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Entrepreneurial activities and occupational boundary work during venture creation and development in the cultural industries

International Small Business Journal 0(0) 1–23 © The Author(s) 2011 Reprints and permission: sagepub. co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0266242611431093 isb.sagepub.com

Andrew Greenman

Nottingham University Business School, UK

Abstract Drawing upon a pragmatist-inspired definition of entrepreneurial activity, this article presents material from an ethnographic study of owner-founders of micro- and small businesses in the cultural industries. The concept of occupational boundary work is developed to examine how entrepreneurial activities are partially shaped by occupations during venture creation and development. The article addresses how occupational boundary work influences venturing opportunities, the process of gaining legitimacy and building commitment to creating and developing organizations. This has relevance for explaining how occupational knowledge is acquired and transformed through entrepreneurial activities during venture creation and development. Keywords cultural industries, entrepreneurial activities, ethnography, occupational boundary work, pragmatist

Introduction A defining goal of enterprise research is to explain how entrepreneurship contributes to wealth creation. Within this endeavour there is a critical focus upon venture creation and development at the micro-level and macro-level. Many have argued that developing theory about venture creation and development requires multi-level concepts capable of bridging both micro- and macro-levels of analysis (Ardichvili et al., 2003; Gartner et al., 1992; Low and McMillan, 1998; Shane and Venkataraman, 2000). Occupation is one concept that enables multi-level analysis (Krause, 1971; Salaman, 1974), however, few studies have explicitly examined how occupation is interrelated with entrepreneurial activities during venture creation and development. Corresponding author: Andrew Greenman, University of Nottingham Institute for Enterprise and Innovation, Nottingham University Business School, Jubilee Campus, Nottingham NG8 1BB, UK. Email: [email protected]

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International Small Business Journal 0(0)

Occupation has been linked to entrepreneurship in studies of occupational choice and employment status (Sullivan, 2010); ethnic entrepreneurship (Evans and Leighton, 1989), intergenerational occupational inheritance (Aldrich and Kim, 2008) and homophilous affiliation in entrepreneurial group formation (Ruef, 2010). While these studies provide insight into how employment and occupation are linked to entrepreneurship, they do not examine how occupations shape the entrepreneurial activities that people engage in during venture creation and development. Therefore, the influence of occupation remains somewhat nebulous. It tends to be subsumed as an antecedent shaping ‘the entrepreneur’, ‘the opportunity’, ‘the entrepreneurial firm’ and ‘the entrepreneurial process’. This is partly attributable to the manner in which the subjects of entrepreneurship research are often rendered into ‘passive recipients of organizational experiences’ (Cliff et al., 2006: 635). This leaves a gap in understanding ‘which experiences enable founders to recognize alternative possibilities’ (2006: 635) and engage in entrepreneurial activities. The relationship between occupations and entrepreneurial activities emerged as a question during an ethnographic study of owner-founders of small businesses in the cultural industries. The participants frequently drew upon occupational meanings to account for their entrepreneurial activities. In order to examine the question of why occupation was central to accounts of the activities undertaken during venture creation and development, the concept of occupational boundary work was developed. Occupational boundary work refers to the process through which people acquire meanings, values and symbolic resources from an occupation, and apply these to give meaning to their identity and organizational activities. This article examines how occupational boundary work can be used to explain how entrepreneurial activities emerge during venture creation and development. By applying an occupational lens (Van Maanen and Barley, 1984) this article addresses the following gaps on venture creation and development. First, do the meanings circulating within occupations shape the projections that people envisage for venturing opportunities? Answering this question contributes to the development of theories explaining how occupations shape the formation of entrepreneurial opportunities (Ozgen and Barion, 2007), visions (Witt, 2007), imagination (Leiblein, 2007) and values (Felin and Zenger, 2009). Second, is occupation used to gain legitimacy? Answering this question contributes to theories of how people use occupation to gain legitimacy for new and small organizations (Aldrich and Fiol, 1995; Suchman, 1995). Third, how do occupations shape the commitment required to bring emerging organizations into existence? Answering this question addresses the gap of how occupational boundary work influences the motivation to organize (Stinchcombe, 1965) and the development of entrepreneurial capabilities (Haynie et al., 2009; Kor et al., 2007). Therefore, the concept of occupational boundary work contributes to theory explaining what entrepreneurial activities are and how they emerge during venture creation and development.

