Life course pathways to business start-up

Abstract

We explore how socially embedded life courses of individuals within Britain affect the resources they have available and their capacity to apply those resources to start-up. We propose that there will be common pathways to entrepreneurship from privileged resource ownership and test our propositions by modelling a specific life course framework, based on class and gender. We operationalize our model employing 18 waves of the British Household Panel Survey and event history random effect logistic regression modelling. Our hypotheses receive broad support. Business start-up in Britain is primarily made from privileged class backgrounds that enable resource acquisition and are a means of reproducing or defending prosperity. The poor avoid entrepreneurship except when low household income threatens further downward mobility and entrepreneurship is a more attractive option. We find that gendered childcare responsibilities disrupt class-based pathways to entrepreneurship. We interpret the implications of this study for understanding entrepreneurship and society and suggest research directions.

Emancipation through digital entrepreneurship? A critical realist analysis

“…These findings offer qualitative support to the conclusions of Jayawarna et al (2014) that privileged class backgrounds enable resource acquisition through mobilisation of labour market privilege. Although…”

“…She also had a much higher-paying job, commensurate to her skillset, where she could work flexibly, which allowed her both to outsource the production of her designs and to travel internationally to do so. Consistent with the argument outlined by Jayawarna et al (2014) that those who face a higher opportunity cost for foregoing employment will start businesses with higher earnings prospects, Jasminder had high aims for her business, including intentions for international growth. Although caring responsibilities limited her availability, she was able to reduce her working hours when she chose without significantly constraining financial resources for her business.…”

“…Assuming the relevance of both various external and internal resources to successful entrepreneurial activity (Jayawarna et al 2014;Jones et al 2013) and following established critical realist method (Bygstad & Munkvold 2011;Danermark et al 2002), we organised and theoretically redescribed these conditions into two groups. First, social resource access (external or structural): material, financial, cultural and temporal resources accumulated over the life course and second, individual know-how (internal or agential): tacit knowledge such as digital and business skillsets, problem-solving skills and auto-didactic ability.…”

“…But in a realist conception of the social world, this is impossible, as structures exist prior to the development of agency, constraining and/or enabling actors who then contribute to their reproduction or transformation (Archer 2007;Porpora 1998 (Porpora 1998) with that of Bourdieusian sociologists (Anthias 2001;Ignatow & Robinson 2017) 1 who attend to the effect of such dynamic, yet durable, positionality on life chances, resource access and accrual. These are essential to both entrepreneurial processes (Anderson & Miller 2003;Jayawarna et al 2014) and digital skills development (Ignatow & Robinson 2017). Actors have agency, or the ability to choose amongst various courses of action, and do so while embedded in systems of thought, belief and ideology -cultures -that profoundly shape their internal conversations and concerns (Archer 2007); entrepreneurial agency, then, is tied to the cultures and structures of particular communities (Vincent et al 2014).…”

“…We therefore, suggest there is a need to develop an ontology of digital entrepreneurship that recognises F o r P e e r R e v i e w 5 contemporary entrepreneurship theory regarding how agents use structurally distributed resources to enact opportunities (Anderson & Miller 2003;Jayawarna et al 2014;Jones et al 2013).…”