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This paper aims to explore the “Fellowship-Tale” as an alternative tale type for narrating entrepreneur stories. The authors illustrate this by telling the Pilgrim business story. It is common for the deeds of men who founded businesses to be narrated as heroic entrepreneur stories. Such fairy tales are dominant narratives in Western culture but do not resonate with everyone, particularly women. Consequentially, many businesswomen do not engage in the rhetoric of enterprise.

The qualitative, analytic approaches adopted in this study include narratology, semiotics and aesthetics. This complementary triage helps us appreciate the complexity of entrepreneur stories while unravelling the nuances of the tale. It also permits triangulation of the data gathered from an in-depth interview of the respondent with newspaper and Internet research.

The research indicates that “fellowship-tales” provide a viable and credible alternative to the fairy-tale rendition common in entrepreneur and business stories.

An obvious limitation is that one merely swaps one narrative framework for another, albeit it offers dissenting voices a real choice.

This study has the potential to be far reaching because at a practical level, it allows disengaged entrepreneurs and significant others the freedom to exercise their individual and collective voices within a framework of nested stories.

A key contribution is to challenge the hegemony of a dominant and embedded social construct allowing new understandings to emerge via a novel combination of research methodologies.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the key values individuals believe in and their interpretation in the context of entrepreneurial behaviour. The study is predicated on the prior work of Krueger (2007) and specifically on the premise that “deep beliefs” underpin sense making, decision making and subsequent entrepreneurial behaviour.

The study utilised an inductive and interpretive research design within a constructivist paradigm. In phase one, Schwartz’s (1992) 54 values inventory was used to discover a core value-set associated with entrepreneurial behaviour. The results were later used as an “aide-memoire” during the second phase of in-depth interviews with 30 self-selected entrepreneurs. Interviews focused primarily on the meaning individuals attributed to those fundamental values they associated with entrepreneurial behaviour. The resulting narrative was subjected to discourse analysis and categorised into relevant themes.

Self-determined human action is based on a specific set of values which the individual uses to make decisions about how to behave in situations that are meaningful to them. Engaging in entrepreneurship is one form of self-determined behaviour that enables the individual to express and satisfy a variety of different fundamental needs. Four specific values are believed to be critical to the motivation of entrepreneurial behaviour, namely, independence, creativity, ambition and daring. The meaning attributed to each of these values is consistent with that attributed to self-determinism, self-efficacy and the identity of participants associated with entrepreneurship.

There are limitations to this research and the extension of the findings to a generalised population comprising individuals who may, or may not, behave entrepreneurially. This is not to say that such individuals hold values substantially different in other roles or areas of their lives outside a purely business context. The values rated by participants in this study had relevance to their view of entrepreneurial behaviour and were confined to a business perspective.The variability in meaning attributed to these values is however likely to produce a common thread focusing on control, creativity and goal-directed behaviour.

The study strongly suggests the presence of a specific value-set associated with entrepreneurial behaviour. The shift in emphasis to independence and being ambitious, at the expense of being creative and daring, represents one explanation for the episodic nature of entrepreneurial behaviour among individuals. The data further reveal differences in entrepreneurial behaviour within urban and rural contexts with the former being more tolerant of entrepreneurial activity because of its inherent cultural diversity

Similarly, all participants have assimilated several different identities for the different social roles they occupy. Within those varying roles there is the possibility that both individual and group values will differ from what is reported here. The purpose of the study was to isolate as far as possible entrepreneurial behaviour and its core values independently from other types of behaviour and values. However, the likelihood does exist that values held by some individuals from other spheres of their lives could take precedence over their entrepreneurial role and thus influence their survey results.

The value of this study lies in exposing the underlying motivations that cause entrepreneurial behaviour. The study also discovered that shifts occur in the belief structure causing individuals to engage in managerial behaviour in preference to entrepreneurial behaviour at critical stages in the business life-cycle. The study further identifies cultural differences in individualistic vs collectivist cultures and the degrees to which entrepreneurial behaviour is accepted within urban vs rural environments.