Defining entrepreneurial activities Entrepreneurial activities are defined as a fundamental human activity (Johannisson, 2008), achievement (Lumpkin, 2011) and creative process (Steyeart, 2007). Entrepreneurial activities are a specific type of organizational activity that involves creative action, innovative exchanges and deal-making (Watson, forthcoming, 2011a). This analytical separation between entrepreneurial activities and other forms of organizational activities (e.g. administrative-managerial) (Gartner et al., 1992; Watson, forthcoming, 2011a) helps to address the question of what entrepreneurial


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activities are, how they emerge and how they contribute to economic and social life (Hoskisson et al., 2011; Lumpkin, 2011). Entrepreneurial activities were defined for this study using a pragmatist-inspired perspective. Pragmatism emphasizes creative action (Joas, 1996) to explain how people adapt to and transform environmental contingencies that disrupt the plausibility of existing knowledge (Talisse and Aikin, 2008). Entrepreneurial activities are one response to change during which people project alternative plausible uses for existing knowledge. Creative action requires people to work at maintaining a reflective equilibrium. This emerges as people evaluate their commitments to existing knowledge against their expectations of whether such commitments are helpful for accomplishing their interests. If, on the basis of experience, existing knowledge is believed to be useful for achieving one’s interests, then equilibrium is maintained. However, as pragmatism also emphasizes that knowledge is fallible, plausibility can be achieved only through taking action. This brings in a reflective or deliberating aspect, during which people anticipate the future consequences of adhering to knowledge (Talisse and Aikin, 2008). Entrepreneurial activities are an instance of creative action because they require people to create alternative plausible uses for existing knowledge, and then commit to actions projected towards an unknowable future (Goodman, 1983). This definition of entrepreneurial activities emphasizes the importance of how opportunity imagination (Lumpkin, 2011) and entrepreneurial beliefs (Felin and Zenger, 2009) are formed from existing sources of knowledge, and then channelled into actions that commit people to bring into existence the future state of an emerging organization (Katz and Gartner, 1988). A pragmatist-inspired definition of entrepreneurial activities is consistent with general definitions of entrepreneurship. Bhide, for example, defined entrepreneurship as an ‘opportunistic adaptation to unexpected events’ (2000: 5) achieved through a high tolerance to ambiguity, and an ability to work with capital constraints and absorb high levels of uncertainty. Similarly, Sarasvathy’s (2001) theory of effectuation emphasized the transformative possibilities of entrepreneurial action, given uncertain futures. Entrepreneurial action is differentiated from other organizational activities because it requires imagination to effectuate new possibilities from extant resources (Sarasvathy, 2001). The projective aspect of entrepreneurial activities is also consistent with theories that explain why a future orientation is vital for overcoming information asymmetries (Cornelissen and Clarke, 2010); conveying visions (Witt, 2007) and committing resources to unknowable (Haynie et al., 2009) and uncertain outcomes (Lumpkin, 2011). In addition, projection is central to Gartner et al.’s definition of how entrepreneurship requires disclosing ‘plausible explanations of current and future equivocal events as non-equivocal interpretations’ in order to persuade others to support the ‘proposed future states of existence’ of a new venture (1992: 47). The pragmatist-inspired definition of entrepreneurial activity is used to explain what is distinct about entrepreneurial activities, while recognizing that they are part of a broader set of organizational activities utilized during venture creation and development (Grandori and Giordani, 2011; Watson, forthcoming, 2011a). The question that this article examines is how occupational boundary work is interrelated with the emergence of entrepreneurial activities defined as projection, legitimacy and commitment to actions designed to bring into existence the future states of an organization.

Connecting entrepreneurial activities and occupation As an organizational activity, entrepreneurial activities are subject to the influence of societywide institutional logics (Watson, forthcoming, 2011a). One such institution is occupation, a social categorization that influences identification (Jenkins, 2008). Occupations are defined as a


