Clinton-Bush era Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, progenitor of
the “irrational exuberance” of so-called free market economics. The fail-
ure of this ideology ushered in the Global Financial Recession of 2008.
Finally, and briefly, on “deregulation”: the jungle that is social media
“net neutrality” fades into relative insignificance compared to question-
able practice in the finance industry. There, most “financial regulation” is
effectively composed by lobbyists of the regulated, especially the Wall
Street and City of London banks, mostly the former. One high frequency
trading area (HFT) that functions through artificial intelligence (AI) had
been legislated against and in 2010 re-legislated for allowing the practice
of “spoofing”. This is an instructive moral versus economic/market con-
flict case arising from changing regulatory conventions. On 21 April,
2015 the financial trader and “lone entrepreneur” Navinder Singh Sarao
was arrested in Hounslow, near London airport. The US Department of
Justice had filed an extradition order to put him on trial in Illinois after
charging him for his practice of “spoofing” futures markets. This meant
entering orders without genuinely intending to buy or sell, which con-
tributed to his trading profits of about $40 million between 2010 and
2014. Part of the explanation of the criminalisation of spoofing is that
regulatory attitudes to it changed with the rise of electronic or automated
trading systems (ATS). Spoofing was harder to accomplish in a tradi-
tional public trading pit, where, as in a poker game, bluffing was not
thought of as wrong, immoral or illegal. Rather, if it was accomplished
successfully no punishment occurred. As MacKenzie (2015) concludes:
“It’s a deep and difficult issue, and calls to mind an old Marxist word:
contradiction”. Accordingly, stock market regulators are “captured”,
often having to interpret blurred ethical and other rules let alone enforc-
ing them. Meanwhile, traders habitually find new loopholes and tech-
nologies to outwit regulatory intentions. It can be concluded that speed
 10  Entrepreneurial Insouciance (or Imperiousness), the Big Risk…  171

has, in effect, de-moralised the microgeography of HFT as an early “first

mover” in the emergence of a dehumanised relational work of AI-type
market relations.
Outsourcing, once evangelized as the apotheosis of global “competitive
advantage” for its exploitation of cheap labor, deindustrialization of
(unproductive) “rustbelt” economies, decimation of trade union power
and prodigious addiction of consumers to commodity fetishism, has also
been re-evaluated. The criticism started once stories began to appear in
the press about “entrepreneurial” Apple’s outsourcing strategy towards
China, where its main outsourcer, Taiwanese smartphone assembler
Foxconn, began suffering press reporting of some nineteen worker sui-
cides occasioned by the inhuman pace and boredom of their labor pro-
cess. This led to Apple re-assessing its supply chain and requiring other
sub-suppliers (e.g. for touchscreen technology) to be terminated for pol-
luting local rivers with toxic cleaning fluids. Four environmental groups
had also reported Foxconn and UniMicron of dumping heavy metals
into two rivers that flow into the Yangtze and Huangpu Rivers, which
supply Shanghai with drinking water.
More recently, in the UK, State outsourcing led to huge growth in:

(a) auditing firms—the Big 4 (KPMG, EY, PWC, Deloitte) grew in size,
(b) outsourcing firms (in UK) e.g. Carillion; Capita, Serco, Group 4,
Interserve, Mitie etc. also grew as privatised state services (in 2018,
Interserve had to seek £1 billion re-capitalisation).

A massive, lucrative market had opened up in the UK State Services

Sector. Following this neoliberal “Small State” “entrepreneurial” experi-
ment by successive governments, the results in terms of quality of service-­
delivery began to appear.
Initially, Carillion was officially bankrupted in 2017 with category (a)
outsourcers KPMG disingenuously overlooking the financial underper-
formance of category (b) Carillion, for whom, KPMG was their official
auditor. So we see how “entrepreneurial culture” is protected by “collu-
sion”. An executive of KPMG admitted “the public are mistaken if assum-
ing Big 4 auditors (KPMG et al.) judge business performance, we only
172  P. Cooke

monitor rules of tendering and see if valid expenditures are expended”. A

case of “never mind the quality, feel the width”.
Accused of favouring over-bidding to further “entrepreneurial” prac-
tices by what had been essentially “dull accountants”, the State as chief
client in these outsourcing deals then created a risky tendering climate in
response to public criticism, which resulted in wins for “lowest bidder”
outsourcers (even online auctions) in difficult, costly areas (like care and
prisons). State functionaries and ministers frequently forgot or down-
played pension fund costs. The Carillion CFO referred to the “waste of
money” occasioned by company pension contributions that resulted in
the unfilled £500 million pension deficit. There was poor risk assessment
by corporate boards. Governments did not insist on firm risk “hedging”.
Afterwards, the remorseful Serco CEO proposed “transparency”, “open
book accounting”, “break clauses” and “living wills”, as part of the ten-
dering process and for firms to hand contracts back to government while
also calling for re-regulation so that tendering firms must fund pensions
properly. In other words, the Corporate sector was requesting that the
Public sector ought to “protect” firms to act in their own best interests.
Globalization—to complete this little inquiry into the dark side of
some key concepts that have begun falling into disgrace, domino-like of
late, before returning to the task of briefly introducing that of entrepre-
neurship itself—is today (2019) less hegemonic than it was at least as
little as long ago as 2016. This is proximately because of utterances and
actions of Donald Trump, which themselves build upon a right-wing cri-
tique of deregulation, outsourcing and, finally, “entrepreneurial” global-
ization itself. Accordingly, the following quote seems premature, albeit
facing aspects of the current dilemmas of political economy:

Inspired by a quote from Antonio Gramsci, the last ten years… (resem-
bles)…an “interregnum”… Either way, the sense that what-went-before
has, at most, only slightly evolved since the (financial) crash is a dominant
narrative within political economy circles. What unites these accounts is a
sense of stasis: that we’re stuck, and we’ve been stuck for a decade. (Stanley
and Hunt 2018)
 10  Entrepreneurial Insouciance (or Imperiousness), the Big Risk…  173

We can agree with some of this but it can be argued that it is already a
little belated. To complete the quote as Gramsci put it, in Selections from
Prison Notebooks (1971),

The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new
cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms
appear. (Gramsci 1971)

These “morbid symptoms” we observed in securities trading are found

also in the wider economy where firms now routinely lie about aeroplane
guidance software (Boeing), automotive “default” emissions (VW), fake
stories are rewarded, addictively, from advertisement “clicks” on social
media (Bridge 2016; Zuboff 2019), energy firms are seen to have been
regularly “gouging” customers (forcing UK government to “cap” prices)
while banks and insurance firms increasingly engage in fraudulent
schemes (PPI; sub-prime mortgages; exorbitant payday loans) to exploit
their customers. Thus, “relational work” research (Zelizer 2012) has been
timely and prescient in seeing how boundary lines between fraudulent
and honest behaviour became blurred in the neoliberal “entrepreneurial”
culture of complicity between poachers and bailiffs.
Earlier, this paper’s critique of Big Tech’s insouciance has elsewhere
invoked strong regulation of the kind that broke up Standard Oil
(Galloway 2017; Zuboff 2019). But this would have to be suitably
advanced by the supposed augmentation of economic theory and prac-
tice in conceptualising today’s over-riding intangible over tangible pro-
duction and wealth. Economists have yet to update modern GDP indices
85 years after Kuznets’ seminal report to the US Congress in 1934. Or,
failing that, democratic political will to govern responsibly will be re-­
discovered by political jurisdictions once again learning successfully to
seek to save democracy from capitalism’s worst depredations, also after
approximately 85 years.
One observer elaborates a little on one of Stanley and Hunt’s (2018)
“heterodox interventions”—universal basic income—that like its oppo-
site “quantitative easing” grew to much greater prominence in the “inter-
regnum” than it had in Oliver Cromwell’s time of Diggers, Levellers and
the “pop-up mints” that printed money to pay soldiers in the English
174  P. Cooke

Civil War (Manning 2017). We here refer to Lanchester (2019), albeit a

late discoverer of this heterodoxy, in his London Review of Books article:
“The next Industrial Revolution is coming: here’s how we can ensure
equality”. Wolfgang Streeck’s (2016) five dark giants reside in the combi-
nation of robotics and artificial intelligence, intertwined with social
polarisation, underconsumption, excessive wealth of elites and increased
global insecurity which express with great poignancy the need for mass
“lifelong learning” because peoples are confronted with:

…a vision of insecurity, projected across a working life. It is a clear princi-

ple of economic and political history—one we’re relearning today—that
humans hate insecurity… In recent decades, we have seen a “great risk
shift”. Individuals in temporary, insecure, gig-like employment are taking
on risks that used to belong to the corporate sector. Not coincidentally, the
share of GDP going to the corporate sector in profits has risen and the
share accruing to labour as pay has gone down. (Lanchester 2019)

A new politics of inequality indicates that there is also revived public

appetite for radical demands to curb private and raise public tax and
spending. Nevertheless, such has been the rapid rise of globalization since
the 1980s that it took both the deindustrialized “rustbelt” communities
and their right-wing apologists some 30 years or more to grasp that they
had been suckered by globalization and its handmaiden neoliberalist
“entrepreneurial” ideology.

Against Antepreneurship
Entrepreneurship, therefore, is by no means confined to small, or start-up
businesses although many of the most prodigious firms on the planet
began as precisely such entrepreneurial start-ups, notably in Silicon
Valley. But the practices of both the surveillance capitalists and the latter-­
day emulators of their risk capital business model have tarnished Silicon
Valley’s once-admired reputation. Nowhere more was their abiding
insouciance vilified than in the form of the Googlebuses that ferry for free
the rich programmers and other tech company employees from their
 10  Entrepreneurial Insouciance (or Imperiousness), the Big Risk…  175

luxury skyscraper homes in San Francisco to their corporate campus

workplaces Myslewski (2013). As one Berkeley academic reported of the
resulting community activist protests that were widely seen:

“…as synechdoches for the anger that many San Francisco residents feel
towards technological privilege and its facilitation of a widening of a class
divide in the city”, and that the Google bus protests were “attempts to
disrupt the smoothness of technological privilege’s spread”. (De
Kosnik 2014)

Other “Big Tech” firms, such as Facebook, Apple, Yahoo and Genentech
also began using such conveyances from 2008. Rushkoff (2016) had
advocated variants on “universal basic income” as necessitated by entre-
preneurial imperiousness and the “big risk shift” suffered in the precarity
of the Googlebus protesters. He quoted an opinion on how entrepre-
neurial insousiance evolved rapidly into Big Tech’s “imperious” quest for
“platform monopoly”:

…entrepreneurs are more focused on creating monopolies and extracting

value than they are on realising the Internet’s potential to promote value
creation by many players…but…the dominant platforms enjoy network
effects that, over time, lead to dominant monopolies…which…brings cre-
ative destruction to a whole new level. (Rushkoff 2016, p.  87, quoting
F. Wilson on Platform Monopolies)

This perspective has grown rapidly into a critique of the post-­

entrepreneurial, “rent-seeking” mentality of the contemporary corpora-
tion. In another book, it is argued:

In several sectors, the growing influence of large and global firms has
increasingly had the effect of slowing down market dynamism and reduc-
ing the spirit of corporate experimentation. (Erixon and Weigel 2016)

Assessing the experiences of global companies, including Nokia, Uber,

IBM and Apple, the authors explored three key themes: declining eco-
nomic dynamism in Western economies; growing corporate reluctance to
contest markets and innovate; and excessive regulation limiting the
176  P. Cooke

diffusion of innovation. At a time of low growth, high unemployment

and increasing income inequality, innovation-led growth was being disin-
centivised. The key reason for this was as follows. Such corporates increas-
ingly spend their profits not on innovation but on share buybacks and
other “rents”. Volkswagen’s and others’ emissions defeat devices were con-
temporary versions of destroying competition until the competition
showed it had already or soon mimicked the “scam”. The authors show
that so much were the likes of Kodak and Nokia wedded to their sunk
costs in previous technologies that they were reluctant to do anything to
protect their diminishing returns from their inherited rents. Thus they
were unable or willing to avoid action that could prevent corporate death
or near-death experiences. Even Microsoft, that bought the carcass of
Nokia, suffered the “innovator’s dilemma” (Christensen 1997) of fearing
to destroy the rents from Windows by re-directing software innovation to
customised apps and new peripherals (Siilasmaa 2019). Meanwhile oth-
ers recognised the corporate value of intellectual property as a protected
source of rent that had the advantage of emasculating competitive corpo-
rate innovation. Thus, in another recent critique of monopoly:

…patents and copyrights reward the entertainment and pharmaceutical

industries with monopolies known as blockbusters… (Lindsey and
Teles 2017)

This puts to question whole rafts of academic research in regional,

national or technological innovation systems that both (wrongly) equate
“patenting” with “innovation” and then commit the further heroic indis-
cretion of professing that the former leads to the latter. A comparable
argument about the feather-bedded comforts of corporate “rent-seeking”
is made by Mazzucato (2018).
So finally, if corporate “entrepreneurialism” has turned into indolent
“rent-seeking” practice what of the “business dynamics” of entrepreneur-
ship in small and medium-sized firms and new business start-ups? The
brief answer is they too are showing signs of awakening from insousiance
and suffering from the “big risk shift” of many others, notably those con-
fronted with the effects of job automation, on the one hand, and the
 10  Entrepreneurial Insouciance (or Imperiousness), the Big Risk…  177

laziness of corporate “rent-seekers”, on the other. In sum, as authors like

Haltiwanger et al. (2014) conclude:

…recent trends point to sustained declines in business dynamism and in

entrepreneurship across a broad range of sectors in the US economy. While
the causes and implications of this development are still being uncovered,
it may suggest a lower growth economy and standards of living than other-
wise would have been. (Haltiwanger et al. 2014, p. 2)

This view, referring to sector-wide findings for the US economy is sup-

ported for secondary study-reviews of many advanced economies in the
world over varying, mainly recent, time-periods (Foster et  al. 2006;
Hathaway and Litan 2014; Decker et  al. 2016; Bijners and Konings
2017; St. Amant and Tessier 2018; Roper and Hart 2018; Cooke 2019).
Declines in entrepreneurship have registered varying levels and recent-
ness in all countries studied (e.g. in OECD 2017). It has become signifi-
cantly marked for graduates from higher education. Hence for US people
with more than a high school diploma, entrepreneurship is a less com-
mon vocation than it was 25 years ago. The decline is especially pro-
nounced among those with advanced degrees: in 1992, 4.0% of 25- to
54-year-olds with an advanced degree (beyond a bachelor’s) were entre-
preneurs. By 2017, this rate had fallen to 2.2% (Brookings/The Hamilton
Project 2018; Aydin 2019).
Since the Great Recession more redundancies have led to a surge in
such “start-ups” in the UK. Accordingly, there are 25% more sole traders
than before 2007 but their combined turnover is lower and their profits
were half that before 2007. A major study conducted by the UK’s highly-­
rated Institute for Fiscal Studies (2019) showed that most who try self-­
employment in the UK fail swiftly while very few go on to employ ten
people (the definition of “entrepreneur”). Sixty percent realised less than
£10,000 in taxable income. Accordingly, 20% of businesses established
by “sole traders” (defined as too small to pay VAT) close within a year and
60% close within five years. Not surprisingly, shared workspace investor
WeWork’s “prosecco-on-tap” business model for technology startup eco-
systems, entrepreneurs, freelancers, small businesses and large enterprises
suffered financial trouble in 2019 with annual losses of over $2 billion
178  P. Cooke

(Aydin 2019; Williams 2018). Accordingly, the Institute for Fiscal Studies
questioned why government schemes were incentivising employees to
start businesses which record low and falling incomes while less than a
quarter make deductions for capital investment. For further analysis of
the discovery that on a geographically broad scale “entrepreneurship” is
no longer as fashionable as its apologists once proposed, a fuller narrative
is contained in Cooke (2016, 2019).

Discussion and Conclusions
We have thus presented an account of the status of “entrepreneurship” in
the contemporary economic scene and it is much at variance with a cer-
tain benign perspective that most academic “entrepreneur” scholars and
apologists in business and government prefer to believe. A representative
contribution to boosting the low status of entrepreneurship research in
the business literature was provided by Shane and Venkataraman (2000)
in a highly-cited paper. They identified three questions entrepreneurship
studies should study: first, how entrepreneurial opportunities exist; sec-
ond, why and how some people not others discover these; and third, why
and how the few can exploit these. Without elaborating at tedious length
on these, it is nevertheless instructive that research into why and how
entrepreneurship stagnates, fails and declines is not to be addressed.
We can gain some insight into the path to perdition of the origins of
one allegedly illegal distortion of socio-economic “disruption” through
the Silicon Valley lens as refracted by right-wing journalism-cum-politics
in reading the beliefs of, first, a UK Brexit conspirator and, second, a
high-tech “influencer” of a slightly earlier era. The politico-journalist is
Britain’s (2019) new Minister for a “No-Deal Brexit”, former leader of
the Vote Leave UK EU referendum campaign Michael Gove. He was also
an early admirer of perpetrators of data harvesting from some 97 million
private Facebook posts as manipulated by Cambridge Analytica aided
and abetted by Victoria, BC’s Aggregate IQ algorithm coding firm. This
was preparatory to the aforementioned plebiscite as is shown in the
following.
 10  Entrepreneurial Insouciance (or Imperiousness), the Big Risk…  179

…In the spring of 2014 Emmanuel Macron departed for Silicon Valley
intent on building a tech start-up venture. Something I recognise from his
adoption of a number of approaches that were used on the Vote Leave
campaign… Mr. Macron’s team contacted 100,000 voters and then…used
algorithms to determine not just the opinions of the electorate but the
intensity with which they were held. Vote Leave employed a remarkably
similar approach. But, like Vote Leave, in deploying the tools and tech-
niques of a tech start-up to so comprehensively disrupt the existing order,
he has shown us the politics of the future. (Gove 2017)

As Gove says, this is exactly comparable to the UK Vote Leave data

harvesting of innumerable voters to determine not only their unwitting
opinions but the intensity with which they were held. All this was done
without Gove, the former Justice Minister, acknowledging or even appar-
ently caring about the probable illegality of invading the privacy of the
French (or British) electorates “to disrupt the existing order”.
The origin of this new “view of the world” in which democratically
agreed norms of non-invasive inquisition of voter or—for that matter—
consumer intentions by nefarious means, was first knowingly articulated
by Scott McNealy, founder of one of Silicon Valley’s once iconic IT firms,
Sun Microsystems, now an acquisition of another Silicon Valley giant,
software firm Oracle. It became another variety of Silicon Valley geek-­
speak when McNealy commented that:

“You have zero privacy anyway,” Sun Microsystems chief executive Scott
McNealy famously said in 1999. “Get over it.” (Popkin 2010)

Inspired by this, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg

famously went on record imperiously speaking the same sentiments
expressed by the big money data farmers that came before him: “none of
the cool kids care about privacy. Neither should you”. “This past
December (2009), Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt glibly stated in
a CNBC interview”, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone
to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place” (Popkin
2010). So there you have the authoritarian, inquisitorial, surveillance
philosophy in a nutshell—“Big Brother is watching you”.
180  P. Cooke

So, to conclude this account of the deflation of the mythology of

“entrepreneurship” at the hands of the “disruptors”, “influencers” and
“iconoclasts” we have argued that “entrepreneurship” has developed a bad
name whether at the hands of the corporate rent-seekers, deregulators,
outsourcers and globalisers or their erstwhile emulators in the world of
innovators, imitators and imperious forerunners. This judgement con-
firms and conforms with the data mobilised above which justifies swinge-
ing critique of “entrepreneurialism”’s transgression of social, economic,
environmental and political norms of civilized behaviour in contempo-
rary society. In both cases, reputations have declined as the “entrepre-
neurship ecosystems” have grown thinner while the corporate
mega-budgets have burgeoned from their rent-seeking, profit-taking and
tax-avoiding “culture” of entitlement. Both categories arose with the rise
of neoliberal ideology and both are facing category-killers from the emer-
gent critique of the social polarisation, excessive earnings and luxury con-
sumption that characterises the kingpins of both. Right-wing populism,
anti-immigrant rhetoric, precarity, excessive earnings and luxury con-
sumption have arisen in the past but have so far been defeated by those
suffering unacceptable austerity outcomes from the “big risk shock” of
gig-like economic insecurity, minimum wages, sink-estate slum housing
and fragile cognitive conditions as democracy once again confronts the
spectre of unrestrained capitalism. These are more than sufficient reasons
for being “against entrepreneurship” for its lawlessness, iconoclasm,
imperiousness and—deliberate—insouciance.

