Sociomateriality and Affect in Institutional Work: Constructing the Identity of Start-Up Entrepreneurs
Abstract
Identity construction as a form of institutional work has mainly been studied from discursive perspectives. We examine how the identity of start-up entrepreneurs is constructed within the sociomaterial setting of a major start-up and technology conference, to enhance institutionalization of start-up entrepreneurship. We draw from the theories of performative identity construction, sociomateriality, and affect. Our study contributes to research on institutional work by highlighting the sociomaterial and affective nature of identity construction as a form of institutional work. We demonstrate how the identity of start-up entrepreneurs is constructed as rock star, vital entrepreneur, and buddy in a start-up ecosystem. Furthermore, we present characteristics of sociomaterial agency that strengthen identification with the institution of start-up entrepreneurship: multisensority, temporal multidimensionality, and the dynamics of equality and exceptionality building. Our study also critically demonstrates how constructed identities tend to reinforce the link between entrepreneurship and masculinity.
Get full access to this article
View all access and purchase options for this article.
References
Ahl H. (2004). The scientific reproduction of gender inequality: A discourse analysis of research texts on women’s entrepreneurship. Malmö, Sweden: Liber.
Alaimo S., Hekman S. (Eds.). (2008). Material feminisms. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Alvesson M., Willmott H. (2002). Identity regulation as organizational control: Producing the appropriate individual. Journal of Management Studies, 39, 619-644.
Anderson A. R., Warren L. (2011). The entrepreneur as hero and jester: Enacting the entrepreneurial discourse. International Small Business Journal, 29, 589-609.
Auramo H. (2014, November 8). Onko Slush nykyään yhtä hyvä kuin se oli vuonna 2008? [Is Slush nowadays as good as it was in 2008?] [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141118134722-11581444-onko-slush-nyky%C3%A4%C3%A4n-yht%C3%A4-hyv%C3%A4-kuin-se-oli-vuonna-2008?trk=prof-post
Barad K. (2003). Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs, 28, 801-831.
Battilana J., D’Aunno T. (2009). Work and the paradox of embedded agency. In Lawrence T., Suddaby R., Leca B. (Eds.), Institutional work: Actors and agency in institutional studies of organization (pp. 31-58). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Bell E., Davison J. (2013). Visual management studies: Empirical and theoretical approaches. International Journal of Management Reviews, 15, 167-184.
Bévort F., Suddaby R. (2016). Scripting professional identities: How individuals make sense of contradictory institutional logics. Journal of Professions and Organization, 3, 17-38.
Blackman L., Venn C. (2010). Affect. Body & Society, 16(1), 7-28.
Bourdieu P. (1990). The logic of practice. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Brown A. (2015). Identities and identity work in organizations. International Journal of Management Reviews, 17, 20-40.
Butler J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York, NY: Routledge.
Butler J. (1993). Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of “sex.” New York, NY: Routledge.
Butler J. (1997). The psychic life of power. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Callon M. (2008). Economic markets and the rise of interactive agencements: From prosthetic agencies to habilitated agencies. In Pinch T., Swedberg R. (Eds.), Living in a material world: Economic sociology meets science and technology studies (pp. 29-56). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Chia R., Holt R. (2006). Strategy as practical coping: A Heideggerian perspective. Organization Studies, 27, 635-655.
Coffey A. (1999). The ethnographic self: Fieldwork and the representation of identity. London, England: Sage.
Connelly F. M., Clandinin D. J. (1990). Stories of experience and narrative inquiry. Educational Researcher, 19(5), 2-14.
Cooper R. (2005). Relationality. Organization Studies, 26, 1689-1710.
Creed W. E. D., Dejordy R., Lok J. (2010). Being the change: Resolving institutional contradiction through identity work. Academy of Management Journal, 53, 1336-1364.
Creed W. E. D., Scully M. A., Austin J. R. (2002). Clothes make the person? The tailoring of legitimating accounts and the social construction of identity. Organization Science, 13, 475-496.
Edensor T. (2015). Producing atmospheres at the match: Fan cultures, commercialisation and mood management in English football. Emotion, Space and Society, 15, 82-89.
Eisenhardt K. M. (1989). Building theories from case study research. Academy of Management Review, 14, 532-550.
Ellis C., Bochner A. (2000). Autoethnography, personal narrative, reflexivity: Researcher as subject. In Denzin N., Lincoln Y. (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. 733-768). London, England: Sage.
Emirbayer M., Mische A. (1998). What is agency? American Journal of Sociology, 103, 281-317.
Essers C., Benchop Y. (2007). Enterprising identities: Female entrepreneurs of Moroccan or Turkish origin in the Netherlands. Organization Studies, 28, 49-69.
