Mallett, O. and Wapshott, R. (2015) Making sense of self-employment in late career: understanding the identity work of olderpreneurs. Work, Employment and Society, 29 (2). pp. 250-266. ISSN 1469-8722
Abstract
The enterprise culture is a pervasive socio-historical discourse. This article adopts a narrative identity work approach to explore how individuals may exert agency to make sense of and negotiate with the structuring features of such discourses. Older entrepreneurs are an interesting case through which to explore these processes because ageing is predominantly portrayed as a form of decline to be resisted or hidden and as inherently anti-enterprise. Qualitative, in-depth, semi-structured interviews with two UK-based older entrepreneurs reveal how they engaged problematically with discourses around enterprise culture and ageing in constructing their identities. Sedimentation and innovation are proposed as valuable concepts for understanding how particular discourses become embedded in the understanding and identity work of individuals and how they seek to exert agency. The findings demonstrate the difficulties in innovative identity work for older entrepreneurs and this is discussed in terms of narrative resource poverty.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2015. This is an author produced version of a paper subsequently published in Work Employment & Society. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | discourse; enterprise culture; entrepreneur; identity; late career; narrative |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Management School (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 30 Oct 2015 11:58 |
Last Modified: | 11 Mar 2016 14:45 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0950017014546666 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | SAGE Publications |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/0950017014546666 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:91335 |