Entrepreneurial Identity

Abstract

Entrepreneurial identity refers to a person's set of meanings, including attitudes and beliefs, attributes, and subjective evaluations of behavior, that define him or herself in an entrepreneurial role. The construct of entrepreneurial identity encompasses how a person defines the entrepreneurial role, and whether he or she identifies with that role. By viewing firm founding as involving a role transition, we explore how entrepreneurial identity can influence successful founding behavior. We posit that when transition to the founder role involves high role novelty and role conflict that can lead to negative feedback, holding a complex and central entrepreneurial identity can facilitate the transition to the founder role by facilitating persistence while emphasizing role experimentation. In contrast, we posit that individuals with high identity centrality and low complexity would probably engage in limited search activities and ultimately become inactive but with an expectation of returning to entrepreneurial activity in the future. Overall, entrepreneurial identity is a dynamic construct whose development is influenced by network contacts that can in turn shed light on why some, and not others, become entrepreneurs.

Distinguishing Types of Entrepreneurial Ventures: An Identity-Based Perspective

“…While the personal identity of the founder is likely to have many components (Down and Reveley ), our interest here is in how central being an entrepreneur is to the person's self‐identity. It has been proposed that entrepreneurial identity includes four dimensions: identity attributes (i.e., personal traits associated with the role, such as being a risk‐taker), identity content (i.e., the tasks of the entrepreneur, such as opportunity discovery or organization building), how the individual regards the role of the entrepreneur (i.e., positive or negative assessments), and identity centrality (i.e., the importance of an entrepreneurial identity relative to other identities constituting the individual's self‐concept) (Hoang and Gimeno 2015). These dimensions are interacting as individuals experience the venture and engage in social interactions, resulting in updates to and refinements of their entrepreneurial identity.…”

Exploring founder identity tension, resolution, and venture pursuit

“…Role identity theory, alternatively, views the categorization of the self as an occupant of a role and its performance (Burke & Tully, 1977). An entrepreneurial role identity refers to the sets of attributes that are associated with the role, the tasks carried out to perform it, how the entrepreneur perceives this performance, and the importance of the role compared to other roles (Hoang & Gimeno, 2015;Morris et al, 2018). Role performance can evoke positive affect, which in turn can encourage certain behaviors (Cardon et al, 2009;Murnieks et al, 2019Murnieks et al, , 2014.…”

“…A total of 21 semistructured interviews were conducted, three with each participant, lasting between 45 minutes and two hours. Our interview format was designed to explore identity dimensions that we knew to be relevant from the literature (for example, Brewer & Gardner, 1996;Hoang & Gimeno, 2015).…”

Social design for inclusive local learning ecosystems: an entrepreneurial cultural affinity approach

“…This research explores in particular a novel concept, namely "embodied entrepreneurial identity" proposed by Kasperova and Kitching [35]. Entrepreneurial identity refers to a distinct set of meanings, attitudes and beliefs, attributes, and subjective evaluations of behaviour, which define an entrepreneur [36]. We assert that to develop inclusive local learning ecosystems such as ECAS, it is crucial to consider the whole body and embodied non-linguistic practices, such as movement, posture, gestures, and facial expressions in the formation of identity [37].…”