Entrepreneurial Narrative Identity and Gender:A Double Epistemological Shiftby Eleanor Hamilton

A double epistemological shift is proposed to challenge the enduring dominance of the discourseof entrepreneurial masculinity, which impedes our understanding of entrepreneurship. First, areframing of the epistemological status of narrative supports philosophical and theoreticalapproaches to the constitution of narrative identity. Second, an epistemological shift to understandgender in entrepreneurship through the constitution of gendered identities in discourse is pro-posed. These shifts invoke the ontological dimension of narrative and contemporary theories ofgender to understand entrepreneurial identity as co-constituted and located in repertoires ofhistorically and culturally situated narrative. This offers new theoretical and methodologicalpossibilities in entrepreneurship.

IntroductionIn this paper post-structuralist feminist theo-

rizing of gender and discourses (Sunderland2004) contributes an understanding of genderidentities constituted and positioned in entre-preneurial narratives. A post-structuralist per-spective draws attention to how particularknowledge is produced and also to “what hasbeen obscured or made invisible” (Fletcher2001, p. 23). Historically, women’s entrepre-neurship has been neglected by researchersand it is, in this sense, rendered invisible(Hamilton 2013a; Ogbor 2000). Ahl’s (2006)critique of women’s entrepreneurship researchtriggered “an outpouring of scholarly interest”(Hughes et al. 2012, p. 430) but there is muchto be done in terms of developing a morerefined understanding of entrepreneurship andgender. It remains the case that entrepreneur-ship research pays scant attention to gender

dynamics, and that explicit feminist analysis israre (Bruni, Gheradi, and Poggio 2004;Hamilton 2013a, 2013b; Mirchandani 1999;Mulholland 1996; Reed 1996).

To develop fresh understandings of gender inentrepreneurship this paper proposes a doubleepistemological shift. The first epistemologicalshift invokes the ontological dimension ofnarrative, moving beyond an understanding ofnarrative as mere method. The second shiftproposed develops contemporary theories tounderstand gender in entrepreneurship throughthe constitution of gendered identities in dis-course, gender as co-constituted and locatedin repertoires of historically and culturally situ-ated narrative. This supports a way to challengethe enduring dominant discourse of entrepre-neurship as embodying particular forms ofmasculinity.

This paper responds to the call for thisSpecial Issue to engage with post-positivistic

Eleanor Hamilton is professor of entrepreneurship in the Institute for Entrepreneurship and EnterpriseDevelopment at Lancaster University Management School.

Address correspondence to: Eleanor Hamilton, Institute for Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Develop-ment, Lancaster University Management School, Lancaster LA1 4YX, UK. Tel.: +44 (0) 1524 593916; fax: + 44(0)1524 594743. E-mail: e.hamilton@lancaster.ac.uk.

Journal of Small Business Management 2014 52(4), pp. 703–712

doi: 10.1111/jsbm.12127

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epistemologies in order to challenge dominantperspectives and offer new ways to theorize thefield of entrepreneurship. A post-positivisticresearch approach assumes that researchmethods applied in any study should be deter-mined by the nature of the research question.Whereas a positivist paradigm relies on quan-titative studies, a post-positivistic approachwould include a range of qualitative, interpre-tive methods. Entrepreneurship research hasbeen identified as dominated by positiviststudies, and a number of leading scholars in thefield have advocated more methodological plu-ralism (Anderson and Starnawska 2008;Gartner and Birley 2002; Neergard and Ulhoi2007). The double epistemological shift pro-posed here can support the development offresh methodological approaches to theorizeentrepreneurship.

Narrative research approaches have shownmuch promise in enhancing our grasp on someof the subtleties and complexities of entrepre-neurship (Larty and Hamilton 2011). Narrativein management studies was established byscholars such as Boje (1995, 2001), Czarniawska(1998, 1999, 2004), and Gabriel (2000). Theyargued that narrative research approaches wereparticularly useful in the study of complex orga-nizations. Some of the key debates around nar-rative in management studies centered, first, onthe relationship between narrative and storytell-ing; second, on the definition and role of plot;and, finally, on the epistemological status ofnarrative. This paper joins those debates inarguing for a re-examination and extension ofthe status of narrative, drawing on wider theo-retical and philosophical debates. This entails anepistemological reframing of narrative as anontological condition of the social world ratherthan simply a representational form, or a meth-odological approach. It relies on an understand-ing that “social life is itself storied and thatnarrative is an ontological condition of sociallife” (Somers and Gibson 1993, p. 2; italics inoriginal; Somers 1994, p. 614). Narrativereframed moves from being a methodologicaldevice to an ontological condition of social lifeand social structures.