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‘collection of tasks and assignments’ (Fine, 1996: 90) or patterns through which particular groups become regularly associated with specific activities (Watson, 2011b). Therefore, occupation mediates (Krause, 1971) between individuals and societal wholes because, as tasks and patterns become institutionalized, they partially shape people’s interests and expectations about which organizational activities will be useful for achieving their aims. People draw upon occupations, along with other social identities such as gender or ethnicity, to give meaning to their lives in relation to others. Occupations are a social boundary (Lamont and Molnar, 2002) stratified through an interoccupational distribution of status. This is based upon the distribution of power that occupational knowledge confers, and/or the authority to command material resources (Zhou, 2005). Occupations are coupled with entrepreneurial activities as follows. Hayek argued that as markets decentralize knowledge into dispersed bits, occupations provide a means for acquiring knowledge about ‘people, of local conditions and special circumstances’ (1945: 522). Such knowledge, different to scientific knowledge, provides a ‘fleeting moment not known to others’ (1945: 522). In order to explain how tacit knowledge is derived from occupations and utilized for entrepreneurial activities, it is necessary to examine whether people make use of the sanctioned knowledge (Brain, 1991) and learning repertoires (Greenfield and Strickon, 1981) of occupational knowledge during venture creation and development. If such knowledge is used, it could be expected to influence the practical judgements (Van Maanen and Barley, 1984) that people make as they draw upon a frame of interpretation derived from occupational knowledge (Brain, 1991). This may influence how ‘people see the world and their capacities to change it’ (Kohn and Schooler, 1969: 662). As people use occupations in their identification, so they construct a selfidentity by drawing upon ‘common definitions and symbols’ (Greenfield and Strickon, 1981: 489) that circulate within an occupation. These definitions and meanings influence how people ‘think through’ past experiences and future expectations (Krause, 1971). This in turn affects their ‘judgment and evaluation of the situation’ by mediating the ‘information and knowledge they have’ (Greenfield and Strickon, 1981: 489). From a pragmatist perspective, an occupational lens (Van Maanen and Barley, 1984) is useful for examining how people evaluate their expectations against existing knowledge and create alternative projected uses for such knowledge. In order to understand how occupations are related to entrepreneurial activities, empirical study is required. This is needed to examine whether the people who engage in entrepreneurial activities value the knowledge provided by an occupation – and if they do, how occupation influences the entrepreneurial activities used during venture creation and development. The relationship between occupations and entrepreneurial activities can be studied as an instance of boundary work. Boundary work refers to the practical everyday activities through which people negotiate social boundaries, such as gender, age, class and occupation (Lamont and Molnar, 2002). In the context of entrepreneurship, the concept of boundaries was used by Down (2006) (Down and Reveley, 2004) to examine how the founders of a small firm made use of spatial and generational boundaries to construct entrepreneurial narratives. Down’s study showed how the temporality of inter-generational conflicts provided a basis for creating a narrative about entrepreneurial activities. Similarly, Watson (2009) showed how, through identity work, the owners of a small family firm drew upon multiple social identities and boundaries to give meaning to their entrepreneurial activities. The concept of boundary work was developed initially to explain why scientists devote considerable time to creating and maintaining symbolic boundaries within fields of science and between science and non-science (Gieryn, 1984). The term ‘occupational boundary work’ is developed here to explain the active negotiations of ‘shared understandings and collective representations’ (Pachuki


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et al., 2007: 334) that occur when people make use of sanctioned occupational knowledge (Van Maanen and Barley, 1984). The consequences of occupational boundary work are both symbolic, as it provides a basis for classifying ‘objects, people, practices and even time and space’ (Lamont and Molnar, 2002: 168), and material, as it enables people and groups to ‘acquire status and monopolize resources’ (2002: 168). Within the context of the cultural industries, engaging in occupational boundary work requires access to and use of reflexive knowledge (Thrift, 2004) about cultural production. This is theorized as aesthetic reflexivity, or the knowledge useful for producing novel symbolic meanings for cultural products (Lash and Urry, 1994), and the industrial reflexivity specific to a subsector, such as film and TV (Caldwell, 2008). The question that this study examined was how people engaged in occupational boundary work to access such knowledge, and whether they utilized it to give meaning to entrepreneurial activities during venture creation and development. In summary, entrepreneurial activities are defined as a type of human activity that requires creative projections and commitments to developing organizations against an uncertain future. As these activities are partially shaped by institutions, the knowledge circulated within an occupation will affect people’s expectations about the plausibility and legitimacy of committing to such knowledge. As an influence on identification, occupations partially shape the practical and everyday boundary work in which people engage. Empirical study is required to gather accounts and examine how such occupational boundary work is interrelated with entrepreneurial activities.