References
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 11
The Dark Side of Entrepreneurial
Passion: Restraining Employee
Innovative Behaviour?
Eeva Aromaa, Ulla Hytti, and Satu Aaltonen

Introduction
Most studies focus on the positive outcomes of entrepreneurial behaviour
and emphasise the pivotal role of the passionate entrepreneur in deter-
mining firm success (Man et  al. 2002; Ahmad et  al. 2010). However,
there is also a dark side in entrepreneurship as Kets de Vries pointed out
as early as 1985. He suggested that the traits and behaviours of entrepre-
neurs that allow them to succeed in their businesses can prove to be det-
rimental in their roles as managers or co-workers (Kets de Vries 1985).
Research on entrepreneurial passion suggests that entrepreneurs have
enthusiasm and love for their ventures (Cardon et  al. 2009). For the

E. Aromaa (*)
Business School, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland
e-mail: eeva.aromaa@uef.fi
U. Hytti • S. Aaltonen
Turku School of Economics, University of Turku, Turku, Finland
e-mail: ullhyt@utu.fi; satu.aaltonen@utu.fi

© The Author(s) 2020 185

A. Örtenblad (ed.), Against Entrepreneurship,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47937-4_11
186  E. Aromaa et al.

owner-manager, a business bears meaning beyond economic utility, per-

haps becoming an extension of the self. Consequently, the inner make-up
of the key power holder greatly influences how the business is run. The
owner-manager may meddle in even routine operations, centralise power
and restrict others’ initiative (Kets de Vries 1996). In the context of small
companies, the owner-manager has the responsibility of serving as the
primary brake or catalyst of innovative behaviour within the firm (Carrier
1996; Bouchard and Basso 2011; Castrogiovanni et al. 2011).
On the other hand, employee-driven innovations are found to be key
sources of competitiveness for small- and medium-sized enterprises
(SMEs) (Kristiansen and Bloch-Poulsen 2010; Hoeve and Nieuwenhuis
2006; Feldman and Pentland 2003). Research on employee-driven inno-
vation places primacy on the idea that every employee can have innova-
tion potential irrespective of their position or level of education
(Kristiansen and Bloch-Poulsen 2010). This chapter discusses the ten-
sions and contradictions between employee-driven innovativeness and
entrepreneurial passion of the owner-manager. The overly positive view
of entrepreneurship can therefore be challenged (Verduijn et al. 2014).
This chapter illustrates why there is a reason to be against such mani-
festations of entrepreneurial passion, which bring out some of the darkest
sides of entrepreneurial management. This study addresses these manifes-
tations by investigating the interplay between the owner-manager and
the employees while analysing how entrepreneurial passion may restrain
and condition employee innovative behaviour within a small firm. The
study is based on an intensive case study in one Finnish small service
company. Our results indicate that entrepreneurial passion restrains or
conditions employee innovative behaviour, which means there is reason
to be against “entrepreneurship”—or at least much more cautious than
most of the previous literature has been. In terms of structure, this book
chapter first provides a theoretical framework consisting of entrepreneur-
ial passion, entrepreneurial management behaviour and employee inno-
vative behaviour. Next, we continue by describing our methodological
approach before presenting our main findings. Finally, we discuss the
theoretical and practical implications.
 11  The Dark Side of Entrepreneurial Passion: Restraining…  187

Theoretical Framework
 ntrepreneurial Passion and Entrepreneurial
E
Management Behaviour

Entrepreneurship is an emotional journey (Baron 2008) and passion is

embedded in its practice (Cardon et al. 2009). The interpretivist orienta-
tion views passion as a socially produced and reproduced phenomenon,
where passion is mobilised in certain organizational situations and char-
acterised by historically situated cultural and social practices (Gherardi
et  al. 2007). Entrepreneurial passion consists of “consciously accessible,
intense positive feelings experienced by engagement in entrepreneurial activi-
ties associated with roles that are meaningful and salient to the self-identity
of the entrepreneur” (Cardon et al. 2009, p. 517). From this perspective,
passion becomes integral to entrepreneurial and managerial identity
(Simpson et al. 2015). At its best, experiences of entrepreneurial passion
aid in motivating coherent and coordinated goal pursuit (Cardon
et al. 2009).
Previous studies have emphasised the positive consequences of entre-
preneurial passion while overlooking the potentially negative side.
Cardon et al. (2005) suggest that while entrepreneurial passion can be
inspiring, it can also be hurtful to oneself and others, leading to dysfunc-
tional consequences. Previous studies about the dark side of passion have
suggested that the experience of passion may produce response patterns
that are obsessive, blind or misdirected (Vallerand et al. 2003). For exam-
ple, this dark force can be seen in entrepreneurs’ resistance to exploring
alternative options (Cardon et al. 2009). Simpson et al. (2015) have criti-
cised the current research on entrepreneurial passion for its teleological
assumption: passion is understood as a solely positive emotion that influ-
ences entrepreneurs’ cognition and behaviour in a helpful manner.
The literature thoroughly highlights the pivotal role of owner-­managers
in running their firms. Management in small firms is unique, often char-
acterised by personalised preferences and informality. Few studies have
focused on the interactional nature of passion to investigate how entre-
preneurs’ actions and performances of passion impact others. Although
188  E. Aromaa et al.

leadership is a major entrepreneurial task, entrepreneurship research has

primarily focused on the relationship between leadership styles and orga-
nizational performance (Vecchio 2003; Ensley et al. 2006; Hmieleski and
Ensley 2007). However, affective experiences at work influence employ-
ees’ behaviour (Seo et al. 2004) and Breugst et al. (2012) argue that there
is a lack of knowledge about how managers’ entrepreneurial passion
influences employees’ actions. In small companies, entrepreneurs and
employees are in frequent and direct contact with each other, making it
more likely that entrepreneurs will affect employee behaviour consider-
ably (Ensley et al. 2006).

Employee Innovative Behaviour

The employee innovative behaviour literature underscores that innovative

behaviour extends beyond the right of the owner-manager and every
employee has an innovative potential (Kristiansen and Bloch-Poulsen
2010). Innovative behaviour among employees has been defined in vari-
ous ways and some definitions emphasise the phases from idea generation
to idea implementation, others refer more to an attitude (Dorenbosch
et al. 2005), or activities such as problem identification and finding solu-
tions (Basadur 2004). Regardless of the vantage point, employees’ inno-
vativeness has been found to play an essential role in ensuring the
competitiveness of SMEs (Kristiansen and Bloch-Poulsen 2010; Hoeve
and Nieuwenhuis 2006; Feldman and Pentland 2003). Besides the eco-
nomic value created for the company, the possibility for employees to
engage in innovative behaviour and in innovations also improve the work
life quality (Kristiansen and Bloch-Poulsen 2010). However, existing
research suggests that employees cannot operate alone, but innovative
processes can be seen as the outcome of a continuous interplay between
the managers and employees (Heinonen and Toivonen 2008). Researchers
have noted the need for the leader to be sensitive during the innovation
process. Leaders should encourage innovation, evaluate and develop
employees’ ideas, act as role models and be innovators themselves; simul-
taneously, they must be careful not to be overly dominant and discourage
 11  The Dark Side of Entrepreneurial Passion: Restraining…  189

subordinates from expressing their ideas (Mumford et al. 2003; Hunter

and Cushenbery 2011).
We argue that acknowledging the context (Welter 2011) is of the
utmost importance in understanding employee innovative behaviour,
particularly when investigating employee innovative behaviour and its
potential barriers. For example, Aaltonen and Hytti (2014) demonstrated
that the barriers caused by everyday work practices are important—even
if commonly ignored in the innovation literature. Innovative behaviour
among employees has primarily been studied in large firms and public
sector organizations (Moriano et al. 2011). Following de Jong and Den
Hartog (2007), our interest lies in expert services—but with a particular
focus on the small firm context and the role of the owner-manager as a
gatekeeper or promoter of such behaviour (see also Carrier 1996;
Castrogiovanni et al. 2011, Aaltonen and Hytti 2015). Thus, our contri-
bution rests in providing a more nuanced understanding of the interac-
tion between the expressions of entrepreneurial passion and employee
innovative behaviour in the small firm context.

The Case Company

We conducted empirical research in a rental and real estate company.
This micro-sized company has implemented several service innovations
in the past few years. The owner-manager of the company is a middle-­
aged woman who established her agency in 1999 as part of a franchising
chain and has been leading the company ever since. The company oper-
ates in a competitive field of business, making the constant renewal of
service processes and new service innovation essential for survival. The
owner-manager holds 70% of the company shares, while two employees
each hold 15%. The owner-manager actively participates in the compa-
ny’s daily activities and informally leads the operational work. The open
culture allows for abundant discussion and encourages co-operation
between the owner-manager and employees.
190  E. Aromaa et al.

Methodology, Data Collection and Analysis

An event-based criterion was applied in selecting this case (Neergaard
2007), and for the purposes of this research, we rely on the idea of an
intensive case study strategy (Eriksson and Kovalainen 2015). During the
two-year research project which focused on managing and measuring
innovation at work in a Finnish small and medium-sized companies, we
built an understanding of the roles of the owner-manager and employees
in their everyday activities by relying on different data sources gathered
from the case company. The first author conducted participant observa-
tion for one week, participated in eleven office meetings, arranged two
company development workshops and conducted four interviews with
the entrepreneur and one with all employees. The analysis is based on the
transcribed data from the development workshop, where the owner-­
manager, Paula (all names are pseudonyms), and three employees, Irene,
Emma and Anna reflected on the company’s innovation practices and
related tensions (Aromaa and Eriksson 2014).
In the first phase of the analysis, we paid attention to the fact that the
interaction between the entrepreneur and the employees was shaped by
the role of the entrepreneur as the prime mover in almost all matters. This
led us to investigate the case and findings through the theoretical lenses
of the “dark side of entrepreneurial management” (Kets de Vries 1985)
and employee innovative behaviour (Kristiansen and Bloch-Poulsen 2010).

Results
In this section, we present relevant findings from our case company,
where the owner-manager and the employees talk about the innovation
practices of their firm. The seven extracts we will introduce fall into two
thematic categories emphasising the role of the passionate entrepreneur:
(1) the owner-manager as the leading innovator of the firm and (2) the
owner-manager as the leading decision maker of the firm.
 11  The Dark Side of Entrepreneurial Passion: Restraining…  191

 he Owner-manager as the Leading Innovator

T
of the Firm

The owner-manager develops ideas alone. At the workshop, the owner-­

manager discusses how she comes up with ideas during her leisure time
during the weekends and holidays.

Yeah, I’ve had time to think. I’ve sat on the sauna bench, warmed in the
sauna and done trips on a row boat. I have like a long process there where
all the time I’m thinking about it [the idea], it just sort of grows and then
I’m all like yes! I feel absolutely convinced that these are great ideas! And I
can hardly wait to tell you all about them! (Paula, Manager)

Summertime is the most hectic season in the company. At the work-

shop the employees critically reflect on Paula’s behaviour when she comes
back to the office with her ideas.

While you are away, we have been working really hard. When you start
with your ideas, we feel like you seem to have little respect for the work we
have been doing during your time off. (Emma, Employee)

There is also another problem with owner-manager’s habit of elaborat-

ing her ideas during the leisure time.

And you have thought it [the ideas] out so far in your head. And then you
get terribly disappointed when we are not really excited about them.
(Irene, Employee)

Interpretation. The owner-manager’s habit of developing new ideas

during her leisure time poses two problems. First, during the holiday
season, the employees are very busy and work under pressure. When the
owner-manager returns to the office with all her new ideas, the employees
are not in a welcoming mood. The owner-manager’s timing for present-
ing her new ideas is sometimes poor. The employees feel that she does not
show them respect for working hard during her holiday when she pres-
ents new ideas immediately upon return. Second, the employees feel that
192  E. Aromaa et al.

they are excluded from the innovation process because they are not
involved in developing the ideas but are only presented the outcome that
the owner-manager thinks is ready for implementation. As a result of the
owner-manager’s passionate but solitary brainstorming, the employees
find it hard to make sense of her thought process. Sharing ideas at an
earlier stage could reduce negative group reactions and save the owner-­
manager from the disappointing reaction of employees who are not
excited about her ready-to-implement ideas which from the employees’
point of view may be far from ready.

It’s like back to the drawing board. When the owner-manager and
employees reflect innovation practices of the company, the employee
describes the owner-manager as the main innovator of the company. The
employee raises a problem how the employees cannot see themselves as
contributing to the innovation practice of the company.

All our new ideas start from Paula’s black notebook. Her ideas are the liveli-
est and loudest, even shocking and upsetting. She presents her ideas as if to
suggest that we will begin to act in a totally new way. It’s like back to the
drawing board. We [employees] can hardly recognise our own ideas at all.
(Irene, Employee)

Interpretation. Even the employees perceive the owner-manager as

the main innovator of the company. Although, in the small service com-
pany, the employees have an important role in the continuous develop-
ment of the customer service practices such as developing documents,
forms and checklists used in customer service processes, the divide is clear
between the owner-manager and the employees. Owner-manager’s radi-
cal innovations, noted in her black idea notebook and presented in a very
passionate manner and pompous ways, construct the employees’ ideas as
incremental. It seems that even if the owner-manager is aiming to inspire
the employees with her passion (Breugst et al. 2012; Cardon 2008), the
employee’s reflection in this extract illustrates her wish how the owner-­
manager should hold back her enthusiasm, which seems to produce pat-
terns that are blind, causing some reluctance to discuss and re-evaluate
her ideas flexibly (Vallerand et al. 2003; Cardon et al. 2009).
 11  The Dark Side of Entrepreneurial Passion: Restraining…  193

The owner-manager presents too many ideas. The owner-manager

actively participates in trainings and projects. During the workshop, the
owner-­manager gives out ideas how they could develop customer service
procedures. Suddenly, she questions the way how the company is adopt-
ing new things.

Do we…have too much of everything? Maybe we have too many ideas that
we would like to implement. (Paula, Manager)

The employee immediately agrees with the owner-manager.

We try to adopt too many new practices and procedures that sound so
good and fine. When we try to do everything, then we sometimes end up
doing nothing. I think we should prioritise and schedule our ideas better.
(Irene, Employee)

Interpretation. The owner-manager feels passionately about all her

new ideas and wishes to implement them all simultaneously without
questioning their importance or the organizational capacity. The extract
illustrates how she is often in an intense, flow-like state of total absorp-
tion (Csikszentmihalyi 1990), which is associated with affects like enthu-
siasm and zeal (Smilor 1997). The owner-manager expects the organization
to be agile and ready for change and have resources for implementation.
However, the extract illustrates how from the employees’ perspectives,
this overly-passionate behaviour towards all new ideas causes them to try
to adopt too many new practices and procedures, leading to distractions,
work fragmentation and an inability to implement the ideas.

Promoting ideas during the night-time? The owner-manager’s pas-

sion for elaborating ideas in any time of the day has ignored the practical
issues from the employees’ perspective.

Night-time is best for ideas! The daytime is too hectic with customer ser-
vice. (Paula, Manager)
We don’t have time to develop ideas when we are serving customers and
when the telephone is ringing all the time. (Emma, Employee)
194  E. Aromaa et al.

Developing new ideas should be scheduled to the calendar. If we have

agreed that we do something, we should have time to do it! (Irene, Employee)

Interpretation. For the owner-manager, the lack of time for develop-

ing ideas is not an issue because she is flexible, finding time to develop
new ideas. The owner-manager entrepreneurial passion makes it difficult
for the owner-manager to slow down and realise that other work tasks
and duties represent a major obstacle and limit employee ability to com-
mit to the firm’s renewal at her same level. Thus, while the owner-­manager
and employees all seem equally motivated to develop ideas, their different
roles and emotional attachment to the company create a need for more
systematic organization of firm innovation. Thus, there is a need for more
systematic organising of innovation in the firm due to the owner-­
manager’s and employees’ differing roles and emotional attachment to
the company (Aaltonen and Hytti 2015).

 he Owner-manager as the Leading Decision Maker

T
of the Firm

I can see how I grab things for myself. The owner-manager reflects how
she too easily participates in decision making concerning issues which are
part of the employees’ everyday decision-making activities in serving
rental customers.

I can see how I scoop the issues and make the decisions on behalf of you.
Even though you are making such good rental estimates and choosing
exactly the same new tenants to the apartments as I would do. (Paula,
Manager)
We all [employees] share an attitude that Paula is needed to come and
say her final word. Everyone of us will wait until she comes and makes the
decision. Only then we know for sure. (Emma, Employee)

Interpretation. Albeit wishing to delegate decision-making to the

employees, the owner-manager takes care of the decisions and the
employees have learned to avoid making independent decisions and ask
the owner-manager first in order to avoid mistakes. The behaviour of the
owner-manager resembles the patterns identified in what has been called
 11  The Dark Side of Entrepreneurial Passion: Restraining…  195

the “dramatic organization” where the owner-manager centralises power

to herself and meddles in even routine operations (Kets de Vries 1996).
In this small service company, the owner-manager feels emotionally
responsible for not leaving the employees alone with decisions, which
illustrates how her motive is more altruistic than egocentric.

Let’s put this behind the ear. In the workshop, the owner-manager
had a certain habit of dealing with the ideas. For example, when an
employee suggested an idea concerning collective information sharing
after the trainings but the owner-manager was not fully convinced on the
employee’s idea, the owner-manager answered to the employee by using
the idiom.

Let’s put the idea behind the ear. (Paula, Manager)

The employee seemed to know how the owner-manager’s idiom was

synonym for forgetting the idea.

No! We shall do this, because this is really important! (Irene, Employee)

Interpretation. In the company, the owner-manager and the employ-

ees elaborate ideas together but nobody documents them. They are only
stored in the mind of the owner-manager who elaborates and combines
them with other ideas. Hence, from her perspective they materialize in
one form or another. From the employees’ point of view they disappear
and are forgotten. The owner-manager always listens to the ideas of the
employees, but from the employees’ perspective a great number of ideas
disappear and they see the situation as if the ideas will be forgotten by the
owner-manager. Owner-manager’s reluctance to implement the ideas of
the employees associated with the simultaneous avoidance of the open
rejection of them can be interpreted either as a form of the avoidance of
conflicts, the demonstration of power or unwillingness to let the others
to get enmeshed in her endeavour—the firm.

The owner-manager taking many personal contacts. The discussion

in the workshop turns into customer relations and how to get ideas from
the customers.
196  E. Aromaa et al.

Getting ideas from the customers, I think it is the capability to read

between the lines when talking with them. (Paula, Leader)
But our customers have personal contacts only with Paula. They can’t
contact us directly because we don’t have our own, personal phone number
or e-mail addresses. This is one reason why it is difficult for us to establish
long-term customer relations. (Irene, Employee)

Interpretation. The owner-manager establishes personal connections

with customers and the information on what was discussed remains only
in her head. Thus, the employees cannot rely on continued customer
contact as a source for new ideas and improvements. However, she wishes
for the employees to take more initiative and to be more proactive in
their customer relations.

