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The purpose of this paper is to provide small business and entrepreneurship researchers with insights to help them undertake life story interviewing, in order that this can subsequently advance understanding within the field.

The authors describe, and reflect upon, the use of a life story interview approach that formed part of the data collection process for a research study into dynamic capabilities in micro-organisations.

The life story interview approach the authors utilised can generate benefits for both the purposes of the research study and the interviewee. Nevertheless, “unexpected lack of time” and “owner-managerial control”, two common contextual factors within micro-organisations, are factors that may raise challenges for successfully undertaking life story interviewing in such organisations. Ultimately the interviewer needs to respond to such challenges by making “stick or twist” decisions with regard to the interview format being used.

The authors provide an example of an interview approach that researchers can use for future research within the field of small business and entrepreneurship. The authors also prepare interviewers for challenges they may experience within the field and the potential need for them to make “stick or twist” decisions.

The authors explicate a specific life story interview approach which is new to the field of small business and entrepreneurship. Furthermore, the authors highlight potential complexities in undertaking this interview approach within micro-organisations. Prior work within the field has tended to give little consideration to challenges of undertaking life story interviews.

In this paper, we first develop the concepts of authentic leaders, authentic leadership, and authentic leader development. We suggest a definition of authentic leaders, which is based on the leader’s self-concept: his or her self-knowledge, self-concept clarity, self-concordance, and person-role merger, and on the extent to which the leader’s self-concept is expressed in his or her behavior. Following, we offer a life-story approach to the development of authentic leaders. We argue that authentic leadership rests heavily on the self-relevant meanings the leader attaches to his or her life experiences, and these meanings are captured in the leader’s life-story. We suggest that self-knowledge, self-concept clarity, and person-role merger are derived from the life-story. Therefore, the construction of a life-story is a major element in the development of authentic leaders. We further argue that the life-story provides followers with a major source of information on which to base their judgments about the leader’s authenticity. We conclude by drawing some practical implications from this approach and presenting suggestions for further research.

The purpose of this paper is to explore what conversation analysis has to offer when analysing a series of life story interviews aiming to capture how reading and texts are used in a rural working-class man’s identity construction.

The conversation analysis methodology with its explicit focus on embodied social action, activity and conduct in interaction is integrated with a life story approach when analysing and describing the identity constructing processes that take place in life story interview settings.

Through a close and detailed analysis of the interaction between interviewer and interviewee, and by focusing and highlighting the phenomena and identities that are oriented to in the face-to-face interaction here and now (and in relation to there and then), descriptions of the complex and dynamic identity constructing processes that are set into play in the life story interview are possible.

It is argued that the approach has a lot to offer when approaching life story data, and thus is a method that can increase the transparency in life story interview research.

The paper explores the intersection of what is often seen as diametrically opposed forms of analysis: conversation analysis and narrative inquiry.

“My Story” is based on a life story approach. This study aims to facilitate therapeutic alliances by providing a format for older and younger people to interact.

Three pairings were studied to explore the experiences of the older and younger person using “My Story”. The focus of the case studies was on how and if any therapeutic alliance emerged.

This study found that in the two of the pairings, “My Story” helped to create a bond and mutual benefit for the participants’ central to a therapeutic alliance. This led one of the pairings to develop into an intergenerational friendship and potentially help with loneliness.

As this was an exploratory and small pilot, more cases and research are required to fully assess if “My Story” is a useful approach to develop intergenerational befriending.

Intergenerational befriending may be one solution that could help with loneliness and social isolation through forming a therapeutic alliance to make the befriending successful.

Loneliness and social isolation for older people remain a problem.

An original pilot was undertaken to test the approach by bringing together older people identified as lonely by a voluntary sector provider and pairing these with a student volunteer. The students visited the older person over six weeks to discuss their life story and create an artefact based on the story for the older person.

