Call for Papers

Over the past couple of decades, the literature on cultural entrepreneurship has enhanced our understanding of how entrepreneurial processes are profoundly cultural (e.g., Gehman & Soublière, 2017; Lockwood & Soublière, 2022; Lounsbury & Glynn, 2001, 2019). Much of this literature to-date has documented how entrepreneurs legitimate their efforts, enabling them to secure resources and find key partners to scale up their ventures (Überbacher, 2014; Überbacher, Jacobs, & Cornelissen, 2015). At the core of legitimation and resource acquisition efforts is the construction of entrepreneurial identities, defined as stories that give meaning to the questions of “who we are” and “what we do” (Navis and Glynn, 2011). These identity stories (Ibarra and Barbulescu, 2010; Linde, 1993) function to assemble variegated cultural elements in a narrative that guides external audiences’ (e.g., investors, government bodies, established organizations) sensemaking efforts and judgement of new ventures credibility and legitimacy.
 
In their recent book, Lounsbury and Glynn (2019) argue for a broader agenda on cultural entrepreneurship that further unpacks the sources and consequences of entrepreneurial legitimation. This requires both a zooming in and a zooming out. With regard to zooming in, we need more detailed ethnographically-oriented studies of entrepreneurs and how they design legitimacy (Glaser & Lounsbury, 2021) that draws attention to how the stories and actions of entrepreneurs are co-constructed with various audiences. Such an approach will enable us to develop a richer understanding of how individual entrepreneurial stories get constructed and how and why they become appealing and convincing.
 
But to fully appreciate where entrepreneurial stories and identities come from, we also need to zoom out to the field level to appreciate the flow of broader discursive dynamics – the stock of stories (Zilber, 2007) – that provide the cultural resources that entrepreneurs access in the cultivation of their identity stories. Such a field perspective on cultural entrepreneurship redirects attention away from the study of entrepreneurial opportunities, and towards the more speculative and distributed dynamics associated with variegated entrepreneurial possibilities that unfold as entrepreneurs aim to create the future (Lounsbury & Glynn, 2019; Lounsbury & Hannigan, 2022). A focus on the exploration of possibilities highlights the importance of future-oriented imaginaries (Augustine et. al., 2019), and how such future-oriented discourse, about utopia and dystopia for example, constitutes the identities of entrepreneurs.
 
This sub-theme will be an attempt to bring together researchers who use diverse and mixed methodologies to investigate entrepreneurs’ journeys towards building their entrepreneurial identities and the following outcomes. We are interested in studies that both zoom in and zoom out – that collectively provide a more comprehensive understanding of cultural entrepreneurship processes. With this sub-theme, we welcome contributions on the outcomes of entrepreneurial identities, especially their unintended and unanticipated effects. Possible questions include, but are not limited to:

• How do different interactions that entrepreneurs have with each other and others in the entrepreneurial ecosystem (e.g., investors, mentors) shape the process of building the entrepreneurial stories? And how do the entrepreneurial identities that get built through this process shape entrepreneurs’ subsequent interactions?

• What are the short and long-term consequences of building entrepreneurial identities (e.g., fund raising, lobbying with government bodies, partnering with established organizations)?

• How is legitimacy designed? How dynamic are entrepreneurial stories? How are they co-constructed with various audiences? How do they change and under what circumstances?

• How have new forms of media (e.g., social media) influenced the dynamics of entrepreneurial stories and identities?

• Where do entrepreneurial stories come from? How are they shaped by broader field discourses and future imaginaries?

• How do entrepreneurial possibilities emerge and shape the development of entrepreneurial ventures and the construction of markets?
   

References

• Augustine, G., Soderstrom, S., Milner, D., & Weber, K. (2019): “Constructing a Distant Future: Imaginaries in Geoengineering.” Academy of Management Journal. 62 (6), 1930–1960.
• Gehman, J., & Soublière, J.-F., (2017): “Cultural Entrepreneurship: From Making Culture to Cultural Making.” Innovation, 19 (1), 61–73.
• Glaser, V., & Lounsbury, M. (2021): “Designing legitimacy: Expanding the scope of cultural entrepreneurship.” Journal of Business Venturing Design, 1 (1–2), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbvd.2022.100007.
• Ibarra, H., & Barbulescu, R. (2010): “Identity as Narrative: Prevalence, Effectiveness, and Consequences of Narrative Identity Work in Macro Work Role Transitions.” Academy of Management Review, 35 (1), 135–154.
• Linde, C. (1993): Life Stories: The Creation of Coherence. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
• Lockwood, C., & Soublière, J-F. (eds.) (2022): Advances in Cultural Entrepreneurship. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Volume 80. Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing.
• Lounsbury, M., & Glynn, M.A. (2001): “Cultural entrepreneurship: Stories, legitimacy, and the acquisition of resources.” Strategic Management Journal, 22 (6‐7), 545–564.
• Lounsbury, M., & Glynn, M.A. (2019). Cultural Entrepreneurship: A New Agenda for the Study of Entrepreneurial Processes and Possibilities. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Lounsbury, M., & Hannigan, T. (2022): “Field of Dreams: Exploration of Entrepreneurial Possibilities.” Entrepreneur & Innovation Exchange, https://eiexchange.com/content/field-of-dreams-exploration-of-entrepreneurial-possibilities.
• Navis, C., & Glynn, M.A. (2010): “How New Market Categories Emerge: Temporal Dynamics of Legitimacy, Identity, and Entrepreneurship in Satellite Radio, 1990–2005.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 55 (3), 439–471.
• Überbacher, F. (2014): “Legitimation of New Ventures: A Review and Research Programme.” Journal of Management Studies, 51 (4), 667–698.
• Überbacher, F., Jacobs, C.D., & Cornelissen, J.P. (2015): “How Entrepreneurs Become Skilled Cultural Operators.” Organization Studies, 36 (7), 925–951.
• Zilber, T.B., (2007): “Stories and the Discursive Dynamics of Institutional Entrepreneurship: The Case of Israeli High-tech after the Bubble.” Organization Studies, 28 (7), 1035–1054.