Discussion
In this study, we have found how the owner-manager’s entrepreneurial
passion restrains or conditions employee innovative behaviour within a
small service company. First, we apply research focusing on owner-­
manager entrepreneurial passion (Cardon et  al. 2005, 2009; Murnieks
et al. 2014) to understand the behaviour of owner-managers as leaders
and co-workers in their organizations. We also underline the pivotal role
of owner-managers in running and influencing their firms (Beaver and
Jennings 2005; Jones and Crompton 2009; Lans et al. 2011; Man et al.
2002). Finally, we rely on research into employee innovative behaviour
(de Jong and Den Hartog 2007; Kristiansen and Bloch-Poulsen 2010;
Basadur 2004), considering the interconnections between owner-­
manager entrepreneurial passion, management and employee innovative
behaviour.
Previous studies have shown that the leader acting as an innovative
role-model can increase idea generation in the whole company (see de
Jong and Den Hartog 2007). However, our case study illustrates that the
owner-managers need to be sensitive to the situation and style when con-
sidering the introduction of new ideas. Actions, performances and dis-
plays of passion may limit employees’ innovative behaviour as it excludes
 11  The Dark Side of Entrepreneurial Passion: Restraining…  197

them from the innovation process in various ways. The passionate behav-
iour of the owner-manager deprives the employees of the opportunity to
truly participate in the innovation process as they are sometimes only
invited to the implementation phase.
We wish to emphasise that we do not view owner-manager entrepre-
neurial passion as purely negative or dysfunctional; however, in our case,
it creates a social reality in which employees feel disempowered to pro-
duce ideas for new innovations. Instead, they are overwhelmed by those
proposed by the owner-manager and assign her the role of innovation
practitioner. Hence, the findings also illustrate the normalisation of
employee behaviour to remain in a more passive role. In this sense, both
the owner-managers and the employees are playing their roles accordingly.
From a practical perspective, if owner-managers wish to change their
organizations’ working practices, they need to become experts in analys-
ing their own behaviours and practices in order to learn how to change
them. The owner-managers wishing to engage their employees in innova-
tive behaviour should restrain their passion. In meetings, they might pur-
posefully be the last to speak and wait for employees to come up with
ideas first before expressing their own ideas. It would also be beneficial to
create particular events as “idea development meetings” in order to allow
employees to come to meetings with a particular mindset and level of
preparedness rather than turning every routine meeting into an innova-
tion arena. In our view, these suggestions imply emotionally controlling
one’s passion for the business and getting things done. If the leader agrees
that knowledge is dispersed throughout the organization, then tapping
into that innovation capability is necessary for the future of the firm.

Conclusions
Entrepreneurial passion of owner-managers has been understood primar-
ily as a positive phenomenon. Meanwhile, the literature largely has
ignored the interactional perspective regarding how this entrepreneurial
passion impacts employees. On the other hand, employee innovative
behaviour has been taken for granted and seen to be constrained by indi-
vidual factors, such as education or personality. Consequently, existing
198  E. Aromaa et al.

literature assigns responsibility for the employees to be innovative and

engage in the innovation processes in the firm. The findings from an
intensive case study on a small owner-manager-led firm illustrate how
owner-managers’ entrepreneurial passion for ideas and entrepreneurial
management behaviour restrain and condition employee innovative
behaviour. Consequently, this study contributes to understanding how
employee innovative behaviour in small firms can be restrained by the
owner-manager’s entrepreneurial passion, which is a reason to be against
entrepreneurship as a passionate accomplishment. A critical examination
of the case shows how the passionate owner-manager performing the role
of primary innovation agent casts the employees in more passive roles in
terms of developing new ideas and acting innovatively.

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 12
In Defense of the Comfort Zone:
Against the Hegemony of Creative
Destruction
Jerzy Kociatkiewicz and Monika Kostera

Creative Destruction as Permanent (Dis)order

We are against entrepreneurship because it distorts perspective, fore-
grounding the unusual, the unprecedented and the unsettled, and
obscures the humdrum sociality that enables all the processes of organiz-
ing, including entrepreneurial ones, to take place. While activities that
might be1 subsumed under the term entrepreneurship have, for a long
time, constituted a part of the organizational and managerial repertoire,
the emergence of entrepreneurship as a significant academic discipline
can largely be dated to the last decades of the twentieth century. While it

J. Kociatkiewicz
Université Paris-Saclay, Univ Evry, IMT-BS, LITEM, Evry, France
e-mail: kociak@kociak.or
M. Kostera (*)
Institute of Culture, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland
Södertörn University, Huddinge, Sweden
e-mail: monika.kostera@sh.se

© The Author(s) 2020 203

A. Örtenblad (ed.), Against Entrepreneurship,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47937-4_12
204  J. Kociatkiewicz and M. Kostera

is possible to find some predecessors—for example, Michael Perelman

(1995) champions the nineteenth century economist David Ames
Wells—the generally agreed-on foundational basis for entrepreneurship
research (and leading, eventually, to virtual beatification of the figure of
the entrepreneur) is Joseph Schumpeter’s analysis of business cycles cul-
minating in Capitalism, socialism and democracy (1942). Schumpeter’s
work, while introducing terms and framings crucial for entrepreneurship
studies, was firmly rooted in the author’s home discipline of economics.
Only since the late 1970s did the discipline emerge “from groups of iso-
lated scholars doing research on small business to an international com-
munity of departments, institutes and foundations promoting research
on new and high-growth firms” (Aldrich 2012, p. 1240). These days, the
discipline’s claimed domain tends to be much broader, and most decid-
edly not limited to business ventures. A recent literature review article
described it as follows:

Entrepreneurship refers primarily to an economic function that is carried

out by individuals, entrepreneurs, acting independently or within organi-
zations, to perceive and create new opportunities and to introduce their
ideas into the market, under uncertainty, by making decisions about loca-
tion, product design, resource use, institutions, and reward systems.
(Carlsson et al. 2013, p. 914)

Bearing in mind the increasingly expansive usage of the term “market,”

any creative, novel, or simply new activity (within or outside organiza-
tions) can be seen as a valid area of interest for entrepreneurship studies.
We would not see it as particularly objectionable or even noteworthy
(boundaries between academic disciplines are, and should be, extremely
porous), if not for the set of problematic assumptions dominating much
of entrepreneurship writing. According to modern classics, such as Bengt
Johannisson (2005), entrepreneurship relies on transgressing boundaries
and challenging structures and institutions. Entrepreneurship is a
dynamic and vigorous lifestyle, a playful and creative approach to life and
work (Johannisson 2005; Hjorth et al. 2003). The entrepreneur engages
in creative destruction (Schumpeter 1949), questions the old and
received, is nonplussed by tradition. He or she is always ready to test the
 12  In Defense of the Comfort Zone: Against the Hegemony…  205

boundaries of what is real and possible, to explore new grounds and per-
haps establish something new and unique in place of what is or is becom-
ing obsolete in his or her energetic presence. Entrepreneuring is a
paradoxical activity: a kind of anarchic organizing, a revolution and evo-
lution at the same time, both a vision, as well as action, alone and with
others, dependently and independently, making use of activity and reflec-
tion (Johannisson 2005). Even the description of entrepreneurial pro-
cesses needs a new approach, getting rid of old notions and definitions.
Old management books prove to be insufficient to embrace the imme-
diacy, spontaneity, creation and playfulness that are at heart of the entre-
preneurial engagement (Hjorth 2001). Indeed, the old fashioned terms
emphasizing structure and strategy need to be replaced with a dictionary
based on vocabularies ready to hold such ideas as passion and transcen-
dence (Johannisson et al. 1997). Nothing is regarded as stable or given:
even resources, the usual object of care of management, are not some-
thing given but can be extended, even created. The environment does not
impose limitations like in traditional management thinking, but provides
an endless space of possibilities (Johannisson 2005). Being entrepreneur-
ial means engaging in the interplay between the agency of the individual,
of the event and of the environment. This interplay is powered by innova-
tion and renewal, affirmative of identities in the making. Everything
about it is creative. It is both a perfectly emergent and immanent process
of organizing. The process becomes a result and, at the same time, the
medium for its emergence: bringing together of individualities and col-
lectivities. Johannisson envisages the entrepreneur as a bricoleur, assem-
bles and puts together new forms from the given, using things, processes,
ideas and people as her or his building material. She or he can also be
regarded as an organizational artist: transgressing constantly the known,
seeking the original, needing a free space where they do not have to put
up with the controlling social institutions.
The entrepreneur not only makes new realities happen around him or
her but works actively to convince others to adapt to their vision
(Johannisson 2005). The vision has to become a necessity for them, and
where destruction and creation merge into organizing. It is, however, not
a stable kind of organizing, but reliant on the unpredictable and subject to
incessant change in time. Everything must nowadays be entrepreneurial,
206  J. Kociatkiewicz and M. Kostera

from ordinary employment (Fleming 2017) to the university (Connell

2019). Entrepreneurship replaces production, argues Wendy Brown
(2017), putting investment capital itself before any of its productive uses
and employments. The person has become entreprenerialized and discon-
nected from context and even meditation has been turned into an entre-
preneurial fashion, as Ron Purser argues in his book on mindfulness, aptly
titled McMindfulness (Purser 2019). It is clear that entrepreneurship has
become mythologized (Kostera 2008), and it has become so in order to
serve as a neoliberal mindset (Purser 2019), a glamorous make-up of the
stark reality of precarization (Standing 2011) and a sleek legitimization of
growing social inequality and misery (Bauman 2011).
Such conceptualization, coupled with the understanding of entrepre-
neurship as a positive force in society, underpins, or at least parallels, the
more popular imperative of stepping (or being pushed) out of one’s com-
fort zone. The ascendance of narratives vilifying the comfort zone accom-
panies the transformation of global society which Zygmunt Bauman
described as a passage from solid modernity towards liquid modernity
(2000) and interregnum (2012): a world where structures are not only
transient and fluid, but also dysfunctional and unreliable. In this light,
we see the discourse of entrepreneurship as detrimental to finding the
necessary collective structural solutions to the multiple social and envi-
ronmental crises challenging contemporary organizations and societies.
We ground our argument in a longitudinal study of alternative organiza-
tions focused on the common good, and their participants concerns, dif-
ficulties and solutions regarding the possibility of offering the participants
a sense of home and the comfort of belonging. Interestingly, one of us
applied (successfully) for funding for one of this project’s phases (the
second, most extensive phase research-wise) framed as a study in of eco-
logical entrepreneurship (ecopreneurship).2 The label was soon aban-
doned, as the social actors were usually distancing themselves in rather
categorical words from any kind of “entreprenurship”, while reacting
more neutrally to “management” and completely positively to “organiza-
tion” and “organizing”.
 12  In Defense of the Comfort Zone: Against the Hegemony…  207

Method
The empirical material derives from a multi-sited study of alternative
organizations conducted by one of the authors. Organizational ethnogra-
phy allows the researcher to gain insight from the perspective of the social
actors in the field, thus acquiring local knowledge, but also being able to
understand the development of wider processes and their cultural mean-
ing thanks to an immersion in the field (Van Maanen 1988; Watson
1994; Kostera 2007; Pachirat 2018). The entire study we refer to in this
text has been in progress for seven years at the time of writing and con-
cerns several layers of structure and culture construction in the field. The
study touches several topics, including the theme of home which we are
addressing in this chapter.
The initial phase took place in Polish work organizations and later
several UK based ones were added. Many of them are cooperatives, but
the collection also contains small and family businesses, informal organi-
zations and public organizations. The contact developed through gate-
keepers and networks and in the most intense phase, made possible
thanks to a EU Marie Curie grant that one of us held, the number of
studied organizations included 18 UK and 16 Polish organizations. Later
12 were selected for more prolonged contact and currently the number is
down to one UK based and three Polish. The field, albeit consisting of
organizations holding a common central characteristic, i.e. being value
driven and not focused on profit as their first and fundamental goal,3
displayed many differing social goals and organizational forms, which
enabled the maximum variation case selection approach (Flyvbjerg 2011).
The main methods used were dependent on the phase of the study. In
the first phase, in-depth recurrent interviews with a limited number of
key informants from each organization were the dominant method, along
with brief non participant and direct observations (Kostera 2007;
Czarniawska 2014). In the second phase formal transcribed interviews
were still the dominant method, however, instances direct observation
were now more extensive and longer. In the third (current) phase, the
prevalent method are informal (non-transcribed) interviews, comple-
mented by direct and participant observations. All the names presented
208  J. Kociatkiewicz and M. Kostera

in this text are pseudonyms, as we were concerned about the privacy of

the social actors in our field and, following an ethnographic tradition, did
not want to publicize their identity.
The material was, for the purpose of this chapter, analyzed by means of
narrative methods (Gabriel 2000; Goodall 2000). We were looking for
plots and metaphors pertaining to the idea of home and homeliness. The
theme occurred spontaneously and was one of the fundamental meta-
phors often used both in formal and informal communication by the
social actors in the field. It appeared in many of the interviews and con-
versations. We selected a few of the occurrences that we consider either
typical or interesting and illuminating. By focusing on stories, we were
both looking for ways of knowing (Gergen 1994) in the field, as well as
aiming at gaining insight into the modes of sensemaking and sense-­giving
in the studied organizations (Weick 1995).
The entirety of the field can be described as alternative organizations,
which recently are gaining increasing interest among organization schol-
ars. Parker et al. (2007, 2014) call for a study of organizations outside of
the managerialist mainstream, to better understand both the diversity
and the alternatives to the limited textbook population. Among the pub-
lications addressing this gap are: “real utopias” or democratic workplaces
(Wright 2010), social movements (Reedy et al. 2016), differing manage-
ment styles and modes (Gibson-Graham et al. 2013), the re-introduction
of the commons in management practices (Łapniewska 2017), and
many others.

Comfort Zone Creativity

While ideas of adventure, heroic tales and notions of creation and creativ-
ity were very strongly present in the collected material (Kostera 2017),
another, equally prominent motif emerged, often and sometimes very
intensely, in many of the studied organizations: that of homeliness.
Building a non-antagonistic relationship between “home” and “work”
was a common concern among the employees, with a widely spread belief
that the workplace should be a kind of a home for the members of the
organization. Thus, the issue of homeliness appeared often in discussions
 12  In Defense of the Comfort Zone: Against the Hegemony…  209

and in interpretations of work practices provided by the workers, intro-

duced into the discourse almost invariably by the employees rather than
as a result of managerial initiative. Many organizations provided space for
the workers where they could keep their private belongings and spend
time together or alone. Sometimes they also encouraged them to use the
space originally prepared for customers; for example, the employees of a
vegan bar, The Vegan Place, tend to occupy some of the tables in the bar
area, at times of less intense customer traffic but sometimes also at busy
times. It was not unusual for customers to look somewhat askew at the
happy company of cooperants chatting away at a table, while they had to
wait at the door for some of the other lunch consumers to finish and leave
their place for the next hungry person.
Some organizations depicted themselves as providing a kind of a home
not only for the workers but also for the local residents. Thus, the employ-
ees of The Good Cooperative, a cooperative grocery store, prided them-
selves in the fact that the customers often struck up conversations among
each other, while waiting in the queue. This was supported by the obser-
vations in the store. People often seemed happy to chat among each other,
as well as with the employees (much more often than is the norm in
Polish shops). On several occasions the cooperative deliberately provided
their customers with cosy spots such as chairs and marked outdoor spaces
where they could socialize after they have finished shopping. Several
times, The Good Cooperative organized bigger and more formalized par-
ties for customers and employees alike. On one occasion, it took place in
the street outside the shop, and on others in spaces borrowed or rented
from other alternative organizations. This organization also regularly held
parties for the employees, either in its main office or in a space provided
by another cooperative. On these events, people assembled to talk and
socialize, but also to listen to lectures, take part in seminars and cook
food together.
Premises utilized by many of the studied organizations, including the
offices used for some time by The Good Cooperative, consisted of mini-
mally adapted apartments. Consequently, these often included empty or
underutilized spaces such as a sofa room or a bathroom with an actual
bath as part of a small administrative office. These were often used by off-­
duty employees (and sometimes their acquaintances unaffiliated with the
210  J. Kociatkiewicz and M. Kostera

organization) to rest, sleep, or take a shower. Such usage was rarely con-
tested: for the most part, everyone involved seemed happy enough to
share. The Dragon Coop, another Polish enterprise selling fresh vegeta-
bles and other local produce, used a tiny room to provide space for mem-
bers to socialize during the winter months. In the summer, this space was
opened up onto the street, and customers were invited to share the use.
One of the interviewees expressed a conviction that working there felt
like being at home, because “there is a sense of freedom possible only in
a place when one feels good […] and can be oneself” (Łucja).
But such sense of being at home is not necessarily limited to sharing a
“homely” space or, indeed, to being present on the premises. Eric, a
member of the English social enterprise Starlight offering conference and
working space, explained that he started to feel at home when he stopped
obsessing about being present at work.

I feel comfortable being myself at home. I don’t worry about having a spat
with people at home, because I know it’s part of the process of understand-
ing. And I feel a certain kind of kinetic energy when I’m at home. The kind
of energy that comes from not worrying too much about the little things,
focusing on the big things. It’s about ignoring the chipped paint and
instead, tuning into the vibe. (Eric)

Likewise, Zofia from GreenLife, a marketplace for independent ven-

dors selling local organic produce in Warsaw, pointed out that both she
(a founder and one of the key organizers) and the other workers needed
to have free time away from work in order to be able to feel at home in
the workplace. It is necessary to be able to disconnect, to have a life inde-
pendent from work tasks and concerns. Work provides the organizers
with a sense of stability and comfort, of coming back to, and being able
to get away from, something well known, personal and social. It is in this
sense that we find the notion of “home” particularly interesting. It recurs
as a motif, signifying not only belonging, but familiarity and routine.
This becomes particularly visible in instances when a clear distinction
is kept between “work” and “not work”. For example, employees at
EduGamers, a successful and welcoming work organization focused on
creating and running educational games for corporate and public sector
 12  In Defense of the Comfort Zone: Against the Hegemony…  211

clients, maintain a clear distinction between different spheres of life.

Agnieszka, one of the employees proclaimed: “people here treat work as
work, not as everything, not as the whole world.” Diana, a co-founder of
EduGamers, mirrored Zofia in insisting that people needed to have a life
and time away from work in order to feel engaged and connected. But,
she added, they also needed to be in control of their work, without neces-
sarily sharing or making transparent all of their work activities.

Sometimes I come [to work] and I look around and I really have no clue
what these people are doing. Sometimes I have a reflection that they are
more at home that I am—in their work—[…] they do such things, they
create games, projects, they talk about things, and I have a feeling that I am
disconnected from a number of everyday things that happen. And I have a
feeling that this is their world […]. I have discovered that I enjoy it, that
people do different things […] that I don’t know what they’re doing. (Diana)

In the same organization there is a strong and recurrent narrative about

the homeliness of the workplace. It is something people come back to,
something “usual”, “everyday”, a “comfort zone” which one of the inter-
locutors presented in very proud and loving terms. She emphasized how
good it was to be able to return to it over and over again and how it
remained “just the same” even after the physical move to another
office space.
Several of the cooperants of the Dragon Cooperative who, for one
reason or another, had to be away from the shop for a longer time,
expressed their “homesickness” to the ethnographer. They admitted to
missing the place considerably, to cherishing images from the surround-
ing area of the city, the light and shadows of the space. At one occasion,
during a prolonged observation in the field, the ethnographer was joined
by an ex-member who had moved away to the countryside. While being
happy there, she also said she missed the cooperative quite a lot. For more
than an hour they both sat observing the work in the coop with a smile,
and taking photos from time to time. The only difference was that the
ethnographer was taking down notes and the ex-member was not. She
later explained that she wanted to be there as intensely as possible, to take
some of it with her when she went back home. She said that it was “just
212  J. Kociatkiewicz and M. Kostera

like before” even if it “had changed quite a bit”—the place has been refur-
bished and there was much more abundant produce now than it used in
“her time”. But this expression: “just like before”, we believe is a key to
understand and appreciate the idea of homeliness, so central for these
organizations. This as well as the notion of comfort zone—which inspired
us to the writing of this text.