Method Aim of the study The aim of the current study was to develop understanding about how owner-founders of small cultural industries businesses accounted for their experience of creating and developing a venture. The study was conducted as an intrinsic (Stake, 1998) case study of a creative city (Florida, 2002). Within the city, situated in the East Midlands region of the UK, a sample of cultural business owners were recruited. The decision to select multiple owners was theoretical, as cultural production is organized into networks of micro- or small businesses (Davis and Scase, 2000) and project teams clustered into spatial agglomerations (Grabher, 2001). Therefore, the study was bounded geographically and to a single occupational subgroup design. Ethnography was selected as an appropriate methodology in order to produce adjacency (Rabinow, 2008) by getting closer (Brewer, 2000) to participants in naturally occurring settings and everyday contexts (Atkinson, 2001; Hammersley and Atkinson, 1994). Given that one of the aims of ethnography is to examine how people give meaning to their actions within specific contexts, the study was conducted from an interpretative social science perspective. This perspective aims to gather accounts of how people interpret actions and develop explanations of why certain actions are conducted and considered meaningful within a social whole (Lachmann, 1971; Watson, 2011b). In addition, ethnography has been widely employed to study the relationship between occupation and organizational interaction (Beckhy, 2003; Fine, 1996; Greenfield and Strickon, 1981; Sandiford and Seymour, 2007; Van Maanen and Barley, 1984).

Data collection As is typical with ethnography (Brewer, 2000), a range of methods including interviews and participant observation were used to gather accounts during two years of fieldwork. The fieldwork


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was conducted to gain acceptance from the participants in order to study the brute realities of ‘how things work’ when starting and developing a venture (Watson, 2011c) in the cultural industries. The initial phase of the research was conducted by taking various field roles (Gold, 1958) within a local ‘occupational community’ (Salaman, 1974). The field roles (see Appendix 1) included formal positions, such as becoming an assistant project manager in a professional development programme for cultural entrepreneurs, a business coach and a contract researcher, as well as informal roles that arose through improvised trades (Ram, 1999) with owner-founders. This required the present author to offer various services, which included bid writing, supplying commercial projects, making introductions to potential employees and, in several cases, temporarily joining a participant’s firm for an intensive period of project work. Through these field relationships, I was invited to attend numerous design sector events, such as award ceremonies, gallery openings, conferences, talks and trade fairs (see Appendix 1). These were useful for recruitment and conducting informal interviews (Heyl, 2001) with design business owners and others involved in supporting the design occupation. These included design educators, business development services, investors and trade associations (Appendix 2 summarizes the participants and the types of trade that occurred with them).

Sample During the fieldwork, extensive field notes were taken along with semi-structured interviews with the owner-founders of design businesses. The participants were selected in order to gain variation in design specialism and company size. All the businesses were micro (1–10) or small (11–25 employees), which are typical of UK design businesses (Design Council, 2005). All 16 participants were interviewed using the same semi-structured interview questions in order to analyse commonalities in their accounts of venture creation and development. Within the sample, three participants (Mark, Jamie and Abigail) were amenable to more intensive and longitudinal access. These novice entrepreneurs (Westhead and Wright, 1998) exchanged research access in return for various forms of support during the three years. An average of five interviews were conducted with each of these participants during the three years. In addition to the above interactions, many hours were spent researching the design occupation. This primarily involved reading accounts of design in histories, monographs, the trade press and educational materials. I also attended numerous design events. These included academic and trade design conferences, design museum and gallery openings. The purpose was to gain further insight into the reflexive knowledge circulating within the design occupation. Access to such knowledge was partial and limited. Full access would require participation in formal education and extensive work-based socialization. However, the cumulative effect of the above activities was acceptance from which it was possible to observe and discuss how the design occupation and entrepreneurial activities were interrelated.

Data analysis The material gathered from the fieldwork was analysed as follows. Accounts from field notes and transcripts were analysed iteratively (Johnstone, 2007) as the material was written up. The analysis required creating a dialogue between remote contexts (Bakhtin, 1986) that consisted of participants’ accounts, field notes and theoretical explanations of cultural production and entrepreneurship. The analysis was driven by reflexivity (Alvesson and Sköldberg, 2009) towards fieldwork