Prior to 2002 narrative studies in entrepre-neurship represented a relatively small field ofwork (Smith and Anderson 2004), but therewere some influential early pioneers (Pitt 1998;Steyaert 1997). Johansson (2004) highlightedthe emergence of interest in the use of a nar-rative approach in entrepreneurship studies,

particularly in the construction of entrepreneur-ial identity, in understanding entrepreneuriallearning and in efforts to reconceptualize entre-preneurship. Advocates of the approach con-tinued to emerge (e.g., Gartner 2007; Hamilton2006a, 2006b; Larty and Hamilton 2011; Smith2005). The special editions edited by Hjorthand Steyaert (2003, 2004, 2009) provided animportant outlet for scholars engaging withnarrative approaches in entrepreneurship.

Narrative mediates and constitutes experi-ence: identities (multiple and complex) drawupon, and are located within, a repertoire ofnarratives (Ricoeur 1991b). The notion ofself-identity (an entrepreneur) interacts withbroader social structures (gender). In forgingtheir self-identity individuals contribute to andpromote “social influences that are global intheir consequences and implications” (Giddens1991, p. 2). There has been a growing body ofinterest in notions of entrepreneurial identity(see e.g., Anderson and Warren 2011; Cohen andMusson 2000; Down 2006; Down and Reveley2004; Down and Warren 2008; Downing 2005;Essers and Benschop 2007; Warren 2004;Watson 2009). Identity and processes of identi-fication matter because “it is how we knowwho’s who and what’s what” (Jenkins 2008,p. 13). Goffman (1959) introduced the idea ofidentity as performance and the communicationof gender stereotypes through advertising,which bridges to the theorizing of gender asperformance (Butler 2010). In entrepreneurshipresearch Ahl (2006) called for an epistemologi-cal shift to examine “how gender is accom-plished” (p. 612; italics in original), as opposedto relying on objectivist assumptions regardinggender. The objectivist stance focusing ongender as an individual characteristic, some-thing essentially male or female that can bemeasured and used as an explanatory variableignores the role of the social and cultural inconstructions of gender (Ahl 2006; Gatrell andSwan 2008). The theoretical connectionsbetween identification processes, gender, andlanguage offer new opportunities in entrepre-neurship research.

Down (2006) was among the first to focus onan entrepreneurial self-identity, an identity thatis not a “categorical essence” but somethingfluid in space and time and constructed inrelation to others (p. 6). Watson (2009) pro-vides an erudite account of work to date in thisarea. He concurs with Down (2006) that entre-preneurial identities are not something that

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“individuals ‘have’” (p. 255) but are more help-fully considered as related to cultural and dis-cursive repertoires. He distinguishes betweenself-identity and social identities connected towider discourse, as interconnected aspectsof identity work (p. 251). Down (2006), onthe other hand, influenced by Somers(1994), views self and society not as separateentities but different aspects of a “socialwhole.” These studies of entrepreneurial iden-tity have included both men and women inthe gathering of empirical materials. Even inthese studies, however, we can find the resil-ience of a male norm in entrepreneurship.Down (2006), for example, relies on maleparticipants to provide empirical materialsto examine entrepreneurial identity. Warren(2004) acknowledges a mainstream entrepre-neurial discourse (masculine) that womenentrepreneurs positioned themselves as par-tially resisting in constructing alternative iden-tities. Watson (2009) provides a rich account ofthe dialogue between two cousins in a familybusiness, emphasizing the relational and dia-logic nature of identity work (p. 266). Of thecousins (one female, one male), it is the malethat is cast as the more entrepreneurial: “doingdeals”; “a bit of an outsider at school”; “pas-sionate” (p. 266). This growing body of valu-able work provides a strong platform fortheorizing entrepreneurial identity, and anopportunity to build on our understanding ofgender and entrepreneurial identity.

