Multipartite Attitudes to Enterprise: A Comparative Study of Young People and Place

TY - JOUR

T1 - Multipartite Attitudes to Enterprise

T2 - A Comparative Study of Young People and Place

AU - Parkinson, Caroline

AU - Nowak, Victoria

AU - Howorth, Carole

AU - Southern, Alan

N1 - © The Author(s) 2020. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details.

PY - 2020/1/9

Y1 - 2020/1/9

N2 - The article examines young people’s attitudes towards enterprise, comparing prosperous and deprived neighbourhoods and two UK cities. Corpus linguistics analysis identified multi-layered attitudes and variations in how place prosperity and city affect attitudes. High interest in enterprise was associated with weaker place attachment and reduced social embeddedness. Young adults from prosperous neighbourhoods delegitimised other’s enterprises; the ‘deprived’ sub-corpus included more fluid notions of enterprise legitimacy. Liverpool accounts contained stronger discursive threads around self-determination; Bradford accounts included greater problematizing of entrepreneurship versus employment. An original Multipartite Model of Attitudes to Enterprise is presented consisting of four layers: attitudes to enterprise generally; attitudes legitimising particular forms of enterprise; attitudes to enterprise related to place; and attitudes to enterprise related to self. The conclusion explains why policies and research need to be fine-grained and avoid uni-dimensional conceptualisations of attitudes to enterprise or deterministic arguments relating entrepreneurship to specific types of places or backgrounds.

AB - The article examines young people’s attitudes towards enterprise, comparing prosperous and deprived neighbourhoods and two UK cities. Corpus linguistics analysis identified multi-layered attitudes and variations in how place prosperity and city affect attitudes. High interest in enterprise was associated with weaker place attachment and reduced social embeddedness. Young adults from prosperous neighbourhoods delegitimised other’s enterprises; the ‘deprived’ sub-corpus included more fluid notions of enterprise legitimacy. Liverpool accounts contained stronger discursive threads around self-determination; Bradford accounts included greater problematizing of entrepreneurship versus employment. An original Multipartite Model of Attitudes to Enterprise is presented consisting of four layers: attitudes to enterprise generally; attitudes legitimising particular forms of enterprise; attitudes to enterprise related to place; and attitudes to enterprise related to self. The conclusion explains why policies and research need to be fine-grained and avoid uni-dimensional conceptualisations of attitudes to enterprise or deterministic arguments relating entrepreneurship to specific types of places or backgrounds.

KW - entrepreneurship

KW - deprived communities

KW - Liverpool

KW - Bradford

U2 - 10.1177/0266242619892829

DO - 10.1177/0266242619892829

M3 - Article

SN - 0266-2426

VL - 38

SP - 293

EP - 317

JO - International small business journal

JF - International small business journal

IS - 4

ER -