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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.

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.

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.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to outline what narrative inquiry entails, why it is relevant for the study of sport and physical culture and how researchers might engage in its analytical methods.

Design/methodology/approach – Narrative inquiry as an approach, not simply a method, is delineated in this chapter. The design of a project is outlined. Three types of narrative analysis – holistic-content, holistic-form and meta-autoethnography – are the focus. The chapter also attends to the benefits of using multiple forms of analysis and representation as part of engaging with the methodology of crystallisation.

Findings – Key findings of narrative research on sport and physical culture are illuminated throughout.

Research limitations/implications – The limitations of narrative analysis are highlighted, including how in many narrative studies the interactional dynamics of storytelling are often neglected.

Originality/value – The chapter provides a succinct introduction to why narratives matter, how narrative analysis as a craft might be practised and what theoretical assumptions underpin it. The authors also highlight innovative practices for deepening understandings of sport and physical culture. These include time-lining, mobile interviewing, analytical bracketing, crystallisation, meta-autoethnography and analysis as movement of thought.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential of life story for the teaching of sociology to Social Work students. It contains the results of a teaching experiment in higher education which aims to foster sociological imagination among students.

The study employs a mixed methodology. The quantitative data came from a survey handed out to the students with closed and open questions. The qualitative information came from the contents of class exercises in which the students had to connect the theoretical contents of the course of sociology with the biographical narratives of different research subjects.

The results reflect student satisfaction or appreciation regarding the use of the life story as a teaching resource, as well as a successful acquisition of sociological skills and knowledge, such as critical thinking, micro-macro connection and the interplay between structure and agency.

Life story and narrative methods should be employed in post-secondary education as teaching instruments.

The study contributes to expand the reflection on narrative techniques as a pedagogical tool. The paper provides several examples of class exercises with biographical narratives that have demonstrated to be successful for teaching sociology in higher education.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a narrative framework for doing empirical research into business ethics and shows, through two examples, how the framework can be applied in practice in this context. The focus is on interview-based research.

A theoretical research based on literature review was conducted.

In the developed narrative framework, two main kinds of analysis are distinguished: an analysis of the narrative and a narrative analysis. An analysis of the narrative is a matter of classifying and producing taxonomies out of the data. The purpose of a narrative analysis is to construct a story or stories based on the data. Narrative analysis differs from the analysis of narratives in that the story does not exist prior to the analysis, but is created during the analysis.

The proposed narrative framework helps those doing empirical research into business ethics avoid simplistic “black and white” interpretations of their material, and helps them to show that ethical realities in the business world are often complex, various and multiple.

The paper offers a methodological framework for those doing qualitative research into business ethics which will increase the quality and rigor of their studies.

A value of the narrative approach is that the stories offer researchers an entry point to understanding the complexity of ethics and how people make sense of this complexity. The paper shows in detail how the methods presented can be used in practice in empirical research.

To underline that viewing entrepreneurship in the context of shifting career roles and professional identities, gendered organizational life and in the current societal context regarding working life (ageing, gender discrimination) provides us with new lenses and enables us to perceive the entrepreneurial identity as fluid and emergent.

A female entrepreneur's life‐story collected through a narrative interview is applied in the study. In this paper identities, organizations and societies in change form the basis for entrepreneurship. Treating entrepreneurship as a social process constrained by time and place allows it to gain new meanings and understandings of security, reliability, risk‐moderation that it has not previously seen to possess.

The paper presents the connections of time and place for entrepreneurship; first, by demonstrating how entrepreneurship as a phenomenon reflects the time and place of investigation; second, how time and place are applied as important elements in the individual story presented in the paper, and, third, how readings of time and narrative are applied to make sense of entrepreneurship in the story.

The paper suggests that the social context (different times, places as well as, e.g. different roles, social identities and careers) should more frequently be studied within entrepreneurship research.

By portraying entrepreneurship from the non‐economic and non‐heroic standpoint, and reflecting the social changes that surround it, entrepreneurship is potentially made more accessible for a larger number of people.

The paper refuses the research of entrepreneurs as a general overriding, economic category and the quest for the “Theory of Entrepreneurship”.

The authors explore self-identity construction as a mechanism of institution­aliz­ation at the individual level. Building on in-depth analysis of life stories of yoga practitioners who are at different stages of practice, the authors found that as yoga practitioners are more exposed to the yogic institution, yogic meanings gradually infuse their general worldview and self-concept. The authors follow the line of research which focuses on professional identity construction as institutional work, yet, opening the “black box,” the authors argue that institutional meanings take root at the individual level beyond the institutional context and beneath the explicit level of identity.