In seeking to extend our understanding ofentrepreneurial identity production and knowl-edge, Anderson and Warren (2011) arguethat “the label, an entrepreneurial identity issufficiently malleable to allow practising entre-preneurs to employ it to build their own indi-vidualized identity” (p. 605). However, thesubject of their study is Michael O’Leary a well-known “flamboyant entrepreneur” (p. 589).The gendered nature of his identity construc-tion and use as a “rough tongued entrepreneur-ial jester” (p. 603) is reinforced and reproducedby the media in a way that perpetuates theexclusionary nature of that identity. Andersonand Warren (2011) note that “the entrepreneur-ial discourse has become a legitimizing frameof entrepreneurial meaning” (p. 592), but thequestion remains about the framework beingprovided by an identity construction where “hisostentatious displays are brash, uncouth invec-tives; his tirades employ obscenity temperedwith saucy humour” (p. 603). The enduring

individualistic, masculine, ethnocentric dis-course has been identified by a number ofresearchers (Achtenhagen and Welter 2003;Baker, Aldrich, and Liou 1997; Hamilton 2006b;Ljunggren and Alsos 2007; Ogbor 2000; Raduand Redian-Collot 2008). Nicholson andAnderson (2005) in a study of the metaphoricportrayal of entrepreneurship in the UK media1989–2000 concluded “the entrepreneurialmyth remains resolutely male” and articulated“the maleness of enterprise” (p. 162). Thisdominant discourse is serving to inhibit insightinto the diversity and complexity of the phe-nomenon of entrepreneurship (Hamilton2013a, 2013b). The entrepreneurial myth “isideological rather than representational” and“offers a sense making framework” (Andersonand Warren 2011, p. 164) but it is exclusionaryand selective in whom it offers a frame withwhich to identify.

This paper proposes a double epistemo-logical shift in narrative and gender to offernew understandings of entrepreneurial iden-tity constructed socially in relation to others,shaped by multiple discourses. The firstshift proposed acknowledges the ontologicaldimension of narrative. The second shift pro-posed develops an understanding of genderas co-constituted and located in repertoires ofhistorically and culturally situated narrative.This could provide a platform for new methodand theory in entrepreneurship. It exploresthe co-constitution of negotiated, complexgender identities and the practices associatedwith those identities over time. Theserelationally defined selves are set within cul-tural and social boundaries including existingdominant discourses, such as the dominantdiscourse of entrepreneurship as individual-ized and masculine. An assumption that entre-preneurship is a masculine endeavor, and thatentrepreneurial identity is most naturallymale, stubbornly endures in entrepreneurshipresearch (Hamilton 2013a, 2013b). It repli-cates and reinforces what seems at times sur-prising gender blindness in the field. At thesame time there have been calls to definegender as ways of being, made availablethrough discourses (Ahl 2006; Swan 2006;Wagner and Wodak 2006). The concept ofnarrative identity with its historical, spatial,and relational implications (Somers 1994)offers an opportunity to generate new insightsand new ways of theorizing the field ofentrepreneurship.

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Extending the EpistemologicalStatus of Narrative

A reframing of the epistemological status ofnarrative, already adopted in other disciplines,supports a philosophical and theoretical under-standing of narrative identity and its centralrole in how we configure and reconfigure ourexperience. Our narrative capacity is funda-mentally part of the human condition and oursocial world (Barthes 1977). The concept ofnarrative lies at the heart of academic study ofthe humanities (Riessman 2008). Given this,can narrative be termed a post-positivistic epis-temology? The justification for so doing is thatin the domain of the social sciences the conceptof narrative has been denied legitimacy in epis-temological terms (Czarniawska 2004, p. 7).“Every knowledge discipline needs an ‘episte-mological other’ to consolidate a cohesive self-identity and collective project” (Somers 1994, p.613; Somers and Gibson 1993, p. 1). This oth-erness is upheld by defining narrative as arepresentation of social knowledge and posi-tioning it in contrast with causal explanation.Dichotomies become perpetuated in position-ing our research such as particular versusgeneralizable, discursive versus quantitative,descriptive versus theoretical, exploratoryversus explanatory, and a value is placed on theresearch in terms of the labels. Defining narra-tive as representational casts it in opposition to,and requiring distance from, the explanatory.

