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Purpose – To explore routes taken to start and grow businesses in science, engineering and technology (SET) sectors by 15 female entrepreneurs.

Methodology/approach – Entrepreneurial routes are explored using the ‘possible selves’ perspective to explore why they felt able to continue in SET when many do not and how they envisaged themselves in relation to SET and enterprise.

Findings – All participants felt that SET was ‘normal’, so there had been ‘no problem’ in starting or running a SET business as a woman but gendered practice was embedded in how they operated, how they made decisions and how they envisaged the future. The heuristics used by participants were acceptance, adaptation and allowances to adapt to a male environment in SET and within entrepreneurship.

Research limitations/implications – This was a qualitative study, therefore, as is normally the case, offers insights but cannot be generalised to populations.

Practical implications – The comments by participants on their experience of university and to some extent secondary school curriculum showed when they were ‘turned off’ SET mainstream activities. Changes in curriculum content and format and awareness building for staff might address this.

Social implications – Gendered practice remains in organisations due to the norms and expectations of a wider society, this chapter shows how this works in SET environments.

Originality/value of chapter – This is a new study given the lack of work so far exploring entrepreneurial routes of women in SET especially using the possible selves perspective.

While women are increasingly in senior positions in accountancy firms, a century after gaining entry to this once exclusively male field, they are still struggling to achieve career success. The concept of possible selves and a model of career crafting are activated in an analysis of how a set of New Zealand professional accountants have pursued their careers. This paper aims to focus on how people actively craft career selves in the context of organisational and gendered constraints, some of which are self-imposed, and therefore, can be modified and revised.

Interviews with 36 male and female accounting professionals in New Zealand – 21 working in private firms and 15 in academia identify how careers are shaped by contexts, cultural understandings of gender, organisational structures within which accountants are located and wider environmental factors.

Women accountants in this study are both agential and responsive to a range of constraints they encounter. These women challenge the notion that professional achievement requires single minded allegiance to a career; their strategic career crafting demonstrates how career and family commitments are not irreconcilable but can be skilfully integrated to nurture multiple selves. Their strategies are considered alongside those of a comparable set of male accountants.

This paper contributes to the literature on possible selves and the complexity of gendered lives through the application of a career crafting matrix to explore how accounting professionals forge careers and construct multiple selves.

This paper aims to report findings for the following question, “What is the nature of high school students’ identity exploration as a result of exploring the role-possible selves of an environmental scientist and urban planner in a play-based course?” Projective reflection (PR) is served as a theoretical and methodological framework for facilitating learning as identity exploration in play-based environments.

From 2016-2017, 54 high school freshmen students engaged in virtual city planning, an iteratively refined course that provided systematic and personally relevant opportunities for play, curricular, reflection and discussion activities in Philadelphia Land Science, a virtual learning environment (VLE) and in an associated curriculum enacted in a science museum classroom. Participants’ identity exploration was anchored in targeted role-possible selves in science, technology, engineering and mathematics: environmental science and urban planning through in-game and in-class activities. This role-playing was made intentional by scaffolding students’ reflection on what they wanted to be in the future while thinking of their current selves and exploring novel role-possible selves.

In-game logged data and in-class student data were examined using quantitative ethnography (QE) techniques such as epistemic network analysis. Whole-group statistical significance and an illustrative case study revealed visual and interpretive patterns of change in students’ identity exploration. The change was reflected in their knowledge, interest and valuing, self-organization and self-control and self-perception and self-definition (KIVSSSS) in relation to the roles explored from the start of the intervention (starting self), during (exploring role-possible selves) and the end (new self). The paper concludes with directions to advance research on leveraging role-playing as a mechanism for fostering identity exploration in play-based digital and non-digital environments.

This paper leveraged VLEs such as games as forms of play-based environments that can present players with opportunities for self-transformation (Foster, 2014) and enculturation (Gee 2003; Shaffer, 2006) to support learner agency and participation in a constantly changing society (Thomas and Brown 2011). The authors introduce and apply novel theoretical and methodological approaches to the design and assessment of play-based environments and address pertinent gaps in the emergent area of learning and identity in VLEs

People believe that they know who they are and that who they are matters for what they do. These core beliefs seem so inherent to conceptualizations of what it means to have a self as to require no empirical support. After all, what is the point of a concept of self if there is no stable thing to have a concept about and who would care if that concept was stable if it was not useful in making it through the day? Yet the evidence for action-relevance and stability are surprisingly sparse.

This paper outlines the identity-based motivation theory, a theoretical approach that takes a new look at these assumptions and makes three core predictions as to when an accessible self-concept influences behavior. These are termed “dynamic construction”, “action-readiness”, and “interpretation of difficulty”. That is, rather than being stable, which identities come to mind and what they mean are dynamically constructed in context.

People interpret situations and difficulties in ways that are congruent with the currently active identities and prefer identity-congruent to identity-incongruent actions. When action feels identity-congruent, experienced difficulty highlights that the behavior is important and meaningful. When action feels identity-incongruent, the same difficulty suggests that the behavior is pointless and “not for people like me.”

Self‐esteem is an important motivational drive for consumption involving both the acceptance and rejection/avoidance of symbolic goods. This paper examines the relationship between self‐esteem and the rejection of goods and brands within the context of fashion consumption by young professionals. A conceptualisation which accounts for consumers’ use of various strategies in their efforts to maintain or enhance their self‐esteem is suggested. A small‐scale exploratory study is used to examine first, how consumers invest products and brands with negative symbolic meanings; and second, how this leads consumers to reject products and brands. The importance of understanding negative symbolic consumption when marketing high involvement products such as fashion goods is identified; and the implications for fashion retailers and marketing management are discussed.