This paper examines how a classroom designed process of constructing narratives about oneself, a group, and others helps students develop an authentic leadership voice. We begin by describing the theoretical framework behind our paper, which includes an overview of the notion of authenticity and the linkage between narrative and authentic leadership. Next, we provide an account of a transformative class called Leadership and Storytelling. Following this is a response to the question that inspired our paper: What was it about the course that made it such a meaningful leadership experience for students? The authors offer three key ingredients to the nature of this powerful classroom experience: space, authorship, and taking students to the edge of knowing. We conclude with an exploration of how others can incorporate narrative into their own work to become better leadership educators.

The purpose of this paper is to explore subjective life histories and leadership journeys of senior leaders, drawing upon elements of an authentic leadership framework (life trigger events, values and emotions). The paper surfaces partial life histories and the often unheard of individual experiences of becoming a leader, offering stories to others as a media for learning and extending authentic leadership theory.

The paper draws upon a qualitative empirical study engaging 22 UK senior leaders in semi‐structured interviews, involving a life‐history approach to generate subjective narratives of how individuals establish and sustain leadership.

The empirical data highlights that elements of authentic leadership theory resonate in practice. Senior leaders' life histories and in particular negative trigger events are significant to their approach as leaders. The values of honesty and integrity were important to the leaders, with some able to sustain their values uncompromisingly. The leaders openly expressed emotion and vulnerability when re‐telling their stories, but whether they do so as leaders in relationships with others, requires further research. Authentic leadership theory may be over simplified in terms of emotion and vulnerability in practice.

Elements of authentic leadership offer alternative understandings of experiences of leaders. The life history approach enables important insights into leaders' subjective realities and should be integral to leadership development approaches.

The paper offers empirical data from UK senior leaders, highlighting the unheard of strutting and fretting of leadership and contributing empirical research to authentic leadership theory.

The literature of entrepreneurship has an urban focus and despite the emergence of the rural entrepreneurship literature, we know little about the characteristics, philosophies, operating practices and growth strategies of ordinary village entrepreneurs’ in a UK context. As a concept, the “village entrepreneur” is contentious as theoretically there should be little difference between urban and rural entrepreneurs. Nevertheless, there is! The concept is important because many villages are in decline and are marginal places in terms of entrepreneurial opportunity. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A review of the fragmented literature is conducted to synthesise and develop greater understanding. Drawing on a “life-story” approach the empirical strand comprises of an analysis of five ethnographic interviews with village entrepreneurs.

The respondents did not consider themselves entrepreneurs whom they characterised as flash, rogues and even crooked. Their embedded village entrepreneur persona was constructed around tales-of-character, hard work and perseverance. They prided themselves in making “slow-money” which they retain over their lifetime. Embeddedness, self-efficacy, character and morality were key themes encountered.

From a research perspective the findings are based on a limited sample and the study was not specifically designed to capture data on characteristics, philosophies and operating practices. Further research on a larger scale is necessary to validate the findings.

From a practical perspective policy makers require to consider the notions of embeddedness, self-efficacy, character and morality when considering implementing growth strategies in rural areas.

This study contributes to the growing literature of rural entrepreneurship by expanding the typology of rural entrepreneurs and by detailing philosophies, operating practices, and growth strategies suitable and appropriate for small village and rural businesses.

The purpose of this article is to understand how women develop entrepreneurship as a career identity through women's various life stages. Using a life story approach, the authors study the formation of Indian businesswomen's entrepreneurial identity in businesswomen's unique socio-cultural context.

The study drew upon 15 semi-structured interviews with practicing women entrepreneurs using a qualitative methodology. Gioia methodology was used to systematically analyze the data for theory building.

The narratives of the Indian women entrepreneurs indicate that Indian women's entrepreneurial identity was a developmental process influenced by various episodes in different life stages-childhood, adolescence, marriage and motherhood. Life episodes influenced the creation and enactment of this entrepreneurial identity, which led to the emergence of entrepreneurship as a career choice.

The study's retrospective design may have raised concerns involving memory recall. The open-ended questions gave the participants the freedom to recount the life episodes that influenced the participants the most and may have partly mitigated this concern.

Prior studies have focused on specific life stages of women entrepreneurs, without taking a holistic life-story view, thereby missing out on how career identity is formed as a result of life episodes. Using the developmental psychology approach, the authors provide a nuanced and holistic lens to understanding women's entrepreneurship.