A reframing of narrative emerged in theearly 1990s in the social sciences based onphilosophical understandings of narrativebeyond representation, something more sub-stantive. Czarniawska (1999) points to a “liter-ary turn” in the social sciences in the 1990s,which led to a fresh consideration of the type ofknowledge produced by social scientists and“opening the door to narrative knowledge”(italics in original, p. 14). What she termed thenarrative mode of knowing, she argues,“changes the task of the researcher” (p. 15).Paul Ricoeur (1991a, 1991b) was at the fore-front in this ontological reframing of narrative,arguing that the concept of emplotment(muthos) mediates the human experience oftime. In developing a view of narrative asdynamic over time, Ricoeur draws on thenotion of emplotment signifying both imagi-nary story (fable) and well-constructed story(plot). Elements of plot take their place in aunified story, but emplotment is an integrating,

dynamic process not a static structure. Config-uring and re-configuring narrative makes senseof experience, provides alternative courses ofpossible action, or is used as a form of com-munication. Narrative’s “temporal dialectic”combines two dimensions, one episodic andthe other configurative (Ricoeur 1991b, p. 78).On the one hand narrative helps us to parcel upmeaningful experiences into a connected,coherent episodic bundle. On the other handwe can, drawing on narratives available to usand our capacity to configure and reconfigure,shape interconnected narratives that constructour identities. The ontological dimension ofnarrative thus encompasses both identity andsocial action.

We are always reinterpreting our identitydrawing on narratives available to us via ourculture embedded in our social and historicalcontext (White 1991; Wood 1991). Existing ide-ologies constrain what may be possible interms of that identity in any given culturalcontext. This is the great difference betweenlife and fiction, that we can become our ownnarrator, but only in imitation of narrativevoices available to us. Ricoeur believes that“unbridgeable gap” is only partially abolishedby our ability to emplot (p. 32). However, the“pre-interpreted” nature of our experience doesallow for emancipatory possibilities from theconstraints of social and cultural norms; “sym-bolic codes are not transmitted in any straight-forward way into individual practice” (McNay2000, 77). Boje (2001) built upon Ricoeur’swork to consider “who gets to author the plot”(p. 108), and emphasized the interplay betweenour pre-understandings, the plot, and our“embedded contextuality” (p. 121). The activedynamic suggested by emplotment denotesthe idea that individuals do not passivelyabsorb external determinations but are activelyinvolved in interpreting experience and, relatedto those interpretations, forming their identityover time. The temporal dimension of identityformation offers a way to move beyond thenotion of subjectivity as either fragmented andin permanent flux or inevitably shaped by nor-malizing social forces. This idea of narrativeidentity shares a post-structural emphasis onthe constructed self but the narrated identityalso suggests constraints and limits to the waysin which identity might be changed. These con-straints are not only imposed by social andhistorical possibilities but also imposed in theprocess of emplotment, in our moving back

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and forth, fitting together events and existingplots. Experience is constituted through, andmediated by, narrative. Identities (multiple,fluid, and complex) draw upon and are locatedwithin a repertoire of narratives.

This new ontological dimension of narrativewas gradually appropriated into the epistemo-logical frameworks of a spectrum of disciplinesin the 1990s including medicine, social psychol-ogy, anthropology, gender studies, law, biology,and physics (Czarniawska 1999; Somers 1994,p. 613; Somers and Gibson 1993, p. 1). Inentrepreneurship research, such an appropria-tion, extending the status of narrative in entre-preneurship research beyond a form ofrepresentation or mere method, way beyond theanecdotal, is perhaps long overdue.