This paper examines what the use of an augmented reality (AR) makeup mirror means to consumers, focusing on experiential consumption and the extended self.

The authors employed a multimethod approach involving netnography and semi-structured interviews with participants in India and the UK (n = 30).

Two main themes emerged from the data: (1) the importance of imagination and fantasy and (2) the (in)authenticity of the self and the surrounding “reality.”

This research focuses on AR magic makeup mirror. The authors call for further research on different AR contexts.

The authors provide service managers with insights on addressing gaps between the perceived service (i.e. AR contexts and the makeup consumption journey) and the conceived service (i.e. fantasies and the extended self).

The authors examine the lived fantasy experiences of AR experiential consumption. In addition, the authors reveal a novel understanding of the extended self as temporarily re-envisioned through the AR mirror.

A The purpose of this study was to better understand how teachers find agency in challenging circumstances. The authors sought to investigate this by examining the developing self-efficacy beliefs of teachers over time.

A longitudinal multi-case study methodology is used to investigate the stories of three new teachers over a two-year period spanning the onset of the pandemic. Narrative and thematic analysis was used to identify themes and trends. This was supplemented by teacher self-efficacy survey responses.

Teacher self-efficacy is a story that teachers build as they find what is possible. This story is informed by shifting conceptions of possible future selves as teachers interpret the challenges around them. These mutually reinforcing and fluid narratives shape teachers’ developing identities as they find agency during a changing reality.

Qualitative and case studies of self-efficacy are rare. Our study explores the context and thinking behind individual teacher beliefs at the time of a global pandemic. We offer a unique look at how teachers make sense of agency and possibilities under conditions of change.

Marketers spend considerable resources to motivate people to consume their products and services as a means of goal attainment. Why people change their consumption behaviour is based largely on these goals; many products and services are used by consumers in an effort to attain hoped‐for selves and/or to avoid feared selves. Despite the importance for marketers in understanding how current performance influences a consumer's future efforts, this topic has received little attention in marketing research. The aim of this paper is to fill some of the gaps.

The paper provides a theoretical framework and uses two studies to test this. Study 1, of 203 women, aged 27‐65, examines the predictions in the context of women and visible signs of skin aging. Feedback information is measured and approach and avoidance regulatory systems are manipulated by priming hoped‐for and feared possible selves. Study 2, of 281 undergraduate men and women, replicates the findings of Study 1 with manipulated feedback, using a different context (gym training) and a sample of both male and females.

The research shows that when consumers pursue a hoped‐for self, it is expectations of success that most strongly drive their motivation. It also shows why doing badly when trying to avoid a feared self is more motivating than doing well.

The findings have important implications as they reveal how managers can motivate customers to keep using a product or service.

The paper makes several contributions to the consumer goal research literature since little is known about how positive (hoped‐for selves) and negative (feared selves) reference points in self‐regulation differentially influence consumer goal‐directed behaviour.

The study aimed to explore the effect of second year business students engaging in counterfactual reasoning on their unrealistic optimism regarding attainment on an employability module.

Using an experimental design, the study compared the module performance of those who generated reasons why they would and would not achieve a series of specific grades. A control group who did not generate any reasons also took part.

Students who generated reasons why they would not achieve a good grade were less likely to be unrealistically optimistic and more likely to attain a good grade on their assessment.

This is a small sample of students from one form of programme, so replication with a greater sample drawn from other programmes would increase reliability.

The results suggest an easily applied and practical way of engaging students in employability modules to support their development of a range of capitals.

The findings are considered in relation to the theory of possible selves, the value for students, particularly widening participation of students, of improved engagement with employability modules and the possibility of applying this technique in wider educational settings.

This paper extends Hoch’s (1985) original study by considering the use of counterfactual reasoning for assessment performance and offering a an easy-to-apply tool for module leaders to support student attainment in employability development modules.

Entrepreneurial identity aspiration refers to the desire to occupy an entrepreneurial role in the future and is an essential impetus for initially engaging in entrepreneurial activities. Building on identity theory, the article investigates the effects of personal attitudes, experiences and inclination towards specific practices on the strength of entrepreneurial identity aspiration.

This article applies multiple linear regression analysis to test the developed hypotheses on an original sample of 127 vocational college students in Austria.

Results show that risk-taking propensity, proactiveness, entrepreneurial self-efficacy and competitiveness drive entrepreneurial identity aspiration. The effects of innovativeness and need for achievement motivation are nonsignificant. Data further suggest that entrepreneurial identity aspiration is related to gender, while entrepreneurial exposure and previous entrepreneurship education show no or adverse effects.

Based on our findings, the authors argue that education should focus on teaching and discussing the identified attitudes and inclinations to foster the formation of entrepreneurial identities. Doing so increases students' aspirations and provides them with the necessary cognitive underpinnings for subsequent entrepreneurial action. The article suggests action-based teaching to achieve this goal.

This article is the first to investigate antecedents of entrepreneurial identity aspiration by connecting it to essential concepts of entrepreneurship research. The authors extend previous work on entrepreneurial identity and add to the theoretical approaches for research in entrepreneurship education. Furthermore, the article points out central aspects that should receive additional attention in educational settings.