مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد کارآفرینی غیر متعارف – الزویر 2018

The present article, which opens this special issue, focuses on unconventional forms of entrepreneurship not captured sufficiently by current theory. Changes in society and escalating economic difficulties have led to a mutation in entrepreneurship, driven less by conventional professional interest and more by passion, a new paradigm that in turn has opened the door to an unconventional approach to entrepreneurship. We here seek to discern the main elements that help define the unconventional entrepreneur, including 1) the role that passion plays, notably in the pursuit of leisure and adventure; 2) the important role of tribes before, during, and after entrepreneurial creation; and 3) liquid society as a cause of the identity crisis and a factor of the quest for entrepreneurial recognition. Lastly, we discuss the possibility of this unconventional entrepreneur being part of a type of governmentality as a perfect example of neoliberal alienation.

Introduction

Unconventional’ is a rather trendy word in the management realm. When a scholar wants to break free from previous works, s/he states that s/he is studying an unconventional phenomenon or developing an unconventional approach. This may be a way of avoiding formulaic research and routine content (Alvesson & Gabriel, 2013). Unconventional ‘somethings’ have flourished across management disciplines such as “unconventional marketing” (Cova & Saucet, 2014), “unconventional finance” (Buchner & Wilkinson, 2015), “unconventional management research” (Clair et al., 2016), and even “unconventional research contexts” (Bamberger & Pratt, 2010). Much of the time, these works overly use terms such as “alternative” or “new” in attempting to break with the mainstream of their discipline. Here, we propose returning to the etymology of unconventional: not adhering to established convention or accepted standards. In the entrepreneurship discipline, an established convention corresponds to the standard – if not canonical – profile of the Schumpeterian entrepreneur. Even if the last decade has seen a flurry of research on such alternative profiles as the accidental entrepreneur (Shah & Tripsas, 2007), the user entrepreneur (Haefliger, Jäger, & Von Krogh, 2010), and the lifestyle entrepreneur (Bredvold & Skålén, 2016), entrepreneurship seems to face difficulties in breaking free from the Schumpeterian figure. The point of departure to breaking free from it is thus the notion of opportunity recognition that lies at the core of the entrepreneurial process. Ardichvili, Cardozo, and Ray (2003, p.106) argue that “identifying and selecting the right opportunities for new businesses are among the most important abilities of a successful entrepreneur”. Conventionally, and corresponding to the stereotypical entrepreneur, opportunity recognition consists in recognising the opportunity first and then developing an organisational development path as described in the traditional literature. Unconventionally, we argue that opportunity recognition is not a necessary first step, and that the desperate search for opportunities could end in failure. We propose looking at entrepreneurship as a shared passion and communal incentive to develop something that could become a successful business venture. Passion and interaction with other passionate people as well as the environment lead to generating potential opportunities (Cova & Guercini, 2016). We thus argue that the entrepreneur’s profile pertains to the single entrepreneur, while obviously the literature has moved on to consider the entrepreneurial team (Lechler, 2001) and the community sharing the passion (Martin & Schouten, 2014).