Garud R., Schildt H. A., Lant T. K. (2014). Entrepreneurial storytelling, future expectations, and the paradox of legitimacy. Organization Science, 25, 1479-1492.
Gergen K. J., Gergen M. M. (1986). Narrative form and the construction of psychological science. In Sarbin T. R. (Ed.), Narrative psychology: The storied nature of human conduct (pp. 22-44). New York, NY: Praeger.
Gherardi S. (2001). From organizational learning to practice-based knowing. Human Relations, 54, 131-139.
Gherardi S. (2006). Organizational knowledge: The texture of workplace learning. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
Gherardi S. (2017). One turn . . . and now another one: Do the turn to practice and the turn to affect have something in common? Management Learning, 48(3), 1-14.
Giorgi S., Palmisano S. (2017). Sober intoxication: Institutional contradictions and identity work in the everyday life of four religious communities in Italy. Organization Studies, 38, 795-819.
Grosz E. (1994). Volatile bodies: Toward a corporeal feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Hampel C., Lawrence T. B., Tracey P. (2015). Institutional work: Taking stock and making it matter. In Greenwood R., Oliver C., Lawrence T. B., Meyer R. (Eds.), SAGE handbook of organizational institutionalism (2nd ed., pp. 558-590). London, England: Sage.
Heinonen J. (2016, November 29). Monella Slushin synnystä väärä käsitys—Kätilöinä markkinointiguru ja juristi [Many have wrong ideas about the conception of Slush: A marketing guru and an attorney were its midviwes]. Kauppalehti. Retrieved from https://www.kauppalehti.fi/uutiset/monella-slushin-synnysta-vaara-kasitys—katiloina-vesterbacka-ja-airisto/VazRYJbh
Henriques J. (2010). The vibrations of affect and their propagation on a night out on Kingston’s dancehall scene. Body & Society, 16(1), 57-89.
Hölttä M. (2015, October 29). Myth busters. Aalto University School of Business News. Retrieved from http://biz.aalto.fi/fi/current/news/2015-10-29-002/
Hytti U., Heinonen J. (2013). Heroic and humane entrepreneurs: Identity work in entrepreneurship education. Education + Training, 55, 886-898.
Idema R. (2011). Discourse studies in the 21st century: A response to Mats Alvesson and Dan Kärreman’s “decolonializing discourse.” Human Relations, 64, 1163-1176.
Jackson A. Y., Mazzei L. A. (2012). Thinking with theory in qualitative research: Viewing data across multiple perspectives. London, England: Routledge.
Jones C., Massa F. G. (2013). From novel practice to consecrated exemplar: Unity Temple as a case of institutional evangelizing. Organization Studies, 34, 1099-1136.
Kašperová E., Kitching J. (2014). Embodying entrepreneurial identity. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour& Research, 20, 438-452.
Knight M. (2006). The production of the female entrepreneurial subject: A space of exclusion for women of color? Journal of Women, Politics & Policy, 27, 151-159.
Küpers W. (2008). Embodied “inter-learning”—An integral phenomenology of learning in and by organizations. The Learning Organization, 15, 388-408.
Kuusi M. (2015, July 27). Miki Kuusi: “I’ve decided each Slush would be my last. But each time I’ve been left with a hunger for more.” [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.aaltopro.fi/en/blog/miki-kuusi-ive-decided-each-slush-would-be-my-last-each-time-ive-been-left-hunger-more
Laine P.-M., Meriläinen S., Tienari J., Vaara E. (2016). Mastery, submission, and subversion: On the performative construction of strategist identity. Organization, 23, 505-524.
Lawrence T. B., Dover G. (2015). Place and institutional work: Creating housing for the hard-to-house. Administrative Science Quarterly, 60, 371-410.
Lawrence T. B., Leca B., Zilber T. (2013). Institutional work: Current research, new directions and overlooked issues. Organization Studies, 34, 1023-1033.
Lawrence T. B., Suddaby R. (2006). Institutions and institutional work. In Stewart R., Clegg S. R., Hardy C., Lawrence T. B., Nord W. R. (Eds.), SAGE handbook of organization studies (2nd ed., pp. 215-254). London, England: Sage.
Lawrence T. B., Suddaby R., Leca B. (2011). Institutional work: Refocusing institutional studies of organization. Journal of Management Inquiry, 20, 52-58.
Leung A., Zietsma C., Peredo A. M. (2014). Emergent identity work and institutional change: The “quiet” revolution of Japanese middle-class housewives. Organization Studies, 35, 423-450.
Lok J. (2010). Institutional logics as identity projects. Academy of Management Journal, 53, 1305-1335.
Lounsbury M., Glynn M. A. (2001). Cultural entrepreneurship: Stories, legitimacy, and the acquisition of resources. Strategic Management Journal, 22, 545-564.