Narrative Identity: GenderConstructed in Discourse

Narrative provides coherence and meaningto the flux of events but is never fixed; it isalways open to interpretation or reconfiguring.Narrative is the medium through which the“inherent temporality of being is expressed”(McNay 2000, p. 85). It shapes identity and isthe way in which selfhood is expressed.Ricoeur (1991b) and McNay (2000) are clear,however, that narrative does not determineidentity. Narrative mediates the generativeconfiguration, and reconfiguration, of identity.This can support a view of identities as mul-tiple, ambiguous and sometimes contradictory.Kondo (1990) contrasts this with what she seesas a Western view of identity as a wholesubject, the master subject, fixed, coherent,bounded, containing some essence that isexpressed in certain distinctive attributes. Shechallenges our assumptions about individualidentities and thus provides the basis for “aradical critique of ‘the whole subject’” in con-temporary Western culture.” (p. 33). McAdams(1997), in taking a view of self and identity,which he labels postmodern, stresses the mul-tiple selves that we seek to unify, in his viewthrough narrative and life storytelling: “Whilethe multiplicity of (post)modern life renders itunlikely that a person’s me can be packagedneatly into a narrative form, adults still seek tobestow upon the me a modicum of unity andpurpose (i.e., identity) by constructing more orless coherent, followable and vivifying stories”(p. 63).

In any examination of identity and genderthere is a danger of falling into the trap of

essentialism, in terms of what is defined asmasculine and what is defined feminine. Ithas been argued that in order to avoid essen-tialism we need to incorporate “into the coreconception of identity the dimensions of time,space, and relationality” (Somers and Gibson1993). Post-structuralist feminist theorizing ofgendered discourses (Baxter 2002; Bruni et al.2005; Sunderland 2004) provides opportunitiesto examine in more intricate ways the dominantmasculine discourse of entrepreneurship. Anentrepreneurial narrative is crafted withincomplex, delicate, constantly changing relation-ships. Identities and notions of self are revealedas more intricate and difficult to define thansuggested by the dominance of patriarchalpower.

Narrative interpretation entails understand-ing the construction of gendered identities indiscourse (Cameron 1998; Sunderland 2004;Talbot 1998). Sunderland (2004) suggests wecan understand gender in discourse asoperationalizing gender, not defining it. This isto enable the claim that “something to do withgender is going on” (Sunderland 2004, p. 172).The next section draws on Sunderland’s (2004)discussions to help frame an exploratoryempirical and theoretical examination ofgender construction drawing on the empiricalmaterial.

Co-constitution ofGender Identity

The intricate complexity of gender identity isnegotiated, disrupted and repaired in thecourse of everyday conversations, undertakingwhat Sunderland (2004) calls negotiated inter-action in the construction of gender. Subtlerelationships of duty, love, power. and conflictare implicated in the constitution of our mul-tiple, complex and shifting identities (Kondo1990). Universal explanations of gender catego-ries are problematic. Discourse constructsgender, but discourse can be actively used,produced to perform gender (Sunderland2004). Individuals define themselves in relationto each other and to wider discourses availableto them. Entrepreneurial identities are con-tested and legitimized at the same time. Ouridentities are more fractured, open and con-tested than a categorization into masculine orfeminine allows. We are, however, beinglocated or locating ourselves in wider dis-courses, “in social narratives rarely of ourown making” (Somers 1994, p. 606). These

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narratives can legitimate and constrain what ispossible in identity construction. As Jenkins(2008) points out in terms of identity “classifi-cation is rarely neutral” (p. 6). So the dominantdiscourse of entrepreneurship as a particularform of masculinity requires challenge, in orderto open up new possibilities.

DiscussionA view of gender as fluid, constructed, and

negotiated in terms of everyday lives in thecontext of the multiple but socially and cultur-ally bounded discourses available to us empha-sizes that it is important to examine theavailable discourses in entrepreneurship.

Ricoeur’s philosophical understanding of therelationship between narrative and identitysuggests while we are always reinterpreting ouridentity drawing on narratives available to usvia our culture we are embedded in our social,cultural, and historical context (Wood 1991).Clearly discourses are diverse and multiple,they are “operating alongside, converging with,jostling and temporarily mingling with otherdiscourses” (Sunderland 2004, p. 193). Somediscourses endure for centuries; some are fleet-ing or newly emerging.

The importance of the constraints imposedby existing ideologies and their coercive natureshould not be underestimated. These construc-tions of gender identity should be understoodwithin wider sets of gender relations and pre-vailing discourses. We must be reminded that,“selves were never separable from context: thatis, from the situations in which they were per-formed, the audience to whom the narrativeproduction of self was addressed, the exclu-sions implicit in any construction of ‘self’, ” thehistorical and political/economic discoursesand the culturally shaped narrative conventionsthat constructed the “self” (Kondo 1990, 247).The reframing of narrative, the epistemologicaland ontological shift, means that “it is throughnarrativity that we come to know, understand,and make sense of the social world, and it isthrough narrativity that we constitute our socialidentities” (Somers and Gibson 1993, p. 27).