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experiences, my prior occupational experience of cultural production, and theoretical repertoires that explain cultural production and entrepreneurship. Throughout the study, my previous occupational experience as a cultural producer was drawn upon. Before the study, I gained experience as a freelancer (e.g. music journalist, DJ, recording artist), part-time employee (e.g. website manager for a music festival promotions company) and co-founder of a micro-venture selling original musical compositions (e.g. for TV and film) and a small independent record label. These experiences provided cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1990) that was used to gain some legitimacy with the participants. This experience was vital for increasing the proximity between myself as a business researcher and the participants, as I could display relevant occupational and entrepreneurial experience. This occupational experience became central to my identity work and was epistemologically productive (Coffey, 1999) in the social relations that it helped to create in the field. Social theory provided repertoires (Alvesson and Sköldberg, 2009) that were used to develop explanations of participants accounts of venture creation and development. Sociological theories of cultural production, especially Bourdieu (1996), were especially influential. These provided sensitizing concepts (Silverman, 2000) that framed research activities, such as selecting themes for the semi-structured interview guide, headings in field notes and categories for writing up. Together with the influence of entrepreneurship theory, three initial categories were developed during the initial analysis. These examined the participants’ biographies of and the genesis of their firms, the influence of temporal and spatial forces of cultural production on the venture, and the processes through which cultural production was converted into a commercial product or service. During the writing up the importance of industrial and aesthetic reflexivity was refined into examining why occupational boundary work was so common during everyday interactions. Two examples from the fieldwork help to illustrate how the participants used occupational boundary work to give meaning to entrepreneurial activities. The first instance was an encounter with Clare,1 who invited me to an award ceremony. Having previously won several high-profile awards at national design shows and secured considerable funding for her recycled material product designs, Clare was pleased to be shortlisted for two awards. The first, best female entrepreneur, she won. The second, best sustainable designer, went to another designer. As the winner collected the trophy, Clare poured a large glass of wine and turned to me to explain: Clare: David sustainable! And Sophie…. Grrhhh. Don’t get me wrong, I like both of them and they’re mates, right, but they don’t care about sustainability. Go and ask them where the materials used in their products are sourced. I’ve done my own due diligence on the manufacturers they source from, and they have a terrible record for environmental responsibility. Researcher: So how come they win awards? Clare: It’s greenwashing. Look at the panel of judges. They don’t know what real sustainable design involves. I know how complicated and expensive it is. When I started out a couple of years back, people like David and Sophie would never have been nominated because the judges were more discerning. Now sustainability has become mainstream, which is good in a way, but it means that real sustainable design businesses have competition.2 This extract was typical of how participants discussed their entrepreneurial activities by drawing on meanings specific to the design occupation. In this instance, Clare was drawing on the


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authenticity of her sustainable design to create an occupational boundary to newer entrants whom she considered were not as committed to environmental sustainability. Having met Clare on numerous occasions, it became apparent that her frustrations ran deeper than losing industry awards. Her business plan reached far beyond product design and involved exploiting a patent that she owned for processing recycled materials and reforming European Union recycling regulation. This type of activity was in contrast with the ambitions of her competitors who, in her words, were not real sustainable designers. The significance is that Clare disclosed her entrepreneurial activities by drawing on occupation-specific meanings. Another encounter, showing how ethnography provided instances to observe how occupational boundary work and entrepreneurial activities were interrelated, is taken from field notes of a lunchtime discussion. The premise for the meeting was to discuss creating a new venture between two owner-founders of small design businesses (Mark and Jamie), an investor (Antony) and myself: Jamie: If we’re really serious about setting something up, I suggest the Pentagram model works best for creative agencies. Antony: Jamie, slow down. Remember I work in FMCGs [fast-moving consumer goods], not design. What is a Pentagram? Jamie: Pentagram is a multidisciplinary independent creative agency. Antony: Nope, I’m still none the wiser. Jamie: Basically, there are several individual agencies under the umbrella brand of Pentagram. Antony: So it’s a partnership? Jamie: If you say so. The thing is this, when you’re growing an agency it’s really hard to get others to collaborate with. In Pentagram the partners are competitors, mentors and collaborators all rolled up together. Antony: Presumably there are benefits in terms of economies of scale? Mark: Erm, I guess. But the real benefit is that the quality of creative output benefits by winning more interesting work. Jamie: Mark’s right – the Pentagram model stops you getting isolated in your own little studio world. I totally believe that is why really successful agencies like DR, Intro and so on get trapped into a style. Mark: And when that style falls out of favour, the phone stops ringing and it’s game over. In the above extract the owner-founders of design agencies (Jamie and Mark) gave meaning to a discussion about a potential entrepreneurial venture by drawing on occupational-specific meanings. Throughout the conversation these were very different to the meanings that Antony applied from his experience as an angel investor and business analyst. The significance ascribed to this extract is that it was one of many examples of how participants would frame their entrepreneurial activities through occupational boundary work. This was in contrast to more generic ways of framing the logic of a prospective venture by using more conventional market discourse. These extracts were selected to show how, through ethnographic encounters in a variety of natural contexts, I observed participants using occupational boundary work to give meaning to entrepreneurial actions. Therefore, the importance of the relationship between occupation and entrepreneurship was developed iteratively through a combination of theory, my previous experience and examining transcripts of multiple viewpoints on how the reflexive knowledge from an occupation was used to frame the meaning of entrepreneurial actions. From this, key findings were developed into explanations of how occupation and entrepreneurial activities were interrelated. The following section summarizes these findings.


