The Social Construction of Entrepreneurship: Narrative and Dramatic Processes in the Coproduction of Organizations and Identities

Abstract

A social dimension to business development and inertia is currently acknowledged in several accounts of learning, business models, vision building, and innovation, and through more general concepts of networking, social capital, and embeddedness. Here a constructionist perspective is developed to improve our understanding of the interactions between entrepreneurs and stakeholders in all of these areas. This identifies narrative and dramatic processes that describe how notions of individual and collective identity and organization are coproduced over time. A framework is created to show how selective and emotional processes that produce storylines, emplotment, and narrative structure support sense making and action making.