MacLure M. (2013). Classification or wonder? Coding as an analytic practice in qualitative research. In Coleman B., Ringrose J. (Eds.), Deleuze and research methodologies (pp. 164-183). Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press.
Massumi B. (1996). The autonomy of affect. In Patton P. (Eds.), Deleuze: A critical reader (pp. 217-239). Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
Massumi B. (2002). Parables for the virtual: Movement, affect, sensation. London, England: Duke University Press.
Meriläinen S., Tienari J., Valtonen A. (2015). Headhunters and the “ideal” executive body. Organization, 22, 3-22.
Merleau-Ponty M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception. New York, NY: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Miles M. B., Huberman A. M. (1994). Qualitative data analysis. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Monteiro P., Nicolini D. (2015). Recovering materiality in institutional work: Prizes as an assemblage of human and material entities. Journal of Management Inquiry, 24, 61-81.
Munir K., Phillips N. (2005). The birth of the “Kodak moment”: Institutional entrepreneurship and the adoption of new technologies. Organization Studies, 26, 1665-1687.
Nayak A. (2008). On the way to theory: A processual Approach. Organization Studies, 29, 173-190.
Nicolini D. (2007). Stretching out and expanding work practices in time and space: The case of telemedicine. Human Relations, 60, 899-920.
Oakes L., Townley B., Cooper D. J. (1998). Business planning as pedagogy: Language and control in a changing institutional field. Administrative Science Quarterly, 43, 257-292.
Ogbor J. (2000). Mythicizing and reification in entrepreneurial discourse: Ideology-critique of entrepreneurial studies. Journal of Management Studies, 37, 605-635.
Orlikowski W. J. (2007). Sociomaterial practices: Exploring technology at work. Organization, 28, 1435-1448.
Orlikowski W. J., Scott S. (2008). Sociomateriality: Challenging the separation of technology, work and organization. The Academy of Management Annals, 2(1), 433-474.
O’Sullivan J. (2015). The startup spirit. Tekes Views Magazine 2015, pp. 6-9. Retrieved from http://www.tekes.fi/globalassets/julkaisut/views_2015_magazine.pdf
Ozkazanc-Pan B. (2014). Postcolonial feminist analysis of high-technology entrepreneuring. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour& Research, 20, 155-172.
Polkinghorne D. E. (1988). Narrative knowing and the human sciences. Albany: SUNY Press.
Pratt M. G., Rockmann K. W., Kaufmann J. B. (2006). Constructing professional identity: The role of work and identity learning cycles in the customization of identity among medical residents. Academy of Management Journal, 49, 235-262.
Pullen A., Rhodes C., Thanem T. (2017). Affective politics in gendered organizations: Affirmative notes on becoming-woman. Organization, 24, 105-123.
Rao H., Monin P., Durand R. (2003). Institutional change in Toque Ville: Nouvelle cuisine as an identity movement in French gastronomy. American Journal of Sociology, 108, 795-843.
Raviola E., Norbäck M. (2013). Bringing technology and meaning into institutional work: Making news at an Italian business newspaper. Organization Studies, 34, 1171-1194.
Reed-Danahay D. (Ed.). (1997). Auto/ethnography: Rewriting the self and the social. Oxford, UK: Berg.
Riessman C. K. (2008). Narrative methods for the human sciences. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
Ringrose J., Renold E. (2014). “F**k rape!”: Exploring affective intensities in a feminist research assemblage. Qualitative Inquiry, 20, 772-780.
Roberts R. A. (2013). How do we quote black and brown bodies? Critical reflections on theorizing and analyzing embodiments. Qualitative Inquiry, 19, 280-287.
Schouten J. W. (2014). My improbable profession. Consumption Markets & Culture, 17, 595-608.
Sirén S. (2014, November, 19). Slush100: Do’s and dont’s in pitching. Retrieved from http://www.slush.org/2014/11/slush-100-dos-donts-pitching/
Snow D. A., Anderson L. (1987). Identity work among the homeless: The verbal construction and avowal of personal identities. American Journal of Sociology, 92, 1336-1371.
Strati A. (1992). Aesthetic understanding of organizational life. Academy of Management Review, 17, 568-581.
Strati A. (2003). Knowing in practice: Aesthetic understanding and tacit knowledge. In Nicolini D., Gherardi S., Yanow D. (Eds.), Knowing in organizations: A practice-based approach (pp. 53-75). Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.
Suchman L. A. (2007). Human-machine reconfigurations: Plans and situated actions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Suddaby R., Greenwood R. (2005). Rhetorical strategies of legitimacy. Administrative Science Quarterly, 50, 35-67.