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Findings Building on the pragmatist-inspired definition of entrepreneurial activities, the material from the ethnography is organized here to examine three instances of how occupational boundary work was related to entrepreneurial activities, as follows. First, the relationship between occupational autonomy and projections. Second, the relationship between occupational centrality and legitimacy. Third, the relationship between occupational resources and building commitment to creating and developing an organization.

Occupational autonomy and projections A pragmatist-inspired definition of entrepreneurial activity seeks to explain how creative action is used to reconfigure the plausibility of existing knowledge through projecting alternative uses. This section examines how occupational boundary work was related to the projective nature of entrepreneurial activities. The relationship became apparent as the participants explained their reasons for starting a business by drawing on previous occupational experience. Many recounted how prior employment was frustrated by the imposition of organizational goals and managerial pressures. Entrepreneurial activities provided creative freedom from being managed as an employee and from being a manager of designers. This search for freedom also extended to a belief that entrepreneurial action meant greater choice over clients and projects. Such meanings were related to a search for intrinsically interesting projects that provided an opportunity to apply autonomous judgement. Table 1 summarizes the instances when occupational autonomy was used to give meaning to entrepreneurial activities. One specific example occurred during an encounter with Mark. After a long day working on his business plan, we began to discuss Stefan Sagmeister, a designer famous for factoring in one year out of every seven years during which he does not accept work from clients, his rationale being that it helps refresh his creativity. After an hour of discussing the merits of ‘doing a Sagmeister’, Mark got up off his Danish designer sofa, walked over to the window ledge of his warehouse studio and explained: I didn’t start Engage to become a salaryman to clients. The last thing I want is to manage a room of Mac monkeys doing rubbish work. Becoming a manager of that work would mean I failed. You’ve got to remember, I’ve worked for agencies that had clients who were happy with some stock photography and a bit of Helvetica. I started Engage to find projects that enable us to experiment and prove design can transform people’s thinking. (Mark)

The search for occupational autonomy (Van Maanen and Barley, 1984) was used frequently to explain how entrepreneurial activities provided the possibility of exercising increased autonomous judgement. As Mark’s account illustrates, starting a venture was a means of gaining greater control over one’s design knowledge through occupational self-control (Brain, 1991). Occupational autonomy offered a means of justifying the mystique (Van Maanen and Barley, 1984) surrounding creative work and its separation from other occupations. Occupational autonomy was used also to define the novelty and innovation of entrepreneurial activities. In design, innovation occurs through creating novel symbolic meanings (Verganti, 2008). The participant accounts suggested how occupational boundary work was used to position the novelty of their venturing which involved projecting a plausible use of design knowledge into an occupational field where fads, fashions and more enduring styles circulated. The novelty of an entrepreneurial projection was set against the temporal forces of what could be considered avantgarde or rear-guard (Bourdieu, 1996) within the occupation at that moment.


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Ventures driven by innovative entrepreneurial activities were encountered when participants reported how they actively ‘pushed’ against the current state of the occupational field. Examples included the plausibility of integrating more environmental sustainability into design (Charles, Clare), the use of digital sensors in mobile content development (Abigail), and selling ‘wayfinding’ into the design of public infrastructure (Mark). These novel projections incurred higher uncertainty and considerable effort to persuade clients of their value. Participants pursuing novel innovations explained how the attraction was being at the forefront of a new design movement. However, the problem was a higher chance of failure against more established forms of design, such as brand communication, graphic and web design. An example of how novel uses of occupational autonomy increased uncertainty was Mark’s focus on wayfinding or graphic navigational systems. His determination to sell wayfinding at the expense of other services contributed to the failure of his business. This was not because he could not convince gatekeepers (e.g. architects) to allocate budget to his wayfinding services, but because an entire multi-billion pound project was cancelled due to political change, and his agency was left with no alternative projects or options. Another novel innovation was projected by Abigail, who wanted to transform a four-person web design agency into a specialized provider of digital installations and mobile phone content. With smartphones not yet released, Abigail’s projection involved using technical knowledge from a local university to create new experiences for mobile devices. This experimental use of design knowledge managed to capture the imagination of R&D departments at large multinational phone corporations, but it did not translate into sales activity. As she explained during a meeting at her favourite teashop: We’ve always been pushing internet technologies, but I got increasingly tired competing against new agencies that basically sold overpriced templates of websites to clients that didn’t know any better. So we’ve been working with universities and tech companies to find new ways of using mobile phones that I think are the future of the internet. We’re definitely struggling to find clients, but we’re gaining recognition and awards for our work. Shame it doesn’t cover the bills – at least not yet. (Abigail)

