The narrative cleansing of Andrew Carnegie: entrepreneurial generativity as identity capital

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to proffer a reconstructed theoretic model of entrepreneurial generatively that accounts for personal and social identities in the narrative construction of entrepreneurial identity..

Design/methodology/approach

The authors followed general analytically structured history processes using the life of Andrew Carnegie to understand how generativity scripts aid in aligning personal and social identities in the formation of entrepreneurial identity.

Findings

The authors argue that Carnegie used entrepreneurial generativity as a form of redemptive identity capital during the narrative reconstruction of his entrepreneurial identity.

Originality/value

This paper extends Harvey et al.’s (2011) model of entrepreneurial philanthropy motivation by including forms of self-capital (psychological capital and self-identity capital) as part of the co-construction of entrepreneurial identity and proposing a reconstructed capital theoretic model of entrepreneurial generativity.

Citation

Humphreys, J.H., Hayek, M.J., Novicevic, M.M., Haden, S. and Pickens, J. (2019), "The narrative cleansing of Andrew Carnegie: entrepreneurial generativity as identity capital", Journal of Management History, Vol. 25 No. 2, pp. 203-220. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMH-06-2018-0031