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More pluralistic approaches have recently emerged in entrepreneurship, yet the discipline remains disinterested in the ideological influences underpinning its research and teaching practices. Following Louis Althusser’s work on interpellation, the process by which ideology enrols and consummates its subjects, the chapter examines the interpellation of entrepreneurship-as-practice researchers and draws attention to the powerful nature of ideology. Critical reflexivity is put forward as an exercise to explore the researchers’ beliefs and identity and to tease out their relationship with the discipline. Finally, using three autoethnographic accounts, the chapter argues that the boundaries of the entrepreneurship discipline can only be shifted if and when researchers learn to recognise themselves as ‘the person in the mirror’. The reflexive spotlight also allows researchers to spot ideological breaks and engage in acts of ‘ideological resistance’.

This personal reflection piece relates my experience of vulnerability as a researcher when doing ethnographic fieldwork with journalists. Drawing on my empirical and emotional experience, I show the way the encounters in the field made me feel vulnerable and challenged my identity as a researcher. The chapter also introduces the way my self-disclosure in various ways as a fellow imperfect human being – a.o. regarding motherhood – was an important way to build relationships with the research participants and gain their trust. By doing so, this reflective commentary seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the articulation between researcher identity, fieldwork, and vulnerability.

This chapter explores how industrial PhD students are engaged in authentic leadership processes while coping with challenges through self-leadership. The authors illustrate how self-leadership can be a helpful approach to managing the leading-and-being-led dilemma. They argue that self-leadership is a process of goal achievement in collaboration with key stakeholders and, therefore, an important aspect of authentic leadership. The authors identify four aspects of self-leadership that influence authenticity: roles, resources, relations and results. Kringelum, Mortensen and Holmgren call for research into the emergence of self-leadership and authentic leadership, the leadership capabilities required and the double-sidedness and dilemmas inherent in such emergences across different contexts.

Women's bodies are abject and ‘out of place’ in organisations where (self and other) disciplining of women's bodies serve to regulate and silence women. Yet we know little about how expectations of body and appearance play out in the career decisions and everyday practices of women academic leaders. In this chapter reflexive accounts are used to explore if dress and appearance expectations have implications for women's career development and advancement, specifically in the context of business schools. The literature review and two reflexive autoethnographic accounts provided, illuminate how, through dress and appearance, the pervasiveness of hegemonic masculinity is both sustained and challenged and the potential impacts of this upon women's careers in academia.