Abigail’s quote encapsulates a projection that radically redirected her firm: the business did not survive the change intact. However, as the smartphone and mobile apps market later developed, Abigail and her former co-founder translated their occupational knowledge into a new venture focused on mobile content development. The significance is that the projections of what might be plausible for an entrepreneurial venture were framed by the desire to apply occupational autonomy. This suggests that the creative and projective aspect of entrepreneurial activities is framed partially by occupational autonomy and what is considered novel within an occupational field at a particular moment.

Occupational centrality and legitimacy In addition to the projective aspects of entrepreneurial activities, a pragmatist inspired definition seeks to explain how commitment to a venture is built with stakeholders (Watson, forthcoming, 2011a). This section examines how occupational centrality was used in symbolic displays aimed at gaining legitimacy. Credibility and certification were two ways in which participants sought to legitimize the plausibility of their entrepreneurial projections. Credibility was displayed through listing instances when a venture had been named alongside more established agencies. In design, as in cultural sectors such as advertising (Moeran, 2006) and architecture (Blau, 1987), contracts are won typically


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through pitches in which agencies respond to a client’s brief. The agencies pitching are often made public: this means that people interested in the design occupation develop a map of which agencies are competing for major contracts. Being shortlisted is a marker used to legitimate a venture through occupational benchmarking, and this form of credibility contest assigns kudos according to a spatial hierarchy. Hence, competing against local agencies for contracts ranks lower than being shortlisted against agencies with national or global reputations. Jason, whom I met on a train as he returned from a trip to France, explained the importance of shortlisting: One of the biggest props [meaning: ‘proper respect’] we’ve had was being shortlisted against Intro and DR. They’re my idols, so to be shortlisted from hundreds of agencies was amazing. We didn’t win that contract, but it signalled we’d arrived and made us determined to win the next competition, which we did. That’s how we got invited to display our work at an expo in Paris alongside DR, Intro, Black Convoy. (Jason)

Certifications were more formal contests, such as awards organized by media and trade organizations. These provided a public contest that could legitimate the creative output of an agency. Certifications provided a symbolic marker to gain legitimacy with customers, competitors and investors; it also provided a basis for attracting and motivating employees. During fieldwork observations it was clear that certificates provided key visual symbols (Clarke, 2011) used strategically (Suchman, 1995) to persuade visitors to an agency’s studio of its legitimacy. I observed the awards displayed in trophy cabinets and more conventionally on walls in meeting rooms. In one instance a participant had created a bespoke library to display design journals mixed in with his own monographs, media coverage and trade awards. Other means of building commitment to a venture through occupational centrality involved associational, expert and location power. Displays of associational power (Zhou, 2005) were achieved through connections to trade associations and universities: these provided channels to institutional guardians of design knowledge engaged in conferring and extending the status of an occupation’s jurisdiction. Experts also provided a similar level of status, typically through mentor– mentee arrangements. Expert connections provided instant occupational centrality and access to the information valuable for opportunities (Ozgen and Barion, 2007). During the study, two participants (Jamie and Mark) invited me to talks given by their mentors. Both individuals were design celebrities and provided their mentees with access to more cosmopolitan (Salaman, 1974) occupational networks, as well as advice on how to develop their businesses. Location was used to display occupational centrality, as a physical presence in a place recognized for its creative milieu (Florida, 2002) helped to signal legitimacy to competitors, potential recruits and customers. Given the concentration of cultural industries in London, many participants explained how they had set up a second ‘office’ in the city’s creative clusters, such as Clerkenwell and Soho. Office locations served a symbolic role when they were coupled with occupational boundary work (e.g. spatial status). After a day shooting footage of creative workspaces for a film project, I unexpectedly bumped into Jamie and Charlotte at a pub frequented by local creatives based in Clerkenwell: Researcher: Hello, what are you doing here? Jason: I was gonna ask the same thing. Bit of a long way from home, aren’t you? Researcher: Yeah, well I’m doing some freelance for Loud. Jamie: Oh right. Well, we’ve just opened shop next to them on St John Street. I think they were shocked when this provincial agency turned up uninvited on their turf.