Against Entrepreneurial Hegemony

The above stories describe ethnographic insights from a longitudinal
study of small, relatively new alternative organizations. They have been
chosen to focus on everyday activities and on homeliness rather than on
the heroic accounts of hardship and adventure. We have done so because
routine work not only takes up most of the time members devote to these
organizations, but also because creation and maintenance of stability is
crucial for their longer-term viability: organizations persist only through
achieving a certain level of institutionalization: when most of the activi-
ties become routinized and humdrum. The alternative organizations in
this study have additionally been created in order to create good places to
work in; consequently, they are judged by their members through criteria
including their homeliness and ability to keep their members within their
comfort zones.4
And it is here that our opposition to entrepreneurship arises. Almost
uniformly, entrepreneurship literature presents familiarity as a trap, a bar-
rier to innovation, an obstacle on the path to growth. “The more you step
outside your comfort zone, the more value you can potentially create”
proclaims a self-described successful entrepreneur in a recent practitioner-­
oriented article in an, again, self-described “award-winning quarterly
report on management, leadership, and strategy”, published by a reputa-
ble academic publisher and affiliated with a respectable university
(Maillian Bias 2015, p.  58). Another journal article on technological
entrepreneurship, this time directed towards an academic audience
praises practices in a technological business incubator where would-be
entrepreneurs are “stimulated to step out of their comfort zone” (van
Weele et al. 2017, p. 25). Yet another sees the main barrier to flexibility
 12  In Defense of the Comfort Zone: Against the Hegemony…  213

in healthcare organizations in the constatation that “[m]ost professionals

love their comfort-zone” (van Gool et al. 2017, p. 194). The examples are
fairly random (and all quite recent), but here serve only to illustrate the
entrepreneurial viewpoint as prevalent in dominant academic and popu-
lar discourse: creative destruction is good, and there is no destruction as
creative as that of the comfort zones.
The described situation is a problem both in regards to what we found
in our field study, and in regards to a broader socioeconomic problems.
The small, busy and innovative organizations of our research, which
many may perhaps be tempted to call entrepreneurial (even though many
if not most organizers distance themselves from this term, much more
strongly than from the notion of “management”), are very definitely
examples of the opposite of “creative destruction”. Rather, they are “tame
sanctuaries”. The way the notion of the “home” is used here does not
necessarily pertain to “work-home balance”. Instead, it is the balance.
People feel good in a workplace that provides them with a sense of bal-
ance. And they are not only largely successful, they also tackle societal
issues in ways that creatively destructive ventures of serial entrepreneurs
optimizing individual career success over collective good (Sarasvathy
et al. 2013) most demonstrably do not. Structures are difficult to build
and maintain in our liquid modern society, and the many global prob-
lems facing our society can only be tackled through building effective
structures for global action. While it could be possible to recuperate the
term of entrepreneurship to account for such activity (the terms quiet,
modest, or earnest entrepreneurship spring to mind), we believe it is not
a fight worth spending our time on. For this reason, for the sake of home-
liness and common future, we are against entrepreneurship.

Notes
1. Or, as we hope to demonstrate, might more usefully not be.
2. European Union Marie Curie Fellowship Programme: FP7, 627429
ECOPREN FP7 PEOPLE 2013 IEF.
3. More about this study in Kociatkiewicz et al. (2020).
4. We expect this to be a common wish of many workers, but examining the
issue on a wider scale lies outside the bounds of the reported study.
214  J. Kociatkiewicz and M. Kostera

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 13
Entrepreneurship Addiction
and the Negative Mental Health
Consequences of Entrepreneurial
Engagement Among Some
Entrepreneurs
April J. Spivack

Introduction
The Historically Positive Framing

In the U.S., entrepreneurship is a key component of the “American

Dream.” Positive outcomes of entrepreneurship are highlighted almost
exclusively in the mass media and academic literatures. For example,
entrepreneurs are often found to have higher levels of autonomy—feel-
ings of freedom and independence (Benz and Frey 2008; Carter et  al.
2003, Shir 2015), higher job satisfaction (Lange 2012), higher life satis-
faction (Binder and Coad 2013), higher psychological capital (Foo et al.
2009), more earnings potential (Markman and Baron 2003), higher

A. J. Spivack (*)
Department of Management & Decision Sciences, Wall College of Business,
Coastal Carolina University, Conway, SC, USA
e-mail: aspivack@coastal.edu

© The Author(s) 2020 217

A. Örtenblad (ed.), Against Entrepreneurship,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47937-4_13
218  A. J. Spivack

personal well-being (Hahn et al. 2012), better work-life balance (Ezzedeen

and Zikic 2017), and more. At the societal level, the message is that more
entrepreneurship equals a more prosperous and healthier society (Agarwal
et al. 2007; Baumol and Strom 2007; Hitt et al. 2011). Entrepreneurship
is often credited with bringing Schumpeter’s creative destruction
(1942/1976) to sleepy industries and business models, by reinventing
and modernizing them. Improvements to quality of life in more entrepre-
neurial contexts, suggest that entrepreneurship is great for societies. As a
result of the focus on the variety of positive outcomes of entrepreneur-
ship, the most successful entrepreneurs receive considerable media atten-
tion and even become featured in Hollywood movies (i.e., Mark
Zuckerberg in The Social Network (released in 2010) and Steve Jobs in
Jobs (released in 2013) and Steve Jobs (released in 2015)). The resounding
message is that entrepreneurship is the ideal path for an individual to cre-
ate a prosperous life.
Much of scholarly attention has echoed this perspective. For example,
research has been focused on figuring out who the most successful entre-
preneurs are, by identifying relevant personality traits (Schmitt-­
Rodermund 2004), social network characteristics (Aldrich and Zimmer
1986), motivations (Johnson 1990), attitudes (Robinson et  al. 1991),
and prior experiences (Shane 2000), to facilitate the recognition of these
individuals. Additionally, researchers have sought to make entrepreneur-
ship more accessible to all, by unpacking the key steps in the entrepre-
neurial process (Shane 2003), so that anyone may replicate it and pursue
such endeavors (Chell 2013). In an effort to increase the rates of entre-
preneurship at a geographic level, there are a variety of support structures,
including, but not limited to government grants, small business develop-
ment centers and business incubators, and increasing numbers of entre-
preneurship programs offered at universities across the country.

The Need for a Balanced Perspective

Missing from these messages is a complete consideration of the negative

outcomes or correlates of entrepreneurship, or circumstances under
which it is logical to be against entrepreneurship. These negative
 13  Entrepreneurship Addiction and the Negative Mental Health…  219

outcomes and correlates may be just as numerous as the positives, but are
given significantly less attention. If we look closely, however, we can see
that entrepreneurship doesn’t lead to universally rosy outcomes, but
rather, there are several instances in which the outcomes are quite nega-
tive. For example, we are familiar with the negative outcomes of the
“entrepreneurial” lending practices that caused the mortgage crisis in
2008–2009 (Lewellyn and Muller-Kahle 2012). We are also aware that
our entrepreneurial transition from glass to plastic that started in the
decades from the 1960s through the 80s (Hawkins 2017), has created
problematic levels of plastic pollution, with data and videos vividly show-
ing the disturbing contamination and consequences for the environment.
Oceans have been severely impacted, as sealife more frequently consumes
or becomes entangled in plastic, while tons of plastic have also been
deposited on particularly vulnerable beaches around the world (Derraik
2002; Eriksen et al. 2014). While one could argue that it only takes an
entrepreneurial mind to similarly resolve these issues (Adner and Kapoor
2010), such as through businesses like Rothy’s (Rothy’s 2019) or Adidas
(Adidas 2019)—businesses that are trying to recycle used plastics to mini-
mize environmental impact—it is unlikely that these few businesses will
be able to completely undo the damage caused by such entrepreneurial
material development.
Beyond the few examples of financial issues and environmental issues
mentioned here, we can also consider the impact of technological entre-
preneurship. For example, if we consider the innovations that have helped
us become a more global and 24/7 economy, there is a paradox of this
increased accessibility—there are social costs to the technological tether,
and these social costs may be greater than the benefits conferred
(Mazmanian et al. 2013). One is left wondering, is it psychologically and
socially beneficial for people to be tethered to work, whereby an employee
is expected to receive/respond to electronic communications on a 24/7
basis? Similarly, is it beneficial to be responsible for the ongoing impres-
sion management via a technological representation of self in social media
(Zhu and Bao 2018), and also have the constant awareness of what one
possesses versus another, thereby influencing consumption
(Thoumrungroje 2014)? While these may be universally beneficial to
capitalism, they may be woefully and insidiously negative influences for
220  A. J. Spivack

quality of life of the people operating within the capitalistic society

(Hinsch and Sheldon 2013).
In the context of public health, certainly, many innovations and entre-
preneurial acts have resulted in life-saving medical treatments, but on the
other side, are all developments universally positive? One only needs to
watch any modern pharmaceutical commercial to become aware of the
various negative side effects, or a lawyer’s commercial soliciting clients
who previously used a pharmaceutical resulting in life-altering negative
consequences, to know that all entrepreneurial medical efforts are not net
positive. We’ve seen the food industry under greater scrutiny in recent
times, whereby the food engineers and industrial farming practices are
increasingly called out for negative impacts rather than doing the impor-
tant work of creating easy to prepare, more nutritious, and more afford-
able food (Horrigan et  al. 2002). Some argue food engineers and
marketers are so good at producing and selling processed products that
create addictions to their creations such that people are enticed away
from known healthier whole food produce-based options (Gearhardt
et al. 2011). Or, perhaps, the 24/7 economy demands so much time that
individuals no longer have the capacity to make healthier lifestyle choices;
it’s increasingly difficult to find the time to eat healthier, exercise, and
tend to needs outside of earning wages. While these may seem like exag-
gerated interpretations of the outcomes of entrepreneurship, the point is
to recognize that a more balanced consideration of entrepreneurship
is needed.

The Extension to the Entrepreneurial Individual

At the micro level, as mentioned above, entrepreneurs as individuals have

been found to experience a wide variety of benefits via their entrepre-
neurial pursuits. The variety of benefits conferred to entrepreneurs
include, but are not limited to, the freedom and autonomy to pursue
businesses that offer personal fulfillment through alignment with their
sense of purpose, talents, and passions (Shir et al. 2019), opportunities
for growth and personal development (Shir 2015), and enhanced well-­
being and psychological capital in the form of optimism, resilience, and
 13  Entrepreneurship Addiction and the Negative Mental Health…  221

self-esteem (Foo et al. 2009). However, it has also been found that entre-
preneurs tend to have more stress and strain (Cardon and Patel 2015),
more work-life conflict (Prottas and Thompson 2006), more role conflict
(Rahim 1996), and more negative health consequences (Cardon and
Patel 2015). The discrepant findings are not hard to accept, as both sets
of results can be simultaneously accurate reflections of underlying phe-
nomena; correlational studies operate on the assumption of trends and
averages. Hidden by such analyses are all the variations in individual
experiences, types of entrepreneurship, interactions between an assort-
ment of variables and their links to a range of outcomes (Woodside
2013). Supporting this assessment, qualitative examinations into the lives
of individual entrepreneurs on a case basis have revealed variety in the
experiences and outcomes of entrepreneurs. For example, in Spivack and
Desai (2016), women entrepreneurs express varying assessments of the
influence of entrepreneurship on work-life balance—some reported neg-
ative outcomes while others reported positive outcomes. Therefore, it is
likely the case that neither finding is (in)correct, but rather, there are
some individuals for whom entrepreneurship is negative, when consider-
ing a variety of outcomes and/or correlates (Santarelli and Vivarelli 2007).
It is the intent of this chapter to consider these specific individuals that
suffer as a result of entrepreneurial pursuits. In these cases, there is reason
to be against entrepreneurship; entrepreneurial pursuits confer harm to
some. Specifically, this chapter explores entrepreneurship addiction as a
mechanism by which negative mental health and well-being outcomes
manifest for some individuals pursuing entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship Addiction
Entrepreneurship is a recently identified context in which an addiction
may surface, as a behavioral addiction (Spivack et al. 2014). As behav-
ioral addictions involve the same thought patterns, brain activation, and
neurological reward systems typically found in chemical addictions, they
have recently been included as viable bases of addiction. “As far as the
brain is concerned, a reward’s a reward, regardless of whether it comes
from a chemical or an experience” (Holden 2001, p. 980).
222  A. J. Spivack

A potentially addictive experience has defining physiological, emo-

tional, and cognitive (i.e., symbolic) qualities (Peele 1985). For example,
one key quality is an experience offering a stream of intense experiences
with ongoing feedback linking the behavior to various sensations (Peele
1985). The sensations are such that they compel the individual to seek
out opportunities to repeat the creation of them through certain behav-
iors and as such reinforce a motivation for repeated engagement (Peele
1985). In this way, an addictive experience revolves around a pattern of
behaviors that function both to produce pleasure and to provide relief
from internal discomfort. This pattern is also accompanied by a sense of
powerlessness and unmanageability of the behavior as the individual
becomes caught in a cycle of increasing efforts to replicate the desirable
sensations. Physiologically, as a result of the volatile experience, the indi-
vidual goes through extremes in arousal, evidenced by a release of hor-
mones, such as adrenaline; heart-rate fluctuations; sweating; nausea; and
shaking (Krauss and Putnam 1985). Emotionally, the volatility is echoed
through positive or negative affect (Slovic et al. 2002), leading to feelings
(Masters 2000), and then resulting in a variety of emotions (Masters 2000).
Finally, the cognitive, or symbolic, component of an addictive experi-
ence refers to the development of a recognized linkage between certain
cues and/or behaviors with physiological and emotional outcomes (Cope
and Watts 2000; Man 2006; Shepherd 2003). Here, the cues would be
the cognitively evaluated positive outcomes associated with engaging in
the behavior and negative outcomes of withdrawing from the behavior.
Together, these cues lead to the “craving” of engaging in certain activities
and form the basis of the behavioral addiction (Ko et al. 2009).
Entrepreneurship offers a context that matches the description of an
addictive experience; it involves a portfolio of intense experiences that
unfold over time (Morris et al. 2012). Any volatility in experience, plus
operating in a context of ambiguity and uncertainty—often the descrip-
tion of the entrepreneurial experience—results in heightened states of
arousal. Over time, heightened arousal is linked to physiological and
emotional burnout (Melamed et al. 1999). While passion for the busi-
ness itself, and some of the autonomy in the job demands, can act as
psychological capital—a known buffer to this relationship between
arousal and burnout (Baron et  al. 2016)—for some individuals, this
13  Entrepreneurship Addiction and the Negative Mental Health…  223

buffer may be insufficient. Burnout is linked to increased physical ail-

ments such as headaches, heart conditions, and cancer (Ahola et  al.
2010). In fact, a recent study (Nikolaev et al. 2019) found that although
most opportunity entrepreneurs tend to find benefits to both mental and
physical well-being, necessity entrepreneurs tend to experience improve-
ments in their mental but not physical health. This finding indicates that
there is a negative impact of entrepreneurial pursuits on physical health
over time for some entrepreneurs.
The experience of entrepreneurship is emotionally laden; frequently,
the experience of entrepreneurship is compared to a rollercoaster in the
business press (e.g., Barnes 2018; Constable 2019; Roach 2017).
Capturing the wide swings in emotional content, “running a business is
like a roller-coaster ride where you can go from euphoria to thinking the
world is falling apart, and then back to euphoria again—all in a span of a
single day” (Barnes 2018). Research has been slower to map out these
swings in emotions, but have shown increasing interest in the area of
entrepreneurial emotions. There is recognition that emotions provide
information especially in contexts of uncertainty, time pressure, and lack
of historical information (Baron 2008). Links have also been studied
between emotions and entrepreneurial actions. For example, researchers
have suggested that high activation emotions—those associated with
intense experiences—should be associated with more entrepreneurial
actions, as they impact opportunity identification (Foo et  al. 2015).
Similarly, negative emotions, such as anger, or having high dispositional
negative affectivity can drive entrepreneurial action (Foo 2011; Foo et al.
2009; Nikolaev et  al. 2018), as individuals seek ways to overcome the
situation or target eliciting these emotions or affective states. A state of
physiological and emotional arousal is intensely pleasurable and may
result in a state of emotional intoxication (Hollingsworth 1973) for some
entrepreneurs. Hence, entrepreneurship offers the emotional feedback,
which would be necessary in establishing the cravings characteristic of
addiction.
Further compounding the physiological and emotional experiences
offered by entrepreneurship, there are unique ties of an individual’s iden-
tity to their entrepreneurial venture (Murnieks et al. 2014; Shepherd and
Haynie 2009). In other words, there is little separation between
224  A. J. Spivack

business-related experiences and individual/business owner related expe-

riences. As a result, the volatility in day-to-day business operations
becomes volatility in experiences of the entrepreneur. Additionally, an
entrepreneurial venture is often related or based on an entrepreneur’s pas-
sion. The passion the entrepreneur feels for the business and subject area
compels the entrepreneur to strongly identify with and invest in the ven-
ture’s activities (Cardon et al. 2009; Locke and Baum 2007; Murnieks
et al. 2014).

Beyond the Experience, Today’s Contextual Influences

It is not only the nature of the process of entrepreneurship that seems to

offer fertile ground for the development of an addiction to entrepreneur-
ial acts, but it is also the contextual factors surrounding the individual
today. First, today’s economy is a 24/7 economy. Second, there is an
increasing social expectation for instant gratification. Third, there are
growing repositories of data on just about anything you can imagine,
based on people’s engagement with technology. And, fourth, entrepre-
neurship is a very public performance. Each of these is further
described below.
First, today’s entrepreneurship occurs in a 24/7 economy. That is, busi-
nesses are expected to be responsive and accessible to potential customers
and clients every minute of every day. Alongside this temporal change,
there is increasing global access—clients and customers can come from
anywhere in the world. Second, customers and clients want access to
products and services immediately. These two conditions pressure an
entrepreneur to find ways to be engaged in entrepreneurial activities and
interface with potential buyers and consumers for extended periods of
time and as frequently as possible. To be a successful entrepreneur in this
context, the entrepreneur must be willing to manage, and be available to
meet, temporal and geographic needs, and find ways of delivering goods
and services as quickly as possible. These forces put pressure on an entre-
preneur to increasingly engage with the venture.
Third, people create digital trails. The ever-present internet creates
24/7 access and an ongoing stream of digital data regarding ­buyer/
13  Entrepreneurship Addiction and the Negative Mental Health…  225

customer/client preferences and activities. As an entrepreneur engaging

in any entrepreneurial activities, there is a wealth of information to sift
through. Fourth, today’s marketplace is increasingly demanding and
public. There are a multitude of forums where customers can voice their
opinions about an entrepreneur’s products and services or the business in
general. These conditions create a growing repository of information that
can provide a venue for certain entrepreneurial individuals to get stuck in
obsessive patterns of behavior, by checking data, searching for new
insights, and fueling obsessive thoughts.
Together, these contextual factors offer additional pressures that could
exacerbate one’s likelihood of developing an addiction to entrepreneur-
ship. Specifically, entrepreneurship addiction is characterized as involving:

(1) obsessive thoughts—constantly thinking about the behavior and con-

tinually searching for novelties within the behavior;
(2) withdrawal/engagement cycles—feeling anticipation and undertaking
ritualized behavior, experiencing anxiety or tension when away, and
giving into a compulsion to engage in the behavior whenever possible;
(3) self-worth—viewing the behavior as the main source of self-worth;
(4) tolerance—making increasing resource (e.g., time and money)
investments;
(5) neglect—disregarding or abandoning previously important friends
and activities; and
(6) negative outcomes—experiencing negative emotional outcomes (e.g.,
guilt, lying, and withholding information about the behavior from
others), increased or high levels of strain, and negative physiological/
health outcomes. (Spivack et al. 2014, p. 654)

Conceptually, these six components of entrepreneurship addiction

exhibit a strong degree of overlap, mutually reinforcing each other. In
fact, high correlations among the symptoms, such as withdrawal and
obsessive thoughts, have been found empirically (Spivack and
McKelvie 2018).
226  A. J. Spivack

Prevalence and Outcomes

Recently, a prevalence rate of entrepreneurship addiction among entre-

preneurs was reported to be between 2 and 14%—similar to the rate in
other behavioral forms of addiction (Spivack and McKelvie 2018). While
it could be suggested that such an addiction may confer various benefits
to the entrepreneur and the society in which the entrepreneur operates
(i.e., intensive awareness of the business that may yield positive perfor-
mance results, new jobs for the community members, etc.), it is not likely
that this is a healthy way of working for the individual, especially using a
longer-term perspective. Instead, it is likely that entrepreneurship addic-
tion negatively impacts the entrepreneur’s mental and physical health, as
well as their relationship with family and friends. Preliminary results
indicate that is the case, where entrepreneur addicts are likely to experi-
ence an array of psychological and physiological ailments (Spivack and
McKelvie 2018).
These findings support other recognized negative outcomes linked to
entrepreneurial pursuits such as negative impact on sleep quality
(Kollmann et al. 2019), negative impact on work-life balance (Spivack
and Desai 2016), and work-home interference (Kollmann et  al. 2019;
Song et al. 2011). All of these negative outcomes are likely, in some part,
due to sacrifices of time, money, and quality of life outside of work,
among others (Kets de Vries 1985; Shepherd and Haynie 2009). As
implied by the condition, an entrepreneurship addict would find it espe-
cially difficult to stop the behavior leading to these negative outcomes.