The purpose of this paper is to apply a reflective theory of development for entrepreneurial ecosystems in the Muscle Shoals region of northern Alabama. The theory provides guidance for practitioners and policymakers interested in developing entrepreneurial ecosystems.

The theory offers five propositions, which are illustrated and applied in the case study. The propositions include the need for civic leaders recognizing local talent; support networks for entrepreneurs; a quality, connected place; activities designed to increase interactivity for entrepreneurs within the ecosystem; five distinct phases producing replicable, scalable and sustainable projects; and universities providing platforms upon which the ecosystems can develop.

Application of the proposed theory is transforming the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the Muscle Shoals region. In just four years, the project has produced over 30 initiatives and events, precipitously increased student participation in entrepreneurial ventures and raised over $1m.

The theory and its application developed from a collaboration between the Agile Strategy Lab at Purdue University and the Institute for Innovation and Economic Development at the University of North Alabama. This collaboration is replicable, scalable and sustainable, and is a model for university-led entrepreneurial ecosystem development and transformation.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how narrative discourses frames entrepreneurial knowledge – in the form of understandings and meanings – focusing the role of business support in stimulating black entrepreneurship. It reveals the assumptions and values associated with business support from the point of view of the providers – who themselves are categorized as “black”.

A collaborative narrative approach is adopted to locate knowledge of business support within the “life‐world” of black business support providers. The research was conducted at two levels: focus group and narrative interviews.

The paper highlights the ways in which dominant discourses guide as well as constrain the representation of black businesses. Low take‐up of business support is contested. Public‐funded business support programmes are perceived as unwholesome, unwieldy and inherently inadequate in meeting the strategic development needs of black businesses.

Focusing on actual engagement rather than content aspects of the business support policy framework reveals a need for more dialogic research to explore more deeply whether, and to what extent, alternative and new perspectives on supporting black businesses are needed.

The novelty of this paper lies in attempting to unravel the complex processes of business support provision in the context of black entrepreneurship by decoding the narrative discourses used by support providers who are themselves categorized as “black”. Such intrinsic examination of views and beliefs is relatively unique and provides an interesting platform for further research.

Researchers have investigated the distinctions between founder and nonfounder chief executive officers (CEOs) for different performance variables. Researchers have also investigated the use of media as supplemental information that investors review to make decisions about initial public offering (IPO) firms. Research that investigates founders and nonfounder CEOs of IPO firms in the media is limited but growing. This paper aims to explore how founder and nonfounder CEOs' narratives are portrayed differently in business media following an IPO.

Using insights from the narrative paradigm, 1,057 news paragraphs about CEOs from 19 matched pairs (38 firms) were content analyzed using a contrasting coding strategy.

Founders and nonfounders' narratives differ in three ways. Specifically, founder CEOs are more likely to (1) have their personal background detailed in the media, (2) translate technical business information to easy-to-understand general language and (3) be quoted talking about positive information than nonfounder CEOs.

The results of this study show the media's role in creating narratives about management and how the experiences of founders and nonfounders are represented differently in the media. The study is limited by only investigating media articles about CEOs and not investigating the entire organizational narrative.

This study adds to the growing literature that investigates the role the media plays in portraying management in the media at time of IPO.

Ethnic entrepreneurship is, and always has been, a means of survival. However, there is limited literature on ethnic entrepreneurship in Australia and therefore, an understanding of ethnic entrepreneurs’ motivations to become self-employed. The purpose of this paper is to report the influential factors in the decision to engage in self-employment through case studies of members of Melbourne’s Sri Lankan community informed by the mixed embeddedness approach.

The mixed embeddedness approach frames the study where the authors examine the motivations for business of five Sri Lankan entrepreneurs. Narratives are used to construct individual case studies, which are then analyzed in terms of the motivations for, resources used and challenges faced on the entrepreneurial journey.

For these ethnic entrepreneurs, their entrepreneurial activity results from a dynamic match between local market opportunities and the specific ethnic resources available to them at the time of founding. The self-employment decision was not prompted by a lack of human capital but an inability to use that human capital in alternative means of employment at specific points in time. Moreover the authors highlight the importance of social and cultural capital as resources used to overcome challenges on the entrepreneurial journey.

