The social construction of nascent entrepreneurship : dynamics of business venturing process from an entrepreneurial learning perspective

Abstract

This thesis examines the process of nascent entrepreneurship from a learning perspective.  The overall aim of this research is to generate insights into nascent entrepreneurs’ learning and managing experiences by exploring their perspectives in relation to the enterprise culture and education discourses in the UK.  Embedded in a social constructionist paradigm, a process-relational stance is taken to entrepreneurship, which recognises the dynamic and emergent processes through which business opportunities are realized and constructed in the context of social interactions with numerous stakeholders.  The social constructionist position, in which this research is grounded, calls for the need to understand human experiences in their socio-cultural context, with an acknowledgement of human agency and active perceptual constructions of people in a society.  Nascent entrepreneurs’ biographies, motivations and capitals that they hold are examined at the micro-individual level, combined with meso-level considerations including social processes of business venturing.  The research also analyses how these micro-individual and meso-relational processes relate to macro-field forces of enterprise culture, moving beyond an individual or team understanding of nascent entrepreneurship.

This research is premised on an empirical investigation of three cases of the business venturing process.  The first case pertains to the formation of a creative venture (i.e. brand communications agency, which uniquely includes in-house production of advertising vehicles with marketing strategy business) by a team of five nascent entrepreneurs, who set up the company outside the local university’s incubator centre while they were students in different areas of Arts, Design and Technology at the local university.  The second case account is about a solo entrepreneur’s business venturing story, which is characterised by a venturing process supported by the local university’s incubator centre.  The final venturing case represents a slightly different account in the sense that it is about a business venturing process led by a nascent corporate entrepreneur in collaboration with and support from the parent company, which acted as an incubator.

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