Conclusion
There is a need for more research to determine the characteristics of the
particularly vulnerable individuals susceptible to the formation of an
addiction to entrepreneurship. Similarly, we need to understand the
power yielded by contextual influences, such as those highlighted here, in
creating increased risk for entrepreneurial individuals trying to navigate
entrepreneurship in a healthier capacity. However, it is clear that it is
 13  Entrepreneurship Addiction and the Negative Mental Health…  227

important to recognize that entrepreneurship addiction is a potential

insidious condition resulting from engagement in entrepreneurial acts for
some. It is problematic that there are so many avenues by which entrepre-
neurship is encouraged without a more balanced understanding of the
influence it has on individuals and societies. Caution should be exercised
in evaluating entrepreneurship; it is not wholly and universally appealing
and profoundly positive. Rather, in some cases, it is reasonable to be
against entrepreneurship; entrepreneurship should be carefully evaluated
and recognized for its potential nefarious influences as well as the posi-
tive ones.

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 14
Against Irresponsible Entrepreneurship:
A Dual Perspective on the Impact
of Entrepreneurship on Firm Survival
Denise Fleck

Introduction
Entrepreneurship constitutes a vast, growing research area and locus of
practice regarding phenomena that play an important role in the devel-
opment of society. Actually, the age-old entrepreneurial phenomenon has
given rise to systematic studies on its multifaceted characteristics; how-
ever, research on entrepreneurship is not without controversies. These
range from the very status of entrepreneurship as a field of study (Harrison
and Leitch 1996; Shane and Venkataraman 2000; Landström et al. 2012;
Busenitz et al. 2014) to entrepreneurship education (Fejes et al. 2019).
Debates include calls for more fine-grained conceptualizations and
instruments (Shane 2012; George and Marino 2011; Miller 2011), as
well as discussions on the nature of entrepreneurial opportunities (Alvarez
and Barney 2007; Companys and McMullen 2007; Alvarez and Barney

D. Fleck (*)
Coppead Graduate School of Business—Federal University of Rio de Janeiro,
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
e-mail: denise@coppead.ufrj.br

© The Author(s) 2020 233

A. Örtenblad (ed.), Against Entrepreneurship,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47937-4_14
234  D. Fleck

2010; Ramoglou and Zyglidopoulos 2015; Ramoglou and Tsang 2016),

to mention a few.
An emerging issue regards the unbalanced emphasis by academics and
people in general on entrepreneurship’s positive outcomes (Jørgensen and
Bager, Chap. 4 in this volume; Murtola, Chap. 6 in this volume; Trehan
et al., Chap. 7 in this volume; Gerpott and Kieser, Chap. 8 in this vol-
ume). This leaves unattended entrepreneurship’s dark side and the side
effects it may entail (Baumol 1990; Dess and Lumpkin 2005; Wadhwani
2012; Sarasvathy 2014; Miller 2015; Bouncken et al. 2018; Spivack and
McKelvie 2018; Aromaa et al., Chap. 11 in this volume; Spivack, Chap.
13 in this volume; Kurtulmus, Chap. 15 in this volume). This chapter
offers a dualistic perspective of entrepreneurship as potentially construc-
tive or destructive, depending on whether it is carried out in a responsible
or irresponsible manner. In addition, it expands further the notion of
responsible entrepreneurship (Fuller and Tian 2006; Azmat and
Samaratunge 2009) by adding a self-destructive potential to the produc-
tive, unproductive and destructive effects entrepreneurial initiatives may
bring about (Baumol 1990; Desai and Ács 2007). While responsible
entrepreneurship plays a vital role in firm survival, this chapter offers a
number of reasons for being against irresponsible entrepreneurship.

A Dualistic Perspective of Entrepreneurship

Throughout the world, entrepreneurship has been touted as an indisput-
able path towards growth, wealth creation and happiness. Actually, opti-
mistic views of entrepreneurship have predominated in the research field.
A literature review by Davidsson et al. (2009) has identified that “growth
is often used as sole or main indicator of ‘success’ in entrepreneurship
research”, having noticed “clear signs of a ‘pro-growth bias’ in that line of
research” (p. 4).
Growth has been equated with socioeconomic progress and develop-
ment (Antonio 2013), with organizational survival, increasing market
power, economies of scale and scope (Chandler 1977), with reduced
dependence on external economic actors (Pfeffer and Salancik 1978), as
well as with personal and professional success (Goold 1999; Rich 1999).
 14  Against Irresponsible Entrepreneurship: A Dual Perspective…  235

It should not be surprising that entrepreneurs aspire to grow their enter-

prises and that society’s perspective on such individuals is quite positive.
Interestingly, the entrepreneurship-growth connection goes beyond
the success notion; it is ontological, because entrepreneurship is a neces-
sary antecedent to organizational growth (Penrose 1959). Penrose’s per-
spective on the growth of firms views growth as a change process whereby
firms and environment transform themselves quantitatively and qualita-
tively in a dynamic way. From a temporal perspective, the growth process
comprises antecedents that precede firm expansion, and a set of conse-
quences that expansion brings about. Because growth is anything but
automatic (Penrose 1959), organizational growth requires a set of entre-
preneurial services individuals may offer—entrepreneurial versatility,
judgment, fund-raising and ambition (Penrose 1959). Unenterprising
firms lack such services and cease to expand.
On the other hand, entrepreneurship may affect quite negatively indi-
viduals, organizations, society and the environment. Research studies
have identified several instances of entrepreneurship’s dark side. At the
individual level, Miller (2015) and Spivack and McKelvie (2018) have
addressed the dualistic nature of entrepreneurial personality. Positive fea-
tures like energy, self-confidence, need for achievement and indepen-
dence may turn into aggressiveness, narcissism, ruthlessness,
irresponsibility and addiction. Sarasvathy’s (2014) critical look at entre-
preneurial opportunities has pointed out the downside potential of
opportunities, having urged “potential entrepreneurs to come to grips
with downside possibilities before they even begin” (Sarasvathy 2014,
p. 312). Regarding risk taking, for example, the author suggests employ-
ing the affordable loss principle in order to gain control over the down-
side of entrepreneurial initiatives.
With respect to the entrepreneurial orientation (EO) of organizations,
Dess and Lumpkin (2005) have identified both positive and negative
effects of the five dimensions that make up EO. For instance, while inno-
vativeness may be a source of progress and growth, R&D expenditures
may turn out to be a waste of resources; in like manner, while proactive-
ness may be instrumental in creating first mover advantages, being a first
mover will not necessarily pave the way to success.
236  D. Fleck

At the economic and societal level, besides playing a productive role by

fostering innovation, economic growth and the welfare of society, entre-
preneurship may give rise to unproductive and destructive initiatives
(Baumol 1990; Desai and Ács 2007; McCaffrey 2018). According to
Baumol (1990), unproductive entrepreneurship has to do with rent seek-
ing forms like litigation, takeovers and tax evasion (Wadhwani 2012),
having no net effect on productivity. Destructive entrepreneurship, on
the other hand, has a net negative effect, as it diminishes the inputs for
production; it is a rent-destroying activity (Desai and Ács 2007).
Thus, the role entrepreneurs play in society may not be healthy from
society’s viewpoint (Baumol 1990; Desai and Ács 2007), because entre-
preneurial choices may generate unproductive or destructive effects,
eschew social responsibility and jeopardize the natural environment.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR), a notion usually employed in the
context of large corporate entities, translates into Responsible
Entrepreneurship, when referring to small entrepreneurs (Chapple and
Moon 2007; Fuller and Tian 2006; Azmat and Samaratunge 2009).
According to Fuller and Tian (2006, p. 437), responsible entrepreneur-
ship “usually refers to being responsible for one’s effect on others and
taking responsibility for helping others in normal business practices as
well as in adjunct or non-core activities”. Chapple and Moon (2007)
maintain that responsible entrepreneurs not only do well for themselves,
but also make a significant contribution to society. Azmat and
Samaratunge’s (2009) investigation on entrepreneurship in developing
countries puts forward several factors that foster irresponsible entrepre-
neurship in these countries. As a result, entrepreneurship in these coun-
tries is more likely to be unproductive and destructive (Baumol 1990;
Desai and Ács 2007) than productive.
This chapter advances an additional category of entrepreneurship out-
come. In addition to the productive, unproductive, destructive effects of
entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial initiatives may bring about self-­
destructive effects on the entrepreneurial entity. Moreover, it refrains from
distinguishing CSR and responsible entrepreneurship with respect to
firm size. From this perspective, “doing well for oneself ” (Chapple and
Moon 2007) includes not only capturing value (Lepak et al. 2007) from
entrepreneurial initiatives, but also fostering the self-preservation of the
 14  Against Irresponsible Entrepreneurship: A Dual Perspective…  237

entrepreneurial entity and precluding or neutralizing self-destructive pro-

cesses, irrespective of its size—small individual enterprises, small and
medium enterprises as well as large organizations.
From a dualistic perspective of entrepreneurship, responsible entrepre-
neurship has to do with (i) carrying out initiatives that enable making
constructive contributions to the entrepreneurial entity and to others, i.e.
“doing well and doing good”; and (ii) avoiding harm to oneself and oth-
ers. Irresponsible entrepreneurship, in turn, refers to entrepreneurial ini-
tiatives that fail to make constructive contributions to the entrepreneurial
entity and/or others, and/or fail to avoid self-harm and/or harming oth-
ers. Unless and until entrepreneurship embraces this dualistic perspec-
tive, there is reason to be against entrepreneurship because simplistic
approaches to entrepreneurship fail to account for the perverse side effects
that entrepreneurial initiatives may engender. As a result, such short
sighted conduct gives rise to unproductive, destructive and self-­destructive
outcomes.
The next section addresses the dual effects that entrepreneurial initia-
tives may have on the entrepreneurial entity. It advances three require-
ments for organizational survival, and discusses the role entrepreneurial
initiatives may play in fostering or precluding organizational continued
existence over time.

Three Requirements
for Organizational Survival
There is more to survival than the existing-non existing dichotomy. In
fact, even though solvency is a key element regarding survival, some orga-
nizations may continue to operate while facing solvency issues. Typical
examples include the permanently failing (Meyer and Zucker 1989), as
well as the “too-big-to-fail” organizations. Given the inherent complexity
of social systems and our current state of knowledge on organizational
survival, establishing a set of sufficient conditions for the development of
healthy organizational survival seems futile. Instead, it is feasible to
238  D. Fleck

identify some necessary conditions (Mohr 1982) for fostering healthy

organizational existence.
Taking a long-term perspective, this section puts forward three main
requirements for promoting the preservation of robust organizations over
time, and scrutinizes the dual role that entrepreneurship may play in
meeting or failing to meet such requirements. The first takes into consid-
eration the changing nature of the organizational environment (Aldrich
1979). Surviving requires the introduction of novelty in order to avoid
organizational obsolescence (Warmington 1974) and foster organiza-
tional renewal instead. The second refers to keeping organizational integ-
rity from two complementary viewpoints, namely nurturing and
preserving the bonds that make up the organizational social fabric, and
engaging in ethical behavior, which will earn the organization a reputa-
tion for being trustworthy and legitimate. Finally, the third addresses the
necessary availability and adequate use of the organizational resource base
to promote organizational renewal as well as to preserve organizational
integrity. Partially meeting these three conditions sets in motion deterio-
rating processes that may result in organizational self-destruction
(Fleck 2009).

 enewal (Embracing Novelty and Promoting

R
Organizational Renewal)

The first requirement is quite straightforward. Because of the changing

nature of things in general (Bunge 1979), and of organizations and envi-
ronment (Aldrich 1979) in particular, fostering organizational continued
existence requires the organizational ability not only to adapt to the envi-
ronment, but also to innovate and shape the environment (Child 1997)
by means of value creating entrepreneurial initiatives. By continuously
embracing value-creating novelties, the organization avoids becoming
obsolescent (Warmington 1974) and fosters its renewal. Carrying out
renewal, however, is highly nuanced.
Organizational renewal has to do with entrepreneurial initiatives that
bring about innovation, and may occasionally shape the environment.
While innovative entrepreneurial initiatives can be an effective antidote
 14  Against Irresponsible Entrepreneurship: A Dual Perspective…  239

to obsolescence, numerous studies have pointed out that innovation may

bring about important side effects. For one, innovation holds uncertainty
and risk, which may impair performance predictability (Rosenkopf and
McGrath 2011; Sarasvathy 2014). What is more, innovating for innova-
tion’s sake will face failure unless it creates value to relevant stakeholders.
Value creation has to do with providing a target user (or buyer) with
benefits s/he deems beneficial and worth paying for (Bowman and
Ambrosini 2000; Lepak et al. 2007). Value creating entrepreneurial ini-
tiatives constitute productive entrepreneurship (Baumol 1990). However,
should they also bring about harmful effects on others (individuals, orga-
nizations, environment and society) and should the entrepreneurial entity
leave these consequences unattended, then destructive entrepreneurship
is also the case. Finally, too much exploration of the new may be detri-
mental to organizational performance, as such behavior may preclude the
organization from capturing value from the exploitation of the old
(March 1991).
No matter how innovative and value creating entrepreneurial initia-
tives may be, capturing value from them is anything but straightforward.
The organizational ability to capture value from entrepreneurial initia-
tives depends on strategic factors such as the organization’s resource base,
strategic positioning, rivalry intensity, economic conditions and the insti-
tutional setting. These factors may ease or preclude the value creating
organization from capturing value, totally or partially, as value slips to
other non-value creating actors (Lepak et al. 2007). On the other hand,
the ability to capture value from non-value creating entrepreneurial ini-
tiatives constitutes unproductive entrepreneurship (Baumol 1990).
Hence, organizational renewal requires promoting productive entre-
preneurship and precluding unproductive, destructive and self-­destructive
entrepreneurship. It should be fostered in tandem with adequate value
capture from extant value creating activities the firm exploits, while
avoiding/neutralizing likely negative effects the entrepreneurial initiatives
may have on the organization and others. For example, when carrying
out a lock-in strategy to secure value capture from value creating entre-
preneurial initiatives, the organization may find little incentive to renew
further, as it gets locked into the successful formula and thus heads
towards obsolescence. The organization might seek to neutralize this side
240  D. Fleck

effect by deliberately stimulating the exploration and exploitation of new

value creating initiatives, which might eventually threaten the successful
status quo. Also, court litigations over mutual patent infringement issues
may turn into productive entrepreneurial opportunities, if the parties to
the dispute reach cooperation agreements that make productive use of
the combined knowledge.

Integrity (Developing and Preserving

Organizational Integrity)

The organizational integrity requirement comprises two dimensions. It

includes constitutive aspects of the organization and ethical elements that
affect organizational continued existence. The constitutive aspects have
to do with the set of internal and external bonds that make up the orga-
nizational coalition (Cyert and March 1963). The weakening of these
bonds undermines organizational continued existence. The ethical ele-
ments refer to organizational behavior that generates the perception of
being a trustworthy actor (Mayer et al. 1995). The weakening of such
perception may hurt organizational legitimacy, which Suchman (1995,
p. 574) defines as “a generalized perception or assumption that the actions
of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially
constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions”.
Regarding the integrity requirement, thus, organizations set in motion
self-destructive processes in two main ways: by giving rise to organiza-
tional fragmentation and eventual break down, as a result of persistently
weak bonds among components of the organizational coalition; and by
failing to acquire and sustain legitimacy, which precludes the organiza-
tion from having a license to operate.
Entrepreneurial initiatives may affect organizational integrity in posi-
tive and negative ways. They may mobilize and get the commitment of
members of the coalition to the entrepreneurial idea. Moreover, those
ideas that address socio-environmental issues may convey a unifying
sense of purpose to the organization (Selznick 1957), neutralize rivalry
among coalition members, and provide the organization with competi-
tive advantage due to the difficulty to imitate social complexity among
 14  Against Irresponsible Entrepreneurship: A Dual Perspective…  241

coalition members. On the other hand, bold entrepreneurial goals may

affect the morale of coalition members, and induce ethically questionable
behaviors. In addition, entrepreneurial initiatives that fail to qualify as
legitimate, such as those making use of corruption, or involving orga-
nized crime, threaten organizational existence over time. In sum, entre-
preneurial initiatives may contribute to the strengthening of the
organization’s social fabric and to being perceived as a trustworthy actor
in society. However, they may also trigger self-destructive processes that
endanger organizational survival.
The constitutive dimension of integrity. Organizational schism (Morgan
1981) contributes a relevant lens for scrutinizing the constitutive dimen-
sion of organizational integrity. It looks at the disintegrative tendencies of
social systems, which conventional analysis tends to regard as “pathologi-
cal, abnormal, temporarily deviant states to be remedied in some way”
(Morgan 1981, p. 24). Instead, it views schism as a natural property orga-
nizations have. The schismatic nature of organizational systems (Morgan
1981) may weaken the organizational social fabric. Unless management
makes efforts to identify likely sources of organizational fragmentation
and seek to neutralize them in order to foster organizational unity
(Selznick 1957), the organization will lack sufficient internal bonding
and will eventually cease to exist. Likewise, the weakening of external
bonds will likely affect the organizational ability to make exchanges, and
its ability to continue to exist.
Entrepreneurial initiatives may embed opportunities for career devel-
opment and financial compensation among members of the organiza-
tional coalition (employees, suppliers, complementors, etc.). For instance,
work force perception of these likely benefits may motivate and mobilize
employees to commit themselves (Rich 1999), reinforcing the organiza-
tional social fabric. On the other hand, entrepreneurial initiatives may
foster organizational fragmentation for two main reasons. The first refers
to entrepreneurial ambition, that is, extremely bold goals may have a
deleterious impact on employee morale (Goold 1999), and negatively
affect employees bond and commitment vis-à-vis the organization.
The second concerns meeting the continued renewal requirement. As
a result of the entrepreneurial quest for growth, the organization experi-
ences increased variety of products, geographies, technologies, markets,
242  D. Fleck

interests, aims, expectations, cultural backgrounds, legislation, suppliers

and organizational members, as well as diverse institutions and cultures
(Josefy et al. 2015) when organizations expand abroad. As a result, it will
likely face competing priorities, resource allocation conflicts and rivalry
(Selznick 1957) among sub-coalitions of individuals (Cyert and March
1963). The adequate handling of differences may contribute cooperation
(Barnard 1938), economies of scope (Chandler 1990), slack and synergy
among organizational units, and give rise to processes that are hard and
costly to imitate due to their embedded social complexity (Barney 1997).
On the other hand, due to the schismatic nature of organizations (Morgan
1981), internal and external bonds may weaken if proper care is not
taken regarding conflict enhancement.
The ethical dimension of integrity. Because uncertainty is part and parcel
of social interaction and organizational exchanges, trustworthiness plays
an important role in organizational life. The absence of trust precludes
the very essence of organizational existence, namely social interaction and
organizational exchanges. Indeed, severe breaches of trust impair organi-
zational continued existence, as the Enron and Arthur Andersen cases
epitomize. Mayer et al.’s (1995) model of trust includes integrity among
its three factors of perceived trustworthiness. Whereas their model con-
cerns individuals, French (1996, p.  155) submits one “can properly
ascribe to corporations the virtues of integrity”, which requires “inten-
tions to pursue proper moral principles and the truth of one’s convic-
tions”. In his view, corporate intention corresponds to the planning
function organizations perform. Eberl et al. (2015), in turn, distinguish
integrity-related behaviors by organizations and individuals. If these
behaviors are not part of organizational plans (French 1996), they are
attributed to the misbehavior of organizational members, rather than to
the organization, and therefore do not belong to the realm of organiza-
tional integrity.
Organizations need to be perceived as trustworthy and legitimate to
keep operating, and nurturing and preserving organizational integrity
from the ethical perspective is a key component in the development of
such perception. Regarding the effect of entrepreneurship on organiza-
tional ethical behavior, several instances of unproductive and destructive
entrepreneurship (Baumol 1990) constitute breaches of ethics. These
 14  Against Irresponsible Entrepreneurship: A Dual Perspective…  243

include rent-seeking and rent-destroying, rather than rent-creating,

entrepreneurial initiatives (Desai and Ács 2007), organized crime, war-
fare and bureaucracy expansion (McCaffrey 2018). In addition, entrepre-
neurial bold goals may prompt “the-ends-justify-the-means” behaviors
among members of the organizational coalition, who deem such goals
unachievable without recourse to ethically questionable behaviors.

