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This study presents an original empirically based conceptual framework representing mobile microbusiness founders' experiences when converting to a franchise business model that links individual-level variables to a sociomaterial process.

An exploratory interpretive research design produced this framework using data from the enterprise development narratives of mobile franchisors who had recently converted their mobile microbusinesses to a franchise business model.

The emergent framework proposes that franchisor’s conversion experience involves substantial identity work prompted by an identity dilemma originating in a conflict between role expectations and franchising operational demands. This dilemma materializes during franchise document creation and requires some degree of “identity undoing” to ensure business continuity. By acting as boundary-objects-in-use in the conversion process, the franchise documents provide a sociomaterial foundation for the business transition and the development of a viable franchisor identity.

There is scant literature addressing the startup experiences of mobile microbusiness franchisors. The study was therefore exploratory, producing a substantive conceptual framework that will require further confirmatory studies.

By proposing that conversion to a franchise business model is experienced as an identity transformation coupled to a sociomaterial process centred on system documentation, this original empirically based conceptual framework not only addresses a gap in the individual-level literature on franchise development but also provides a framework to direct new research and discussions between intending franchisors and their professional advisors about person–enterprise fit.

The conceptual framework is the first to address franchisors' experience of transitioning any type of microbusiness to a franchise business model.

Creative industries, such as the designer fashion industry (DFI), are among the toughest in which to establish sustainable business ventures. While studies have examined how networks and social capital contribute to independent DFI start-ups and why such businesses fail, these studies have been largely restricted to well-established entrepreneurial spaces like London, which differ in structure and size compared to emerging DFI entrepreneurial spaces in small economies like New Zealand. This chapter addresses this gap in the creative enterprise literature by presenting findings from an examination of 12 New Zealand fashion designers’ accounts of their responses to start-up challenges. The analysis, which paid particular attention to the relationship between social capital and reported strategic practice, revealed that the designers’ challenge profiles and strategic responses were linked to very ‘biographical’ personal networks and their personal enterprise orientations. While those designers with well-established networks started the most resilient businesses, the analysis revealed that even these designers were not necessarily particularly strategic when tapping into the social capital embedded in their networks. Overall, the findings provide further confirmation of the importance of social capital and network management during start-up. Most significantly, they demonstrate why designers need to be forward looking and employ a strategic approach to developing and accessing social capital and when making business decisions. Those who did so were more likely to have viable ventures than those who accessed social capital in order to react to unanticipated challenges.

The purpose of this paper is to address the interface between design education and business start‐up in the designer fashion industry (DFI) and provide a new framework for reflecting on ways to improve design education and graduates’ business start‐up preparedness.

This interpretive study employed semi‐structured interviews to collect nascent fashion designers’ enterprise development narratives and tertiary educators’ views on how they prepare designers for the challenges of the DFI.

While design and production skills studied in design education are valuable, it was found that work placements are particularly important resources for aspiring fashion business owners because they provide “education in enterprise” and the sort of social capital required for business success. The research produced a framework for reflecting on and refining the fit between design education and the practice of enterprise development in the DFI that incorporates considerations of the creativity‐business tension and designer's enterprise orientations.

The findings suggest there is a need to create more intersections between fashion design and entrepreneurship education and to incorporate more education for and in enterprise. They also suggest there is value in encouraging students to select design education that fits their enterprise orientation and any skill deficits associated with this orientation.

The paper makes a valuable contribution to both the higher education and entrepreneurship literatures by presenting an original model for conceptualising the way design education can interface with business start‐up to develop industry‐appropriate social capital and sound business practices.

This paper presents a case study that explores the experiences and sensemaking of a new start entrepreneur in New Zealand. The primary aim of the case was to theorise new entrepreneurs' sensemaking about risk in order to provide a framework for further study.

Data for the case were gathered using a semi‐structured interview technique. These data were then coded and analysed using an approach inspired by grounded theory. As the purpose was to examine both what the subject said about her entrepreneurial experience and the conceptual frameworks she drew upon to do this, the analysis integrated techniques employed in discourse analysis and educational psychology.

The analysis produced a theoretical model that suggests the entrepreneur's perceptions of self shaped the perception of risk and then structured the way in which risks were addressed or avoided.

This case and the questions that the theoretical model raises have significant implications for entrepreneurs, policy makers and educators. We expect the lines of enquiry suggested by this case will provide a framework for further research on new start entrepreneurs' sensemaking and in so doing help address the dearth of knowledge about New Zealand's new start entrepreneurs' behaviour, particularly in relation to risk assessment.