Entrepreneurship studies identify an entre-preneurial myth “more vivid and persistentthan expected” and one that “remains reso-lutely male” (Nicholson and Anderson 2005, p.162). The stubborn endurance of a dominantdiscourse of entrepreneurship as a particularform of masculinity has been challenged (Ahl2006; Ahl and Marlow 2011; Hamilton 2013a).

But there remains work to be done in achievingan epistemological shift, which has been calledfor in the study of gender and entrepreneur-ship. The archetype of the entrepreneur asmale is symbolically and materially representedin the media and reproduced and reinforced inentrepreneurship research; this impacts onboth male and female subjectivities. This “rep-resentational silence” of women in the entre-preneurial narrative presents a barrier forwomen constructing a social identity aligned tothe normative forms of the representations ofentrepreneurship, symbolic, and otherwise(Somers 1994, p. 630).

This paper suggests ways in which method-ologically and empirically we can begin tomove forward in conceptualizing entrepreneur-ial identities and practice. There are ways ofknowing and understanding experience thatare different from the current dominant theo-retical discourses, but equally valuable. Post-positivist approaches are underrepresented inentrepreneurship research (Hindle 2004) andhave the potential to address fundamentalquestions (Anderson and Starnawska 2008).This Special Issue encourages entrepreneurshipresearchers to consider the theoretical chal-lenges and epistemological shifts required toestablish legitimacy for approaches that havebeen cast as “the other,” the epistemologicalother in contrast to causal explanation (Somers1994, p. 614). It recognizes that in challengingdominant theoretical discourses “getting heardrequires new theories” (Somers 1994, p. 610).

In moving forward empirically, first wecan build on the existing foundations in the useof narrative analysis in entrepreneurship,extending the range and depth of literaryframeworks employed (Larty and Hamilton2011). This is challenging because as entrepre-neurship researchers we have to move beyondnarrative cast as a method of analysis to anontological approach that can unlock newunderstanding of subtle and diverse forms ofentrepreneurial identity construction. Second,we can begin to employ explicitly feministanalysis in order to understand the dynamics ofgender and identity construction (and use) inthe context of entrepreneurship. This will coun-teract the current exclusionary entrepreneurialmyth that is so resolutely framed ideologicallyas masculine. Here we can learn from thelessons of the overarching field of managementwhere Broadbridge and Simpson (2011) con-ducted a review of 25 years of gender and

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management research. They point to the chal-lenge of gender denial, where current concep-tualizations assume that gender issues havebeen, in some sense, “solved.” They suggestfuture directions of research in revealinggendered practices and processes concealed innorms, customs, and values. Although the fieldoffers a growing number of approaches boththeoretically and methodologically, thereremain “increasingly strong calls for scholars totake their research in new directions” (Hugheset al. 2012, p. 429).

This paper, in proposing a double epistemo-logical shift in narrative and gender, offers newunderstandings of entrepreneurial identity con-structed socially in relation to others, andshaped by multiple discourses. It moves narra-tive from being cast as a method of research toacknowledging the ontological dimensions ofnarrative. It relies on understanding the role oflanguage “in how we think and learn aboutphenomena” (Nicholson and Anderson 2005).It develops an understanding of gender asco-constituted and located in repertoires of his-torically and culturally situated narrative. Thisprovides a platform for new method and theoryin entrepreneurship. It calls for the examina-tion of the co-constitution of negotiated,complex gender identities and the practicesassociated with those identities over time.These relationally defined selves are set withincultural and social boundaries including exist-ing dominant discourses, such as the dominantdiscourse of entrepreneurship as individualizedand masculine. The concept of narrative iden-tity with its historical, spatial and relationalimplications (Somers 1994) offers an opportu-nity to generate new insights and new ways oftheorizing the field of entrepreneurship. It pro-vides a challenge to the dominant theoreticalperspectives in terms of what might be legiti-mate research. It also encourages an explicitengagement with contemporary gender studiesto provide a conceptual vocabulary to enhanceour research and enrich our understanding ofentrepreneurship.

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