THE PROTEAN ENTREPRENEUR: THE ENTREPRENEURIAL PROCESS AS FITTING SELF AND CIRCUMSTANCE

Abstract

This paper is an ethnographic study of rural entrepreneurship. It explores the relationship between small business and the rural environment and is intended to contribute to the development of entrepreneurial theory. The major findings are that the entrepreneurial process is the creation and extraction of value from the environment, but that the background of the entrepreneur configures the idiosyncratic entrepreneurial process. The key to understanding this is argued to be the entrepreneur's perception of value, so that entrepreneurship is argued to be protean in that it takes its shape from the dynamics of the individual fitting themselves into their perception of the socio-economic context. Thus the entrepreneurs' approach to business can be understood in terms of their values and in this study, the entrepreneurial business is shaped and formed from these same values.