The case draws attention to the interplay between identity and new start entrepreneurial behaviour and in so doing challenges us to look at new start behaviour in a new way. It raises questions about the centrality of the notion of risk in new start entrepreneurs' rationales for the enterprise development decisions they make.

This article aims to better understand how empowered middle manager engage in change translation? Relying on the notions of building and dwelling strategizing, the authors analyze the micro-practices of middle managers during organizational change, when middle managers are freed from time-consuming administrative activities.

This empirical study relies on a qualitative embedded case study approach that involves comparing two banking units belonging to a large French bank. The qualitative data were collected from three different sources: exploratory and semi-structured interviews, observations and secondary data. The coding analysis enables to distinguish middle managers' dwelling and building strategizing during organizational change.

The study’s findings show how managers translate organizational change relying on both building and dwelling strategizing. By doing so, managers enable to adapt the prescribed strategy to local circumstances and foster front-line empowerment.

Even though the findings are based on the analysis of a single organization, the authors provide several theoretical insights. First, the authors contribute to the recent academic debate in strategy-as-practice literature by showing the recursive relation between building and dwelling strategizing. The authors also shed a new light on middle managers' strategizing by emphasizing the idea that middle managers are not only passive change “translators” but that middle managers enact a real agency in the organizational change process.

From a managerial perspective, the study’s findings enable to enlight what empowering middle managers means in practice. Indeed, the authors show clear empirical illustrations of how middle managers can be empowered by both organizational structure and top-management support. The results also reveal how empowering middle managers enable to empower their team by three different activities: (1) federate the team spirit to facilitate collaboration; (2) develop employees' capabilities and (3) adjust managers' activity according to employees' needs.

While multiple current new ways of organizing encourage to transform organizations from inefficient bureaucracies into flatter and more dynamic project-based teams, calling into question the importance of middle managers' strategic role, this study provides an original case study of an organization that chose to run against the tide and created an additional middle management level.

The aim of this paper is to examine how the “colleen” archetype was used in the creation of a successful brand personality for a range of soap manufactured in Ireland during the early twentieth century. It reveals the commercial and political agendas behind this move and the colleen's later application to Ulster unionist graphic propaganda against Home Rule between 1914 and 1916.

This case study is based on an analysis of primary and secondary sources; the former encompassing both graphic advertising material and ephemera.

This paper demonstrates how contemporary pictorial advertising for colleen soap was suffused with text and imagery propounding Ulster's preservation within the UK. It also suggests that the popularity of this brand personality may have been a factor in the colleen's appropriation for propaganda purposes by certain strands within Ulster unionism.

This paper is based on original research that expands the historical corpus of Irish visual representation, while also adding notably to discourses within the History of Marketing and Women's History.

This paper aims to present an original conceptual model that captures the orientations of new business founders in the fashion design sector as they navigate the tension between creative endeavour and business practice.

The start‐up experiences of 38 fashion designers from the four main fashion centres in New Zealand were examined using an interpretive narrative approach. The designers' enterprise development narratives were analysed using in‐depth literary and conceptual analyses to reveal the nature and context of their start‐up behaviour and the conceptual frameworks they employed to make sense of their start‐up behaviour.

The designers were, to varying degrees, preoccupied with a perceived tension between creative processes and business practices. This tension was typically experienced as a disjunction between self‐identity and the identities supported by the business models designers worked within. Successfully navigating this tension could require significant conceptual shifts or fundamental adjustments in business approaches which challenged designers' original rationales for start‐up. The analysis of designers' responses to the creativity‐business tension and how they made sense of this produced a conceptual framework, a space delineated by three basic enterprise orientations: creative enterprise orientation (CEO), creative business orientation (CBO), and fashion industry orientation (FIO).

This conceptual framework has major implications for policy makers and providers of design education and business support as it offers a means of differentiating between the lived‐in experiences of designers. In so doing it could be used as a tool for tailoring support more appropriately to designers' needs. The narrative approach produced rich, contextualised insights and a template for the further studies that will be required to establish the wider applicability of the framework.

The original conceptual framework presented here provides much needed insight into creative business start‐ups that will allow better targeting of education, support and policy development. The approach used to create this framework is an innovative example of how narrative and sensemaking approaches can be combined to provide rich insights into enterprise creation from the entrepreneur's perspective.