 lack (Producing and Productively Using

S
Organizational Slack)

The slack requirement comprises securing the necessary resources for pro-
moting organizational renewal and integrity, as well as making proper use
of organizational resources in a way that precludes slack from turning
into waste and avoidable losses. Failure to meet the slack requirement
prevents the organization from fighting obsolescence, schism and ethical
misbehavior, and paves the way to organizational self-destruction.
Entrepreneurship affects slack in opposite ways. On the one hand,
entrepreneurial services constitute a key requirement for making use of
slack in productive ways (Penrose 1959) that contribute to organizational
renewal and integrity. On the other, entrepreneurial initiatives inspired
by slack may fail to bring about renewal, may hurt integrity and what is
more, they may turn slack into waste or losses. For instance, entrepre-
neurial initiatives that pursue stretch goals incommensurate with avail-
able resources may give rise to rework, stress, burnout, quality problems
to customers and other players along the value chain, among other trou-
bles. These shortcomings may lead to the failure of the initiative, and
with it, to renewal failure, integrity deterioration, waste and losses.
Organizational slack is arguably a controversial construct, on account
of its dual nature. Even though some perspectives hold a neutral view,
others emphasize a constructive view of slack, while some others pinpoint
its potentially damaging effects on the organization. Neutral definitions
of slack include being the difference between total resources and total
necessary payments (Cyert and March 1963); and comprising “the pool
of resources in an organization that is in excess of the minimum necessary
to produce a given level of organizational output” (Nohria and Gulati
244  D. Fleck

1997, p. 604). Slack resources vary in nature (people, operational assets,

relationships, time, control, technology and financial resources), provide
different degrees of user-friendliness (available, potential and recover-
able), and provide different sorts of services (Penrose 1959)—operational,
entrepreneurial, managerial, to mention a few.
On the constructive side, Penrose (1959) maintains that resources may
become idle on occasion, and such slack may constitute an incentive to
organizational growth and renewal. Moreover, identifying opportunities
for renewal from slack requires entrepreneurial versatility (Penrose 1959),
i.e. having people in the organization providing entrepreneurial services.
Another favorable view defines organizational slack as “that cushion of
actual or potential resources which allows an organization to adapt suc-
cessfully to internal pressures for adjustment or to external pressures for
change in policy, as well as to initiate changes in strategy with respect to
the external environment” (Bourgeois 1981, p. 30). In fact, organizations
operating at the very edge of their resources will likely struggle to meet
emerging internal demands and new external requirements, even if such
disturbances are small-sized. In consequence, such organizations head
towards obsolescence and integrity weakening.
On the other hand, the mere existence of slack may suggest the pres-
ence of organizational flaws that preclude organizational efficiency and
competitiveness (Tseng et  al. 2007; Nohria and Gulati 1997). For
instance, agency theory (Jensen and Meckling 1976) suggests that sur-
plus resources may be used to promote individual interests, to the detri-
ment of organizational interests (Ju and Zhao 2009; Wan and Yiu 2009;
Hicheon et  al. 2008; Jacobsen 2006; Love and Nohria 2005; Tan and
Peng 2003; Davis and Stout 1992). In short, slack includes a dual notion,
namely waste; and the slack-waste pair exhibits a dynamic relationship of
constructive or destructive kind. Constructive practices, such as system-
atic learning from past mistakes, convert waste into slack. Destructive
practices, such as repeated rework along with no learning, cause the waste
of slack resources.
As regards slack’s value creating and value destroying potential, the
literature has identified twelve value creating and eight value destroying
functions slack may perform. Value creating functions include adapting
organizational structure to internal and external pressures (Bourgeois
 14  Against Irresponsible Entrepreneurship: A Dual Perspective…  245

1981; Huang and Chen 2010); fostering innovation (Bourgeois and

Singh 1983; Richtnér and Åhlström 2010; Rosner 1968); providing a
technical buffer (Bourgeois 1981; Richtnér and Åhlström 2010); enhanc-
ing organizational flexibility to change goals and strategy (Marino and
Lange 1983; Sharfman et  al. 1988); increasing organizational perfor-
mance (Peng et al. 2010); enabling opportunities exploitation (Bromiley
1991; Ju and Zhao 2009); avoiding internal disruption (Bourgeois 1981);
speeding up problem solving (Bourgeois 1981; Bowen 2002); protecting
the depletion of scarce resources (Meyer 1982); reducing misalignment
between subunit and organizational goals (Bourgeois 1981); risk mitiga-
tion (Lawson 2001); and enhancing risk taking (Bateman and
Zeithaml 1989).
The value destroying potential of slack has to do with findings that
suggest that high slack levels may lead to waste and to organizational
indiscipline. Actually, slack may increase avoidable costs (Bourgeois
1981); foster the formation of coalitions driven by self-interest (Bourgeois
and Singh 1983); enable the pursuit of self-interest goals (Bourgeois
1981; Bourgeois and Singh 1983); harm performance (Bromiley 1991);
disguise failures in organizational processes (Bourgeois 1981); foster inef-
ficiency (Love and Nohria 2005); increase disagreement among top man-
agement members regarding new opportunities (Bourgeois and Singh
1983); and reduce organizational responsiveness to market changes
(Bromiley 1991).
Concerning organizational survival, slack may refer to all time frames.
Financial resources may secure both short-term and long-term solvency.
Operational slack may secure operations continuity over the short-term,
as well as enable expansion in the medium term. Slack resources that
make up strategic options contribute new avenues that may secure long-­
term survival. Because change and uncertainty are ubiquitous, organiza-
tions need slack, but should fight waste, if they aim at surviving. Effective
slack management comprises the organizational ability to capture value
(i.e. generate slack) from value creating initiatives (Lepak et al. 2007), as
well as making use of generated slack in a productive way, namely, by
avoiding its misuse that gives rise to avoidable losses. In addition, the
analysis of unpreventable losses may generate new slack to the extent that
246  D. Fleck

the organization manages to learn from such experiences. Such learning

may turn formerly unpreventable into preventable issues in future events.
Therefore, from a long-term perspective, organizational survival
requires adequate levels and use of slack, and responsible entrepreneur-
ship—doing good, doing well, and avoiding self-harm and harming oth-
ers—plays a constructive role in fostering organizational renewal and
integrity. By failing to meet one or more of the responsible entrepreneur-
ship features, irresponsible entrepreneurship plays a destructive role, hin-
dering renewal and weakening integrity.

Conclusion
This chapter departs from the widespread success-oriented bias com-
monly found in the entrepreneurship and growth literatures, maintain-
ing that entrepreneurial initiatives may constitute irresponsible
entrepreneurship—a far less divulged dark side. The scope of the respon-
sibility notion in this chapter is broad including individuals, firms, indus-
tries, economic systems, societies and the planet, since organizational
survival depends on the survival of all those entities. Moreover, from a
long-term perspective, responsibility transcends the concern with mere
subsistence, focusing instead on the long-term healthy survival of organi-
zations and their members, as well as of the entities around them.
Hence, the responsible entrepreneurship notion advanced here com-
prises conceiving business models that enable value creation to others and
value capture to the organization. It also includes identifying, avoiding
and neutralizing the likely harmful effects of the entrepreneurial initiative
on the entrepreneurial entity, members of the organizational coalition
and other entities. Among the contributions this chapter offers, a few
stand out. First, it puts forward a dualistic perspective of entrepreneur-
ship that acknowledges entrepreneurship’s bright and dark sides. Second,
it pinpoints the close relationship between entrepreneurship and growth,
highlighting some dangerous consequences of entertaining highly ambi-
tious goals, which usually translate into excessively high growth speed.
Third, it focuses on the consequences of entrepreneurial initiatives on the
entrepreneurial entity, offering a fourth category of entrepreneurship
 14  Against Irresponsible Entrepreneurship: A Dual Perspective…  247

outcome—self-destructive—in addition to Baumol’s (1990) trio—pro-

ductive, unproductive and destructive. Finally, it advances three require-
ments for promoting organizational survival, discussing the dual role
entrepreneurship may play in fostering organizational self-preservation
over time through its renewal, integrity maintenance and slack availabil-
ity; and in setting in motion self-destructive processes that foment orga-
nizational obsolescence, disintegration and lack of resources.
These notions help advance research and practice for those concerned
with the long-term healthy survival of organizations, environmental sus-
tainability and society’s robust development. This chapter contributes a
research road map offering a blueprint for performing fine-grained
research on the dual role entrepreneurship may play. While entrepreneur-
ial initiatives the world over have brought about economic growth, great
technological advances and achievements in several areas, presently,
human kind and our planet face poor existential conditions.
Unless and until those in charge of entrepreneurial initiatives develop
awareness of the likely adverse effects of entrepreneurship, there is reason
to be against entrepreneurship because not only it may harm others, as
Baumol (1990) claims, but it may also harm the entrepreneurial entity.
In fact, entrepreneurial initiatives may set in motion self-destructive pro-
cesses if they fail to promote organizational renewal and/or preserve orga-
nizational integrity and/or adequately manage organizational slack.
Properly fighting organizational obsolescence requires the organization to
engage in productive entrepreneurship, namely exploring value creating
novelties and capturing value from these initiatives. Otherwise, unpro-
ductive (non-value creating), destructive (value destroying) or self-­
destructive (non-renewing and/or slack destroying) outcomes will be the
case. Furthermore, properly tempering the entrepreneurial growth pace is
essential for both neutralizing the organizational schismatic propensity
and preserving organizational legitimacy, since excessive pressure on
organizational members may give rise to unnecessary internal conflicts, as
well as ethically questionable behaviors.
In the light of the notions discussed in this chapter, it is fair to say that
more often than not irresponsible entrepreneurship has predominated to
our detriment. Changing this sad state of affairs calls for a thorough dis-
cussion that goes beyond the scope of this chapter. This notwithstanding,
248  D. Fleck

I believe the notions advanced here can help practitioners, researchers

and educators. Practitioners may develop awareness of the wide implica-
tions of entrepreneurial initiatives, as well as alertness to entrepreneur-
ship’s dark side, enhancing the chances of avoiding unpleasant
shortcomings. Researchers and educators, in turn, can broaden the entre-
preneurship topic in their studies and teaching by encompassing entre-
preneurship’s dual nature and drawing attention to the self-destructive
potential entrepreneurial entities hold.

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 15
The Dark Side of Entrepreneurship:
The Role of the Dark Side of Personality
Bekir Emre Kurtulmuş

Introduction
It is a common notion that entrepreneurship provides positive benefits
for economy, society and employees (Baumol and Strom 2007; Bosma
et al. 2018). It tends to be associated with good deems. Consequently, it
is an assumption that societies and governments in general should sup-
port new businesses no matter what as entrepreneurship is perceived to
create new jobs and wealth. Entrepreneurs and their contribution to
modern economies are well known and they are one of the main engines
for economic growth and job creation. In fact, it has been shown that
entrepreneurs are one of the most important sources of economic growth
(Wennekers and Thurik 1999; Aparicio et al. 2016) as well as of new job
creation (Malchow-Møller et al. 2011), and there is a positive relation-
ship between entrepreneurship and innovation (Zhao 2005). It is because
of this that most governments support entrepreneur activities and
announce incentive programmes for new entrepreneurship. Across

B. E. Kurtulmuş (*)
Kuwait College of Science & Technology, Doha, Kuwait

© The Author(s) 2020 255

A. Örtenblad (ed.), Against Entrepreneurship,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47937-4_15
256  B. E. Kurtulmuş

societies, there is a very strong tendency to support new entrepreneur-

ship. There is no doubt that entrepreneurship activities provide plenty of
benefits for both national economies and local societies.
However, such positive sentiments may be misleading, particularly in
certain circumstances. It is, for instance, less discussed if this uncondi-
tional support always provides positive results. In certain circumstances
entrepreneurs behave unethically/immorally, something that almost con-
sistently lead to failure for their organizations.
Similar to the (overly) positive perception of entrepreneurship, leader-
ship is considered as positive and beneficial to organizations and societies
(Fletcher 2017). It is relevant to the entrepreneurship research as in
majority of the cases entrepreneurs are established by few individuals who
also take on leadership positions. The successful leaders bring prosperity
and well-being to organizations. Nonetheless, for two or more decades
scholars have started to research a relatively new topic—the dark side of
leadership. It is discussed that associating leadership with positive things
may not always be right. Some leaders have destructive and toxic tenden-
cies which, eventually, lead both organizations and individuals to failure.
They may also cause destructive effects on followers.
Individuals with destructive and toxic tendencies may be more com-
mon in leadership positions than one may think (Boddy et  al. 2010).
This is because certain dark individual traits may provide positive advan-
tages in complex organizational structures as well as in social interactions.
For example, narcissistic individuals are quite good at inflating their self-­
capabilities due to their self-conflicted belief in themselves and egoistic
tendencies. They are also quite successful at manipulating others towards
their individualistic and selfish desires (Paulhus 2014). Entrepreneurship
usually belongs to a single individual who also has a leadership position
within an organization. There is, thus, a connection between the dark
side of personality traits and the dark side of leadership.
This chapter raises critical questions about societies’ and governments’
sentiment of providing unconditional support to new entrepreneurship
as it is a common belief that they are one of the biggest sources of new
employment and wealth. What if entrepreneurs have any of the dark side
of personality traits? Do they still deserve the same support? Would
 15  The Dark Side of Entrepreneurship: The Role of the Dark…  257

entrepreneur leaders, who have the dark side of personality traits, fail
organizations and harm wellbeing of individuals?
There are generally two inter-connected reasons for being against
unconditional support of entrepreneurship. First, the same (dark) per-
sonality traits that are beneficial in entrepreneurship often cause harm to
organizations and their people. It has consistently been shown that peo-
ple with the dark side of personality traits—which seems to be helpful for
those who have ambitions to make an “entrepreneurial career”—harm
both organizations and other people, and they have often a different
moral or ethical code (Spain et  al. 2014; Kaiser et  al. 2015). Second,
entrepreneurs are often the sole owner—or among few owners—of the
entrepreneurial businesses that they build up, which makes them power-
ful. Such organizations are often less bureaucratic and less formalised
than other organizations, and, thus, there is a lack of organizational con-
trol over decision-making processes. Individuals with dark personality
traits are more common in senior positions than in lower levels of man-
agement (Boddy et al. 2010), so it may be right to assume they may be
seen more often in entrepreneurship positions. Therefore, there is a high
possibility of entrepreneurs having the dark side of personality traits.
Consequently, entrepreneurship may contribute with rather negative
consequences for businesses as well as for other people, both within and
outside of the organizations that the entrepreneurs own and rule.

The Dark Side of Personality Traits

While the main part of the literature on personality focuses on personal-
ity traits from a perspective of “big five” and some other personality mea-
surement systems, there is also a steady increase of research conducted on
the dark side of personality in this literature. Individuals possessing a rela-
tively negative and destructive personality traits, namely the dark triad of
personality, are examined.
Personality traits are one of the strongest determinants of individuals’
behaviours and attitudes and may also be a very important concept to
determine entrepreneurs’ behaviour and attitudes. There are many differ-
ent traits that define individuals’ characters, attitudes and behaviours.
258  B. E. Kurtulmuş

Some of these may be positive and more likeable whereas others can be
quite unpleasant. Dark personality traits comprise different personality
traits that are deemed to be harmful and undesirable. Such traits are
defined as socially aversive and subclinical. Individuals with such traits
are considered well enough to not receive clinical attention and they can
conduct their daily activities without much problems (Paulhus 2014).
Such individuals may cause problems for both organizations and others
around them.
In this vein, in order to pinpoint an exact definition of the so-called
dark personalities scholars have conducted extensive research. In fact,
both forensic scientists and personality/traits researchers have conducted
similar studies (Jones and Figueredo 2013). Consequently, the dark side
of dark personality traits are defined, these are Machiavellianism, narcis-
sism and sub-clinical psychopathy (Paulhus and Williams 2002)—this set
has recently been increased to four traits, by addition of everyday sadism-­
appetite for cruelty (Buckels et al. 2013). These traits describe rather harm-
ful and destructive side of personality. These personality traits are highly
correlated and overlapping (Jones and Figueredo 2013). In fact, Paulhus
(2014) discusses that callousness—being insensitive to others—is the rea-
son why the dark side of personality traits—Machiavellianism, sub-­
clinical psychopathy and narcissism—overlap. Despite the fact that each
trait provides unique outcomes to the point that they should be consid-
ered separately (Paulhus and Williams 2002), individuals with the dark
triad of personality traits engage explosive behaviour of others with dif-
ferent tactics (Jones and Paulhus 2017).
Individuals with the dark personality traits are socially aversive but can
live within a social environment. They are “sub-clinical”—no need to be
treated in institutions (Furnham et al. 2013). Key features of the dark
side of personality traits are callousness, impulsivity, manipulation, crim-
inality, manipulation, grandiosity and enjoyment of cruelty. Some of
these features are overlapping such as callousness which is the only fea-
ture that can be observed within all four of these traits. Also, some of the
traits are unique such as enjoyment of cruelty that can only be observed
in the trait of everyday sadism-appetite for cruelty (Paulhus 2014).
Individuals with the dark side of personality traits can be considered
harmful to others. They tend to be rather aggressive, particularly when
 15  The Dark Side of Entrepreneurship: The Role of the Dark…  259

they feel being threatened. It is easier to cheat and lie for these individuals
when the risk of being caught is low, but when the risk is high the most
likely group to cheat would be Machiavellians (Jones and Paulhus 2017).
The people with dark personalities tend be more inclined to have mali-
cious envy (Lange et al. 2018). Surprisingly, out of these four dark traits
Machiavellianism is not associated with outright aggressive behaviour
while narcissism is the only one associated with anti-social behaviour and
psychopathy is the one that most consistently predict aggressive behav-
iour (Jones and Paulhus 2010).
Within an organizational context, studies have found that the dark
triad of personality traits are related with many negative work outcomes.
Some of the issues that are found to be correlated with the dark traits of
personality traits are counter productive work behaviour (Cohen 2016),
bullying behaviour (Linton and Power 2013), negative organizational
citizenship behaviour (Spain et  al. 2014), negative job satisfaction
(Jonason et  al. 2015), poor job performance (O’Boyle et  al. 2012).
Therefore, it is clear from the literature that the dark triad of personality
leads to destructive and harmful behaviour and not only organizations
are affected but it may even have direct impacts on other employees’
wellbeing.