Sveningsson S., Alvesson M. (2003). Managing managerial identities: Organizational fragmentation, discourse and identity struggle. Human Relations, 56, 1163-1193.
Teittinen P. (2014, September 15). Euroviisut jäävät kakkoseksi—Slushista Suomen historian suurin tekninen tuotanto [The Eurovision song contest will be left on second place—Slush to become the largest technical production in Finnish history]. Helsingin Sanomat. Retrieved from http://www.hs.fi/kulttuuri/a1410748378250
Thomas R., Davies A. (2005). Theorizing the micro-politics of resistance: New public management and managerial identities in the UK public services. Organization Studies, 26, 683-706.
Tracey P. (2016). Spreading the word: The microfoundations of institutional persuasion and conversion. Organization Science, 27, 989-1009.
Tsoukas H., Chia R. (2002). On organizational becoming: Rethinking organizational change. Organization Science, 13, 567-582.
Valtonen A., Markuksela V., Moisander J. (2010). Doing sensory ethnography in consumer research. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 34, 375-380.
Vesterinen V. (2008, September 22). Slush Helsinki [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://www.arcticstartup.com/article/slush-helsinki.
Watson T. J. (2008). Managing identity: Identity work, personal predicaments and structural circumstances. Organization, 15, 121-143.
Wetherell M. (2012). Affect and emotion: A new social science understanding. London, England: Sage.
Wry T., Lounsbury M., Glynn M. A. (2011). Legitimating nascent collective identities: Coordinating cultural entrepreneurship. Organization Science, 22, 449-463.
Cite article
Cite article
Cite article
OR
Download to reference manager
If you have citation software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice
Information, rights and permissions
Information
Published In
Article first published online: December 1, 2017
Issue published: July 2019
Keywords
Authors
Metrics and citations
Metrics
Journals metrics
This article was published in Journal of Management Inquiry.
VIEW ALL JOURNAL METRICSArticle usage*
Total views and downloads: 2132
*Article usage tracking started in December 2016
Articles citing this one
Receive email alerts when this article is cited
Web of Science: 30 view articles Opens in new tab
Crossref: 0
-
“What is your secret sauce to win?” – gender performance at entreprene...
-
Entrepreneurial Pitching: A Critical Review and Integrative Framework
-
Affective capitalism and the (new) entrepreneurial mood: Slush as a fi...
-
The fluid affective space of organizational practices
-
Identity is a matter of place: intersectional identities of Romanian w...
-
Outlining startup culture as a global form
-
‘ Being a professional is not the same as acting profess...
-
Common sense put to work: The capitalisation of affects in the introdu...
-
Legitimacy Processes and Trajectories of Co-Prosumption Services: Insi...
-
One Size Does Not Fit All: Considering Materiality to Understand Routi...
-
Introduction: ‘Shooting for the Moon’
-
Identities and Ways of Being
-
The Arena
-
The Future of Arenas of Fabrication
-
“Life sucks, coffee helps”: Articulating the authentic entrepreneur on...
-
Cultural practices and organizational ethnography: implications for fi...
-
Entrepreneurial subjectivation and capitalist desire – affective poten...
-
Empreendedorismo e afeto: desafios e perspectivas de pesquisa
-
Intelligent Scanning Detection System of Muscle Exercise Fatigue Based...
-
Exploring the Role of Metaphors in Social-Identity Construction: The C...
-
Hackathons as Affective Circuits: Technology, organizationality and af...
-
A review of the physical context of creativity: A three‐dimensional fr...
-
Appropriating integrated performance management tools in healthcare: a...
-
Helping Entrepreneurs Help Themselves: A Review and Relational Researc...
-
Navigating an Identity Playground: Using sociomateriality to build a t...
-
A Posthumanist Epistemology of Practice
-
Working to align energy transitions and social equity: An integrative ...
-
From sites to vibes: Technology and the spatial production of coworkin...
-
Entrepreneurial Identity: A Review and Research Agenda
-
Navigating the Terrain of Entrepreneurship Education in Neoliberal Soc...
-
Viewing entrepreneurship “in motion”: Exploring current uses and futur...
-
Work/Non-work? Laminated Boundary-Tensions and Affective Capabilities:...
-
A Posthumanist Epistemology of Practice
-
Walking the tightrope and stirring things up: Exploring the institutio...
-
Becoming upbeat: Learning the affecto-rhythmic order of organizational...
-
Tracking the sociomaterial traces of affect at the crossroads of affec...
Figures and tables
Figures & Media
Tables
View Options
Get access
Access options
If you have access to journal content via a personal subscription, university, library, employer or society, select from the options below:
loading institutional access options
Alternatively, view purchase options below:
Purchase 24 hour online access to view and download content.
Access journal content via a DeepDyve subscription or find out more about this option.