In this community, entrepreneurship was not a result of a lack of human capital but how it was utilized in combination with social and cultural capitals in the given opportunity structure. The mixed embeddedness approach enables the uncovering of how ethnic network ties were used in light of the opportunities available to build entrepreneurial activity.

This study develops the use of “practical theory”, as a resource in entrepreneurial learning. Practical theory emerges from the implicit, intuitive, tacit and situated resource of practice, whereas academic theory is abstract, generalised, explicit and seeks to be provable. The study develops practical theories from the life story accounts provided by interviewing entrepreneurs. The study demonstrates a framework and example for interpreting entrepreneurial learning and developing practical theory from these accounts. Thirty practising entrepreneurs were interviewed, in a wide range of industries and at different stages of life and career experience, from first venture to experienced serial entrepreneur. Practical theories of entrepreneurial working have been developed, using the framework of “what, how, why, who and in what conditions” the practices identified are effective. The practical theories arising from the study are presented using this structured framework, based on a sense making perspective. Discourse material is used to support and illustrate the practical theories, which relate to personal learning and development; identifying and developing innovative opportunities; creating new ventures; and managing growing businesses.

Many “Divas” despite possessing destructive character traits ironically become successful entrepreneurs thus illustrating an alternative “storied” social construction of entrepreneurship. This influences how female entrepreneurs are perceived in the popular press and can be manipulated as an alternative entrepreneurial reality. The purpose of this paper is to build upon research into entrepreneurial identity introducing the “Diva” concept.

The qualitative methodological approach involves an analysis of biographies of famous Diva's to identify common themes; and an internet trawl to identify supplementary micro‐biographies and newspaper articles on “Divas”. This tripartite approach allows rich data to be collected permitting a comparative analysis.

This empirical paper presents the socially constructed nature of entrepreneurial narrative and the “Diva storyline” demonstrating the influence of journalistic licence upon how successful women are portrayed. The paper adds incremental credence to power of male‐dominated journalistic practices to vilify enterprising behaviour to sell newspapers.

An obvious limitation to the work is that the sample of articles and biographies selected were chosen via search parameters which mention the word “Diva”. Nevertheless, there is scope for further “more detailed” research into the phenomenon to flesh out the model built in this preliminary paper.

An important implication for scholars and journalists is the need to reconsider how we tell and decode entrepreneur stories. As researchers, we need to recognise that there are other avenues for women to become entrepreneurs than to become businesswomen and that it is alright for women to reject the “entrepreneur” label.

This paper informs our understanding of the socially constructed nature of how we tell, understand and appreciate entrepreneur stories. It thus makes a unique contribution by illustrating that the storylines which constitute the “Diva cycle” are constructed from the same storylines that we associate with entrepreneur stories but narrated in a different order. It provides another heuristic device for understanding the social construction of gendered entrepreneurial identities making it of interest to feminist scholars of entrepreneurship and to social constructionists alike.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of how a social enterprise opportunity is brought to fruition in an emerging market.

This real-time longitudinal case study tracks the emergence of a micro-franchise start-up from conception to inception. Using a narrative perspective as a conceptual lens focuses attention on the relational, temporal and performative elements of the interactive process that occurs between social entrepreneur(s) and the environment(s). While interviewing provides the primary source of evidence, multiple data collection methods were utilized.

The analysis of the process elements centres on the narratives of the micro-franchise co-founders and other key informants that prompt action aimed at bringing the opportunity to fruition, showing how the social entrepreneurs bring the inside out and the outside in.

Despite challenges to the appropriateness of Western management theory within emerging markets, this study has shown that theory at a sufficiently high level of abstraction can be useful. It also demonstrates the need to study process over time and be inclusive of the range of stakeholders and contexts that influence it.

The findings indicate that social enterprise start-up is a co-creative process that evolves in unpredictable ways over time. Beyond start-up, only time and further study will determine whether social enterprise will prove to be the panacea for poverty and marginalization that governments expect.

This research gains real-time insight into social enterprise emergence. It underscores the multi-dimensional nature of context and provides evidence indicating that the relationship and influence between social entrepreneur(s) and their environment is not one way.

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.