The Dark Side of Leadership

Leadership is considered to provide direction toward positive behaviour
among followers. The “right” leadership practises are assumed to create
positive values for everyone involved. However, recently some have
argued that some leadership practises are harmful, destructive and even
toxic for followers and organizations. It has been shown that individuals
with dark traits of their personality tend to perform “dark” leadership
(Furtner et al. 2017). For example, people with the dark triad of person-
ality traits—any of them—are more common at senior levels than lower
positions (Boddy et al. 2010), and create environments that all parties
involved are more or less negatively affected by. Their leadership practises
are considered to be harmful for both organizations and for the well-­
being of individuals (Liu et al. 2012).
260  B. E. Kurtulmuş

Therefore, scholars have engaged in doing research on the phenome-

non called the dark side of leadership (Conger 1990). After initial studies
they have reached a conclusion that there are some certain leadership
practises that should be considered as “dark” ones. Thus, the term “dark
leadership” includes destructive, tyrannical, evil and toxic leadership
practises. These studies have also found that there is a negative relation-
ship between leadership effectiveness and psychopathy—which leaders
effectiveness considerably reduce if they have psychopathy trait (Landay
et al. 2019), grandiose narcissism and organizational cynicism (Erkutlu
and Chafra 2017) and narcissism and work deviance (Judge et al. 2006).
There is also evidence that leaders with high Machiavellenism and psy-
chopathy have a detrimental effect on wellbeing of employees (Volmer
et al. 2016), that they make bad decisions and cause dysfunctional orga-
nizations (Clements and Washbush 1999), and even that they negatively
influence employees creativity (Liu et al. 2012).
So, it is consistently shown that the dark side of leadership practices
are bound to bring failure to organizations. Moreover, not only organiza-
tions but also followers’ well-being is threatened by the dark leaders’
immoral and ethical behaviour. It should be noted that such leaders have
warped moral values and the way that they perceive their surroundings
would be different than how others perceive the same surroundings. This
is probably problematic for followers, as whenever they need a reference
point in regard to ethics and morality they would face a dilemma, in that
the dark leaders may not share the same moral values.
Their self-perceived value may incline them to believe that their deci-
sions do not need to have any moral/ethical approvals. There is no formal
control mechanisms of leaders’ decisions and the only way of seeking
approval of decisions is informal approvals—through consensus among
followers. However, due to their extreme capabilities of manipulation
and callousness they may overcome disapproval from colleagues with
relative ease. During managerial process they would not consider other
emotions well-being. They may have no interest to protect the organiza-
tion’s benefit either—they may not necessarily owner but can be leader.
Therefore, it can be concluded that dark leaders may create problems not
only for organizations but also, they bring a lot of problematic issues to
followers (Furnham et al. 2013).
 15  The Dark Side of Entrepreneurship: The Role of the Dark…  261

Dark Personality Traits and Entrepreneurship

“Personality” is something we connect to individuals. Entrepreneurs can
be perceived as individual businesses, and entrepreneurial organizations
are often individual-dependent. Usually, fewer people are involved in the
decision-making process than in other organization, and the owners are
not seldom the ultimate decision-makers.
There is a strong sentiment in the literature that entrepreneurship is
somehow related to personality traits of individuals. Entrepreneurs may
be defined as risk taking individuals and it has been suggested that per-
sonality is one of the main reasons for individuals’ entrepreneurship
activities (Wennekers and Thurik 1999). In fact, there is a relationship
between personality traits in general and new business creation and busi-
ness success (Rauch and Frese 2007). Agreeableness is one of the most
influential personality traits that affect social entrepreneurship behav-
iours of individuals (Nga and Shamuganathan 2010). There is also a rela-
tionship with certain personality traits and entrepreneurship intention
and performance (Zhao et al. 2010).
The dark side of personality traits can also be observed among entre-
preneurs, with all associated negative attributes (Klotz and Neubaum
2016). In fact, it is clear from research conducted that the dark side of
personality traits have a pervasive influence on entrepreneurs and subse-
quently entrepreneurship activities. Research has found that there is a
positive relationship between the dark triad of personality and unproduc-
tive entrepreneurial motives (Hmieleski and Lerner 2016), between
entrepreneurial tendencies and behavior and sub-clinical psychopathy
(Akhtar et al. 2013), and between entrepreneurial intentions on different
cultural contexts (Wu et al. 2019). “CEO narcissism” trait has influence
on firms’ entrepreneurial orientation and performance (Wales et  al.
2013). Narcissism is also related to entrepreneurial intention (Mathieu
and St-Jean 2013). Defining positive and negative effects of personality
traits on entrepreneurs’ managers is beneficial to understand many differ-
ent organizational outcomes (Miller 2016).
The identified relationship between entrepreneurship and the dark
traits of personality does hardly provide many positive benefits.
262  B. E. Kurtulmuş

Entrepreneurs may, thus, be less empathic than people in average, and,

thus, more often than for any other individual, cause harm for both orga-
nizations and for the well-being of the employees.

Conclusion
There is a common belief that entrepreneurs are responsible individuals
who produce benefits for economies and employees, which may be
among the most commonly used justifications why there is reason to
unconditionally support entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship.
However, there is reason to argue against such unconditional support.
First, the same personality traits that entrepreneurship not seldom are
based on, have proven harmful for organizations and their people. There
is a consensus in the literature that personality traits of individuals have a
strong impact on entrepreneurship activities; studies have found various
effects of personality traits on individuals’ entrepreneurship tendencies
and behaviour. Despite some petty advantages that such traits come with,
these types of personalities are consistently leading to organizational fail-
ure. They have also negative impact on employees’ wellbeing.
Second, entrepreneurs often possess a lot of power within their organi-
zations, something which helps to increase the problems caused by the
dark personality traits even further. Entrepreneurial organizations have
unique attributes that make them different from other types of business
organizations. Usually, one person—the entrepreneur her- or himself—
makes all or most of the most important decisions. There would also be
limited control upon such individuals in relatively small organizations.
This makes it difficult to control ethicality and morality of the decisions
taken. Unlike larger organizations, there are often no mechanisms that
limits or controls undesired behaviour of individuals, such as code of
conduct or board of directors. These circumstances are, of course, more
devastating in those cases when entrepreneurs with darker sides of their
personality run the organizations. Such entrepreneurs would lack callous-
ness and empathy for others, thus, they may not consider the conse-
quences of actions on others.
 15  The Dark Side of Entrepreneurship: The Role of the Dark…  263

In conclusion, nothing is wrong with discussing positive attributes of

entrepreneurship, but there is also a need to discuss negative sides of
entrepreneurship. As is shown in this chapter, there might be situations
in which entrepreneurs produce more harm than benefits.

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 Afterword: What Does it Mean
to be Against Entrepreneurship?
From Antagonistic to Agonistic Critique
Pascal Dey

Introduction
Entrepreneurship leaves no one indifferent. It is not just a multifaceted
and polysemous concept (i.e. a concept carrying different meanings)
(Shepherd 2015), but an appraisive concept conveying different value
judgments (Choi and Majumdar 2014). Entrepreneurship is appraisive in
that it is accredited with some kind of valued achievement, be that wealth
creation, or the provision of employment, innovation and prosperity.
Since entrepreneurship is such a normatively charged term, one can either
be for entrepreneurship by touting its purported achievements (the posi-
tion of mainstream entrepreneurship research), or challenge entrepreneur-
ship’s ability to actually produce such positive effects (the position
adopted by critical entrepreneurship scholars). It thus appears that there is

P. Dey
Bern University of Applied Sciences, Bern, Switzerland
University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland
e-mail: pascal.dey@bfh.ch

© The Author(s) 2020 267

A. Örtenblad (ed.), Against Entrepreneurship,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47937-4
268  Afterword: What Does it Mean to be Against Entrepreneurship…

no in-between, no nuance of judgment as one is literally forced to take a

stance: either for or against entrepreneurship.
I will use the liberty that comes with writing an afterword to reflect on
whether the binary opposition between for or against, as well as the
implicit understanding of critique as a purely oppositional gesture, still
has purchase in contemporary critical entrepreneurship scholarship.
While it is no secret that I wholeheartedly identify with the critical entre-
preneurship community, this chapter takes it upon itself to argue that
critical research could reach a dead end if it continues to reduce its mis-
sion to an antagonistic confrontation with (a however defined) main-
stream of entrepreneurship research. At the heart of this contention is the
realization that the mainstream of entrepreneurship research has changed
so much in recent years that it has become superfluous to conceive of
critique solely as an act of pure negativity (Noys 2012). Thus, given how
entrepreneurship is studied and theorized today in mainstream entrepre-
neurship scholarship leads me to purport that being against—in the
oppositional sense of the term—is hardly appropriate for leading our
critical enterprise into the future. Using the first part of this short reflec-
tion to delineate and challenge the prerogative interpretation of critique
as oppositional engagement with mainstream research, this leads me, in a
second step, to ponder the possibility of an alternative interpretation of
critique based on Chantal Mouffe’s (1999, 2013) notion of agonism. I
thus use the article by Olaison and Sørensen (2014) on entrepreneurial
failure to exemplify the potential inherent in agonistic critique.

Critique 1.0: Against Entrepreneurship

as Antagonistic Opposition
Although critical entrepreneurship scholars, with few exceptions (Fletcher
and Selden 2016), have not made any systematic attempt to define what
critique actually is and what set of principles and goals it should uphold,
it is fairly uncontroversial to assume that the majority of critical research
on entrepreneurship has an antagonistic orientation. The basic premise of
this article thus is that it would be wrong to consider antagonistic opposi-
tion as the best, let alone only model for criticizing mainstream
 Afterword: What Does it Mean to be Against Entrepreneurship…  269

entrepreneurship research. But what does antagonistic critique actually

entail? Antagonistic critique is predicated on a friend-enemy imagery
(Schmitt 2007) which separates the “I” and “us” from the “other”. This
separation is irreconcilable in that the enemy throughout the confronta-
tion remains in a position of complete exteriority or outside to the “I”
and “us”. The aim of the antagonistic engagement with the “other” thus
consists in creating the terms for distinguishing the good and the bad,
and to take measures to put the enemy in its place and, possibly, to over-
come it. So conceived, antagonistic critique can be pictured as a “battle”
with the enemy that knows only one winner. This is not to glorify the
potential excess of antagonistic critique, but a cautious reminder that
oppositional encounters growing out of a concrete issue or concern
always carry the seeds of “war” (Schmitt 2007).
Antagonistic critique made its entrance to management and organiza-
tion studies via Critical Management Studies (CMS) (Alvesson and
Willmott 1992), which was defined by its anti-performative orientation
(Fournier and Grey 2000) and its distinct anti-management ethos. In this
framework, to critique essentially meant to bring to the fore manage-
ment’s entanglement with unequal relations of power, the systematic
exploitation of workers in the labor process or management’s complicity
with immoral and reprehensible phenomena such as genocide or human
trafficking. Although CMS comprises different theoretical orientations
(Marxism, Critical Theory, poststructuralism, feminism, critical realism,
etc.), it is united by a belief that there is something fundamentally wrong
with how management is understood and practiced. These antagonistic
feelings can also be found in part of the critical research on entrepreneur-
ship. I refer to this research as Critique 1.0. Although such a thing as a
clearly delineated “mainstream” of entrepreneurship research never
existed (Baker and Welter 2020), Critique 1.0 has essentially been sparked
by a discontent about the way in which entrepreneurship was conven-
tionally studied and theorized (Dey and Mason 2018). The primary
enemy of Critique 1.0 was the preferred position of economic and man-
agement theory in entrepreneurship studies (Hjorth 2013; Hjorth and
Holt 2016). Critique 1.0 thus tried to denaturalize dominant renditions
of entrepreneurship as “new venture creation”, “opportunistic wealth cre-
ation” or “profit making” (Shane and Venkataraman 2000) by
270  Afterword: What Does it Mean to be Against Entrepreneurship…

pinpointing how these understandings tend to present entrepreneurship

quite naively as a univocally “positive economic activity” (Calás et  al.
2009, p.  552). Jones and Spicer’s (2009) seminal book Unmasking the
entrepreneur offers a paradigmatic example of antagonistic critique or
Critique 1.0. Their unapologetic critique sheds light on how mainstream
scholarship has turned a blind eye toward central elements of entrepre-
neurship, such as excess, failure, irrationality or unethical behavior. Jones
and Spicer go on to argue that these suppressed phenomena are not just
rare deviations or outliers, but defining characteristics of entrepreneur-
ship and entrepreneurs. Consider, as an example, the case of excess. Jones
and Spicer aver that excess in the form of, for instance, wasteful con-
sumption and decadent parties is a constitutive element of entrepreneur-
ship, and they point toward real-life examples like Richard Branson or
Steve Fossett to argue that entrepreneurs are “cruel and vindictive” actors
(p. 115). Ignorance of excess in the academic literature according to the
authors is not just a failure to consider relevant evidence, but is seen as
indicative of the general refusal on the part of the scholarly community
to engage with the “dark side” of entrepreneurship. Jones and Spicer’s
book thus sets out to reveal that behind the ideological smokescreen of
entrepreneurship lies another, less rose-tinted reality which is deliberately
edited out of academic (and policy) accounts. In a truly antagonistic ges-
ture of “creative destruction”, the authors treat the mainstream as an
“enemy” making strategic use of economic discourse to fabricate (fic-
tional and thus largely untrue) fantasies about the productive value of
entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. The ultimate aim thus is to tran-
scend the enemy’s ideological fabric by suggesting an alternative to it.
To be sure, Jones and Spicer’s antagonistic critique made perfect sense
during a time when entrepreneurship was almost univocally regarded as a
positive thing, attributed with a seemingly limitless capacity to produce
valuable achievements (Weiskopf and Steyaert 2009). Jones and Spicer
thus had good reasons to attack mainstream research head-on to disman-
tle its various taken-for-granted assumptions and blind spots pertaining
to the virtuousness of economic practices, the moral and rational nature
of entrepreneurial actors, or the primacy of functionalist and construc-
tionist theories. However, as entrepreneurship research has become more
pluralistic and diverse in terms of its theoretical and paradigmatic
 Afterword: What Does it Mean to be Against Entrepreneurship…  271

orientations (Calás et  al. 2009), many of our antagonistic knee-­jerk

reflexes no longer seem adequate.
For instance, Jones and Spicer (2009) maintain that mainstream
research ignores the shortcomings and negative ramifications of entrepre-
neurship. This might have been accurate more than 10 years ago when
their book was published. What we witness today, however, is an increas-
ing interest amongst mainstream scholars in the “dark side” of entrepre-
neurship. For instance, in a recent paper, Shepherd (2019) makes a plea
for exploring the “negatives” of “entrepreneurship” (p.  217), including
the dark side (the entrepreneur’s negative psychological and emotional
reactions during the entrepreneurial process), the downside (e.g. the
entrepreneur’s loss of status and financial resources) and the destructive
side of entrepreneurship (the damage which the entrepreneur inflicts on
society as a whole). The broader insight to be gleaned from this cursory
example is that mainstream scholars have come to acknowledge that it
would be wrong to assume that entrepreneurship is universally positive,
and that it is important to better understand if and when people engag-
ing in entrepreneurship actually benefit from these endeavors, and to
study in greater depth the conditions under which entrepreneurship pro-
duces positive effects for entire societies and economies (Wiklund et al.
2019). Attending to how entrepreneurship ends up creating unintended
effects, thus potentially doing harm to key stakeholders (Khan et  al.
2007), mainstream research has taken it upon itself to understand if and
when entrepreneurship creates dysfunctions in individuals, families,
communities and society (McMullen and Warnick 2016) with an eye
toward creating effective responses to the widespread suffering precipi-
tated by the dark side of entrepreneurship (Shepherd 2019).
Or to use another example, Jones and Spicer (2009) lament the absence
of research dealing with the ethics of entrepreneurship, while accusing
mainstream research of offering a thin account of the “social” of entrepre-
neurship based on an understanding of social entrepreneurship as mere
charity (Roscoe 2011). This critique resonates with Calás et al.’s (2009)
seminal article which in the very same year pointed out that our pre-­
occupation with economic activity prevents us from understanding what
else entrepreneurship could be and do. Today, such antagonistic state-
ments essentially miss their mark since mainstream research no longer
272  Afterword: What Does it Mean to be Against Entrepreneurship…

considers entrepreneurship exclusively in terms of wealth creation and

profit (Shane and Venkataraman 2000), but as an engine of positive social
change (Stephan et  al. 2016). During a time where social change is
becoming the New Normal of entrepreneurship research, entrepreneur-
ship is increasingly theorized as a source of social value, social change and
emancipation (Rindova et al. 2009). As part of this Copernican revolu-
tion, it has been argued that entrepreneurship is perhaps the most effec-
tive means for solving some of the grandest challenges of our times, such
as poverty (Bruton et al. 2013) or economic exclusion (Gauthier et al.
2020). The view of entrepreneurship as a medium of social change has
become so compelling that scholars have started to address whether every
new enterprise should in fact “be required to be a hybrid organization”
capable of producing financial value alongside environmental and social
value (McMullen and Warnick 2016, p. 631).
What is the lesson to be taken from these examples? One answer would
be that critical entrepreneurship research has become obsolete as main-
stream research has completely absorbed its various allegations and con-
cerns. Another answer, which I prefer, is that mainstream entrepreneurship
research has changed so fundamentally in recent years that we need to
adjust not just the object of our critique but also our fundamental
assumptions about what critique is. While the previous section has dem-
onstrated that Critique 1.0 has lost some of its purchase, the question
then is what an alternative mode of critique could look like that does
something more than just treat the mainstream as its enemy.

Critique 2.0: Against Entrepreneurship

as Agonistic Engagement
Having highlighted what I consider to be the limitations of antagonistic
Critique 1.0, I will now sketch out the tentative contours of an alterna-
tive understanding of critique based on Chantal Mouffe’s (1999, 2013)
notion of agonism. I will refer to this as Critique 2.0. Agonism (from
Greek agōn: Contest) has been used by Mouffe to argue that conflict has
a special relevance within democratic politics. Specifically, Mouffe pro-
posed agonistic pluralism as an alternative to liberal conceptions of
 Afterword: What Does it Mean to be Against Entrepreneurship…  273

politics based on the ideal of consensus. Mouffe’s basic idea is that demo-
cratic life is rife with irreconcilable conflicts between “us” and “them”,
wherefore it makes little sense to adhere to the liberal ideal of consensus
and harmony (Tambakaki 2014). Agonistic politics is hence a response to
the question of how the democratic process can be secured under condi-
tions of perpetual difference and disagreement. Mouffe defines agonism
as a process of ongoing “contest”. Thus, while both antagonism (see
above) and agonism entail an element of struggle, Mouffe (2014) makes
it clear that the “agonistic confrontation is different from the antagonistic
one, […] because the opponent is not considered an enemy to be
destroyed but an adversary whose existence is perceived as legitimate”
(pp. 150–151). Transposing agonism to the current context, we can see
that the aim of agonistic Critique 2.0 is not so much to erase and replace
its adversary (e.g. by offering a better, more valid account of social reality)
(Roskamm 2015), but to challenge the adversary on its own terms
(Mouffe 1999). Conceived in this way, agonistic Critique 2.0 seeks to
channel the positivity of the confrontation with the adversary by carrying
out critique from a position of respect for and admiration of the “other”
(Critchley 2005). Critique 2.0 acknowledges that the mainstream is legit-
imate in its attempt to say something meaningful about its subject mat-
ter. It is this bond of respect which serves as a moderating element in the
ongoing confrontation with the “other” (Tambakaki 2014), which cre-
ates the ground on which new insights and ideas can arise.
Let us now use a concrete example to render palpable the potential
merit agonistic Critique 2.0 can have for entrepreneurship studies. To
this end, I like to summon an article by Lena Olaison and Bent Meier
Sørensen published in 2014 in the International Journal of Entrepreneurial
Behavior & Research. I have chosen this particular article not just because
I had the pleasure of accompanying it in my role as an editor for a special
issue on critical entrepreneurship research (Verduyn et  al. 2014), but
because it deals with a topic that was identified by Jones and Spicer
(2009) as a conspicuous absence in entrepreneurship research: entrepre-
neurial failure. While Jones and Spicer (2009) rightly pointed out at the
time that failure has been a blind spot in entrepreneurship research for
many years, entrepreneurial failure has quickly developed into a passion-
ate stream of research since the publication of their book. Over the last
274  Afterword: What Does it Mean to be Against Entrepreneurship…

decade, mainstream scholarship has tried to better understand the ante-

cedents, elements and boundary conditions of entrepreneurial failure,
and to increase the effectiveness of responses to both entrepreneurs’ suf-
fering and stigma (Byrne and Shepherd 2015), and the broader socio-­
economic damage caused by entrepreneurial failure. These are valuable
and legitimate objectives, and one can justifiably ask whether critique is
still necessary under these circumstances. Olaison and Sørensen’s article
responds with a clear Yes, since although it treats extant research on entre-
preneurial failure as legitimate, it still considers the mainstream as inad-
equate and thus in need of critical scrutiny. Instead of following Jones
and Spicer’s example of using ridicule and parody to engage their adver-
sary, Olaison and Sørensen immerse themselves in academic accounts,
policy documents as well as political speeches, press reports and the nar-
ratives of entrepreneurs to develop an embedded sense of dominant
understandings of entrepreneurial failure. While the analysis confirms
that entrepreneurial failure is readily seen as integral to the entrepreneur-
ial process, the authors are struck by the particular way in which failure is
usually understood. In contrast to earlier discussions which used to blame
the entrepreneur for his or her failure, Olaison and Sørensen’s analysis
brings to the fore how entrepreneurial failure is largely considered a posi-
tive thing. That is, failures are seen as empowering and generative
moments as entrepreneurs can learn from them so as to increase their
chances of succeeding with their next venture (McKenzie and Sud 2008).
This insight points immediately to the question whether entrepreneurial
failure has lost all its stigma and blemish. Olaison and Sørensen offer a
double answer to this paradox. On the one hand, they aver that the nega-
tivity of failure continues to exist as an inescapable reality of entrepre-
neurship. On the other hand, they convincingly make the case that the
negative reality of failure is continuously suppressed on a discursive level
whereby the “real and material kernel” of entrepreneurship (p. 194) gets
denied. In line with these observations, Olaison and Sørensen offer
important insights into how entrepreneurial failure is split into good and
bad parts, arguing that only “productive” failures tend to gain broad rec-
ognition since being presented as an elemental stepping-stone toward
entrepreneurial success. Unraveling the mostly concealed censorship
mechanism shaping our shared understanding of failure, Olaison and
 Afterword: What Does it Mean to be Against Entrepreneurship…  275

Sørensen’s deconstructive endeavor casts a new light on the discursive

prohibitions and hidden affective dynamics at play in our epistemological
practices. Importantly, even if Olaison and Sørensen’s article invites us to
temporarily abandon existing prohibitions by shacking up dominant
understandings of entrepreneurial failure, they are not interested in pro-
viding a better, more truthful understanding of this subject matter.
Indeed, the article does not treat dominant renditions of entrepreneurial
failure (i.e. “good failures” that are conducive to learning) as an enemy
that needs to be overcome. Rather, their approach has an educational
dimension, aimed at raising sympathy for and awareness of how “accept-
able and unacceptable types of entrepreneurship” (p. 201) are fabricated
and sustained in mainstream scholarship, thus using agonistic Critique
2.0 to create a space where dominant assumptions reach their limit. These
insights are of immediate importance to critical researchers, but poten-
tially also have relevance for the mainstream entrepreneurship commu-
nity. Indeed, that Olaison and Sørensen’s article might have broad appeal
and utility that goes beyond our critical community is reflected in the
fact that the article won the Best Paper Award of the International Journal
of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research in the year of its publication.

