Practices, paradox and process in the performance of an entrepreneurial identity

Description/Abstract

This paper explores how entrepreneurial identity becomes manifest as a power relation to confront, challenge and bring about institutional change in the establishment. In this way the reflexive constitution of an entrepreneurial identity can enable significant purchase in challenging and reconstituting institutional forms through the dialectic interplays of entrepreneurial agency and bureaucratic structure. The paper illustrates our argument through exploring the enterprising practices of Michael O’Leary, the CEO of Ryanair, during his battles with the European Union about subsidies at Charleroi airport. The paper aims to add to our understanding of how the nexus of discourses of enterprise and narratives of identity enables and empowers entrepreneurial actors to bring about change and discontinuity; effectively “creative destruction” by entrepreneurially couched challenges to institutional forms and established elites