Coda
This afterword has argued that critical research on entrepreneurship is at
a cross-roads: it can either continue to lose relevance and legitimacy by
applying a form of critique that is only partially adapted to the changed
circumstances of mainstream research (Critique 1.0); or it can explore
alternative forms of critique that are better suited to address the current
state of entrepreneurship studies (Critique 2.0). Having favored the sec-
ond option, I have drawn on Mouffe’s notion of agonism to adopt more
affirmative and granular critical dispositions that allow us to transcend
Schmitt’s antagonism between friend and enemy by prodding a space
between being either “for” and “against” entrepreneurship (Parker and
Parker 2017). This “in-between”, which is a constant thread running
through Mouffe’s political theory of agonism, reminds us that the pre-
eminent task of critical scholarship today consists in treading the fine line
276  Afterword: What Does it Mean to be Against Entrepreneurship…

between “belonging” and “breakthrough” (Critchley 1999). “Belonging”

demands that critical scholars remain sympathetic toward their adversar-
ies, while trying to gain relevance amongst mainstream entrepreneurship
scholars by working from within the tradition they critically engage with.
“Breakthrough”, on the other hand, signifies that there is always the dan-
ger of selling our critical sensitivity by overly trying to become palatable
to the “other”. Critique, to remain worthy of its name, thus needs to keep
a productive distance from the mainstream so as to retain its ability to see
that entrepreneurship could be different from how it is traditionally
understood. And while Olaison and Sørensen’s paper has helped us create
a better appreciation of how agonistic Critique 2.0 can produce impor-
tant impulses for both critical entrepreneurship scholars as well as for the
mainstream entrepreneurship community with which it engages, it is to
be hoped that we will see more such studies in the future.

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 Index1

A B
Abuse of minors and Big five, 257
minorities, 168 Black, vi, 48, 138, 192
Addiction/addictive, 1, 8, 13, 171, Body, 44, 93, 94, 98–101, 103, 104
173, 217–227, 235 scanning, 41
Agonism, 268, 272, 273, 275 work, 104
Agonistic, 272–276 Boo.com, 10, 38, 41–53
critique, 267–276 Businesses, 207
Amway, 142, 143
distributors, 142
Antagonism, 273, 275 C
Antagonistic, 208, 267–276 Callousness, 258, 260, 262
Anthropomorphism, 38–41 Capitalism, ix, 4, 11, 40, 47, 50, 54,
Anthropomorphization, 40, 58–60, 69, 74, 77, 105, 142,
46, 47, 53 155, 169, 173, 180, 204, 219
Apple, 62, 134, 140, 171, 175 Capitalist, 4, 23, 38, 46, 47, 58, 60,
Artificial intelligence (AI), 170, 174 73, 105, 155, 156, 167, 174

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2020 279

A. Örtenblad (ed.), Against Entrepreneurship,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47937-4
280 Index

Capitalistic, 8, 57, 73, 220 of entrepreneurs, 120, 124

Class, 25, 37, 40, 47, 80, 95, of entrepreneurship, 3, 14, 30,
101–103, 120, 175 112, 114–116, 118, 120–121,
Climate, v, 59, 116, 172 125, 185, 255–263, 270, 271
Comfort zone, 13, 203–213 of entrepreneur’s negative, 271
Commodification, 102 of leadership, 256, 259–260
Consequence, 2, 3, 9–11, 14–16, 22, of personality, 14, 255–263
30, 38, 40, 53, 54, 58–60, 70, of personality traits, 256–259, 261
71, 73, 82, 86, 140, 157–159, Darkness, vii
161, 162, 187, 217–227, 235, Definition of entrepreneurship, 30,
239, 244, 246, 257, 262 61, 138, 154
Contextualizing entrepreneurship, 24 Destruction, vii, viii, 50, 57, 58,
Control, ix, 11, 39, 40, 57–74, 103, 155, 205, 213
115, 116, 122, 124, 135, 156, Destructive, 2, 14, 19–31, 58, 60,
197, 211, 235, 244, 257, 213, 234, 236, 237, 239, 244,
260, 262 246, 247, 256–260
ethicality, 262 consequences, 3
Co-responsible, 157, 158, 163 effects, 256
Corporeal entrepreneurialism, 104 entrepreneurship, 24, 236, 239,
Corruption, 3, 168, 241 242, 271
Creative destruction, 13, 61, 142, Discourse, 4, 9–11, 13, 15, 26, 27,
175, 203–213, 218, 270 30, 37, 38, 53, 58–60, 63, 65,
Credo of compassionate 66, 73, 77–79, 82, 85, 87–90,
capitalism, 143 95, 99–101, 113, 125, 135,
Critical entrepreneurship, 37, 112, 144, 145, 206, 209, 213, 270
114, 125, 267, 268, 272, Disempowered, 197
273, 276 Dressed for success, 47
Critical entrepreneurship studies, 3 Dualistic, 234–237, 246
Critical Theory, 269 Dual nature, 243, 248
Criticism/critique, vii, 3, 38, 51, 58, Dumb luck, 134
70, 171–173, 175, 176, 180,
268–272, 274–276
Critique 1.0, 268–272, 275 E
Critique 2.0, 272–276 Ecological economics, 154,
156–158, 160–164
Ecological man, 160
D Economic man, 160, 161
Dark side, 113, 120, 172, 246 Economy, 255
associated with entrepreneurial Eco-preneurs, 154, 158, 161,
activity, 125 162, 164
  Index  281

Eco-preneurship, 9, 12, 15, Entrepreneurs, 133, 205, 270

153–164, 206 definition, vii
Ecosystem, 21, 96, 159, 163, 177 as economic actor, 12
Edifice, 168 as agents of change and growth in
Effects, 3, 21, 95, 103, 106, 140, market economy, 154, 155
141, 168, 171, 175, 176, dark personalities, 14
234–237, 239, 242, 243, 246, as neoliberal subject, 97–99
247, 260–262, as synonymous with, 38
267, 271 as temporary phenomenon only
of hero myths, 146 existing during formation of a
Empathy, 262 business, 137
Employee innovative behaviour, Entrepreneurship, 4, 10, 113, 218,
13, 185–198 227, 234, 246, 255, 270
Employee-driven innovation, 186 dark side of, 234, 235, 248
Employees, 255 definition, 267
Empower, 66 discourse, 4, 8, 9, 11, 14, 62,
Empowered woman, 101 73, 89, 124
Empowering, ix, 274 ecosystems, 180
Enterprises, 237 focus on positive outcomes, 13
Entreification, 42, 43, 45, 46, 52–54 literature on, 2
Entrepomorphization, 46, 47, 52–54 mainstream, positive and
Entrepreneurial, 194, 196 uncritical image of, 2
behavior, 22, 95, 136, 138, 185, positive, 2, 8, 13, 206
273, 275 as positive economic activity, 113
behaviours, dark side of, ix uncritical, 2
discourse, 96, 106 value-loaded term, 2
hegemony, 212–213 Ethical, 62, 63, 73, 162, 163, 168,
management, 186–188, 170, 238, 240–243, 247,
190, 198 257, 260
opportunity, 8, 94, 95, 99–104, Ethics, 60, 73, 242, 260, 271
106, 111, 124, 140, 178, 233, Ethnic entrepreneurs, 113
235, 240 Ethnic minority entrepreneurs, 11,
passion, 185–198 12, 112, 117
process, 60, 73, 140, 205, 218, Ethnic minority
271, 274 entrepreneurship, 120–121
success, ix, 121, 140, 274 Everyday sadism, 258
team, 9, 12, 15, 136, 144–146 Exploitation, viii, 11, 95, 100, 101,
vision, vi, vii 121, 123, 153, 171, 173, 178,
Entrepreneurialism, vii, 101, 112, 239, 240, 245, 269
167, 176, 180 Exploration, 239
282 Index

F Heroine, 45
Facebook, 62, 78, 140, 168, 169, Heroization, 12, 137, 147
175, 178, 179 Hero myth, 147
Failure, 3, 38, 95, 123, 141, 167, Heterogeneity of entrepreneurship
170, 239, 243, 245, 256, 260, semantics, 22
262, 268, 270, 273–275 History of economic thought, 20, 21
Familiarity, 13, 210, 212 Homeliness, 13, 208, 211–213
Female entrepreneurship, 20, 22, 31 How-to-guides, 136, 141–143
Fetish, ix, 39, 47, 77, 79, 87, 90 Hybrid entrepreneurs, 27
Fetishism, 11, 38, 40, 41, 77–90, 171 Hybrid forms, 30
Fetishist, 10, 37–54 Hybrids, 27, 28
moral, 38
Firm, 13, 198
Forced into becoming I
entrepreneurs, 60 Iconoclasm, 12, 169, 180
Forced into entrepreneurial Iconoclasts, 180
activity, 121 Ideological, 22, 79, 84, 89, 95, 104,
Forced into entrepreneurship, 122 135, 147, 270
Fragmentation, 155, 193, 240, 241 Ideology, ix, 12, 82, 83, 89, 95, 105,
Franchising chain, 189 113, 133–147, 170, 174, 180
Free market, viii, 13, 112, 168, 170 Illegal, 24, 138, 169, 170, 178
Illegality, 169, 179
Immigrant entrepreneurs, 72
G Immigrants, 59, 60, 69–74, 113,
Gates, Bill, 134, 168 119, 122, 180
Gender, viii, 4, 50, 94, 101, 103, 140 Immigrant women, 72
Genocide, 168, 269 Immoral, 260, 269
Globalisers, 180 Imperiousness, 12, 167–180
Globalism, ix Implications, 103, 157–161, 164,
Globalization, 13, 121, 177, 186, 248
167, 169–174 Inequality, 11, 59, 90, 106,
Grandiosity, 258 111–125, 174, 176, 206
Great Man cult, 145 Innovation practices, 190, 192
Insouciance, 12, 167–180
Integrity, 238, 240–244, 246, 247
H Intensive case study, 186, 190, 198
Hegemonic discourse, ix, 79, 84, 172 Internet entrepreneurs, 41
Hegemony, 13, 96, 203–213 Interpretivist orientation, 187
Hero, 62, 65, 73, 80, 133, 134, 136, Invasion of privacy, 168
144–147, 176, 208, 212 Investor capitalism, 144
  Index  283

Irresponsibility, 141, 235 Marxist, 10, 11, 38, 39, 41, 54n1, 170
Irresponsible entrepreneurship, 8, 13, Meaning of entrepreneurship, 21, 22
14, 38, 60, 233–248 Mechanistic worldview, 154, 156–157
IT entrepreneurs, 41 Men, 94
Mental disorders, 139–141
Mental health, 103, 217–227
J consequences, 13
Job automation, 176 Micro-sized company, 189
Johannisson, 205 Microsoft, 62, 168, 176
Migrant entrepreneurs, 22, 112, 118,
119, 121–124
K Migrant entrepreneurship,
Kets de Vries, M. F., 3, 117, 120, 20, 31, 125
185, 186, 190, 195, 226 Minority, vi, 112–114, 116,
117, 120–124
entrepreneurs, 112–118,
L 120, 122–124
Lawlessness, 12, 168, 169, 180 entrepreneurship, 11, 111–125
Leadership, 61, 156, 161, 188, 212, Monetize successfully, 99
256, 259, 260 Monopoly, 176
Legitimacy, 240, 247, 275 Moral, vi, 62, 63, 97, 170, 242, 257,
Legitimate, vi, 11, 54, 78–80, 90, 260, 270
238, 241, 242, 273, 274 hazard, 168
Morale, 241
Morality, 260, 262
M Myth, viii, ix, 62, 144–147
Machiavellianism, 258, 259 Mythical, 79, 145
Mainstream, 2, 3, 14–16, 112, 114, Mythology, 82, 180, 206
115, 123, 125, 208, 267–276
discourse, 15
of entrepreneurship research, N
defined, 268 Narcissism, 139, 141, 235, 258–261
Mainstreaming, 102 Narcissistic, 256
Male, 28, 58, 114, 120, 139 Necessity, 11, 21, 62, 112, 115, 118,
Man, 83, 89, 94 121, 122, 124
Manipulation, 258, 260 entrepreneurs, 223
Market opportunity, 105 Neo-liberal, 8, 10, 57–74, 95, 98–105,
Marx, K., 38–40, 47, 77, 79, 85, 168–171, 173, 180, 206
87, 90, 102 discourse, 58
Marxism, 269 paradigm, 167
284 Index

Neoliberalism, 12, 58, 95, Personality traits, 14, 218,

97, 98, 112 257–259, 261–262
Neoliberalist, 174 Platform monopoly, 175
Network, 26, 62, 112, 116, 119, Positive, 102, 106, 113, 115, 197, 227
120, 123, 157, 160–162, 169, attributes of
207, 218 entrepreneurship, 263
effects, 175 consequences, 187
society, 26 face of the entrepreneur, 136–137
Networking, 164 image of entrepreneurship, 24
Nlack, 192 outcomes of entrepreneurship,
Non-ethical, 63 185, 217, 218, 234
public statements on
entrepreneurship, 26
O rhetoric surrounding
Objectivist, 170 entrepreneurship, 11, 112
Opportunity, vi, 11, 13, 22, 38, 39, sentiments, 256
41–43, 63, 66, 67, 82, view of entrepreneurship, 186
94–103, 105, 106, 115, Positive discourse
118–125, 138, 155, 162, 197, on entrepreneurial, 114
204, 220, 222, 223, 235, 241, on the topic, 120
244, 245 Potential entrepreneurs, 136, 235
entrepreneurs, 223 Power, v, vii–ix, 3, 11, 61, 122, 144,
Organic worldview, 156, 159 155, 158, 159, 171, 186, 195,
Organizational artist, 205 226, 234, 257, 262, 269
Organizations, 212, 213 Powerlessness, 222
Outsourcers, 171, 172, 180 Process philosophy, 157, 158
Outsourcing, 11, 13, 63, 167–174 Productive entrepreneurship,
Overly-passionate, 193 239, 247
Overly positive picture of Productive value of entrepreneurs
entrepreneurship, 125 and entrepreneurship, 270
Owner-manager, 186–198 Psychological traits, 134, 139–141

P R
Paradigm, 115, 156, 160 Race, viii, 40, 50, 101, 103
Paradigmatic, 154–156, 270 Reification, 38–42
Passion, 8, 13, 187, 192, 193, 196–198, Relation between the entrepreneur
205, 220, 222, 224, 273 and things the entrepreneur
Passionate entrepreneur, 185, 190 produces, 38
  Index  285

Renewal, 13, 23, 189, 194, 205, Small service company, 186, 192,
238–241, 243, 244, 246, 247 195, 196
Rental and real estate company, 189 Small state, 97, 171
Reported positive outcomes, 221 Social entrepreneurship, 4, 20, 21,
Responsible entrepreneurs, 236 31, 120, 261, 271
Responsible entrepreneurship, Social fabric, 97, 238, 241
9, 16, 57, 234, 236, Social institutions, 205
237, 246 Social media, vi, viii, 170, 173, 219
Risk taking, 235, 245, 261 Social mobility, 26, 28
Society, 255
Stability, 26, 210, 212
S Startup entrepreneurs, 136
Schism, 241–243, 247 Start-up founders, 135
Schumpeter, J. A., viii, 19, 22–24, Start-ups, 12, 22, 25, 61, 78, 135,
61, 137, 204, 218 147, 168, 174, 176,
Self-destruction, 238, 243 177, 179
Self-destructive entrepreneurship, Sub-clinical psychopathy, 258, 261
234, 236, 237, 239–241, Succeeding, 85, 89, 139, 274
247, 248 Success, vii, 20, 46, 51, 62, 82, 83,
Self-employment, ix, 10, 19–31, 86–88, 90, 95, 104, 120,
118–124, 177 134–136, 139, 140, 143, 144,
Serial entrepreneurs, 41, 47, 213 146, 147, 160, 185, 213, 234,
Shady forms of 235, 246, 261
entrepreneurship, 139 Success fee, 43
Side effect, 14, 220, 234, Successful entrepreneur, vii, viii, 12,
237, 239–240 41, 62, 79, 80, 82, 86, 87, 90,
Slack, 242–247 102, 133–147, 170, 173, 206,
Small- and medium-sized enterprises 210, 212, 213, 218, 224, 239,
(SMEs), 123, 168, 176, 186, 240, 244, 256
188, 190, 237 Successful entrepreneurial
Small business, 21, 26, 118, 123, team, 146
125, 177, 204, 218 Successful Samwer brothers, 146
Small enterprise/firm, 4, 117, 168, Successful tattoo advertising, 102
174, 186–189, 198, 207, 212, Surplus value, 38, 47, 53, 54
213, 237, 244 Survival, 13, 15, 87, 112, 115,
Small entrepreneurs, 174, 198, 207, 119, 120, 123, 124,
212, 213, 236, 237 189, 233–248
Small organizations, 262 Surviving, 121–124, 135, 245
Small owner-manager, 13 Systems psychodynamic, 117, 125
286 Index

T W
Tattoo advertising, 11, 93–95, Wannabe entrepreneurs, 79,
99–104, 106 80, 82, 90
Thriving, 121–124 War machine, 10, 37–54
Toxic, 169, 171, 256, 259, 260 What types of relations between the
entrepreneur and the things
produced can be
U discerned, 41
Uncritical mainstream, 4 White, vi, 28, 58, 114, 120,
Unemployment, 20, 26, 28–30, 96, 123, 139
114, 120, 142, 176 White man, 58
Unethical, 14, 38, 270 Wholly, 227
Unethically/immorally, 256 Woman, 47, 71, 93, 94, 101, 189
Universal basic income, 175 Women, 4, 11, 70, 71, 94, 99–101,
Universally appealing, 227 103, 221
Unproductive entrepreneurship, Would-be entrepreneurs, 212
19–31, 171, 234, 236, 237,
239, 242, 247, 261
Unquestionably positive light, 120 Z
Use value, 38, 39, 43, 46, 47, 53, 54 Zero privacy, 179