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Charlotte: We’ve only been open a couple of weeks and it’s great for meetings with clients because all the main ones are based here. Jason: True story – and its great for retaining star designers who naturally gravitate down here. I guess the buzz in places like this makes you see why. Others, such as Steve, were less concerned about creative milieu and took a more instrumental approach to owning a London office: Let me tell you about the London office. It’s one of the best moves we made. It’s a tiny serviced office space in Soho we rarely visit, but it gives us a London telephone number and postal address. The phone directs to the office up here and we get someone with a London accent to answer it. It’s amazing how much work we’ve got that way. It’s all part of the bullshit and spin this game is based on. (Steve)

The significance attached to the above examples and those listed in Table 1 is that occupational centrality was used frequently to display legitimacy and build commitment to a venture, whether through credibility contests, certification or connections to associations, location and experts.

Occupational resources and commitment Developing ventures requires more than displaying legitimacy. A pragmatist-inspired definition also seeks to explain how people build commitment to the plausibility of alternative uses of knowledge. Occupational boundary work was central as it provided the participants with a means for identifying, acquiring and developing the resources required for their ventures. In design, as in other knowledge-intensive sectors, knowledge either of people or in the form of intellectual property is the central resource. Therefore, a key entrepreneurial activity was building commitment to using communal (Felin et al., 2009) sources of occupational knowledge to develop an organization. Occupational boundary work was useful for understanding this process as it explained the challenge that owner-founders recounted in demonstrating how their ventures could promise occupational autonomy, while also achieving organizational goals (Van Maanen and Barley, 1984) that offered rewards to those committing to them. Project selection, specifically supplying ‘interesting’ projects, was vital for developing ventures. If successful, project selection could attract, motivate and retain key design talent. If unsuccessful, the reverse was observed through the churn of highly mobile design talent. Here the serendipity (Hammersley and Atkinson, 1994) reported in ethnography was vital, as opportunities emerged to contrast the owner-founder’s accounts with those of former employees who had subsequently founded their own businesses. There were two instances of this during the study, reported in the extracts below. The first quote was part of an interview with Steve, who launched into an unprompted confessional tale about a temporary loss of judgement. The second extract is from Liz who I met at Second Wednesday, a networking event for information and communication technology (ICT) and digital entrepreneurs. Having worked for Steve for seven years, Liz was pitching her new venture and found time to explain her reasons for resigning: I hold my hands up. I went chasing the dollar and taking any project going. I had a plan to become the biggest agency in the region. We made it to second, but not before I lost the trust of the creative team. This impacted on the quality of our creative output, and we lost clients and staff. I’ve spent the last year repairing the damage. (Steve)


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I worked for Steve after graduating and became the lead project manager. I was pushing for a share of the business but got pissed off with overselling boring projects to the designers. One day I got in and Steve was waxing on about this great new project that sounded cool. Then I saw it was a quick and dirty rebrand for a company that assembled sheds. I did it, but the next week I had to go and motivate the designers over a brochure for a spanner manufacturer. That’s when I lost it. (Liz)

These extracts confirmed how project selection was shaped by occupational boundary work. Developing a business required balancing opportunities for employees to articulate their occupational autonomy with the need to achieve organizational goals. This was something that other participants such as Jason were acutely aware of: You can’t accept all income is good. The work we take on affects everyone, not just the bottom line. Being selective hurt in the early years but it’s paying back, as we don’t have the same problems other agencies have. That’s why we’ve always said that whether you’re a senior designer or a student intern, Engage is the best platform for developing your portfolio. (Jason)

While venture development was sought primarily through building internal knowledge capabilities, external knowledge through acquisition and partnerships was another means of demonstrating success. Occupational boundary work influenced such activities by shaping the types of external knowledge that were considered valuable. Participants that had engaged in inter-organizational partnerships or acquisition (Jason, Steve and Tim) reported that the key value of these activities was to acquire technical expertise to extend their firm’s services. For Jason, whose firm specialized in print communication, digital branding and web styling were two possible extensions. However, based on his evaluation of the occupation, he projected that although web design was popular, it would be commoditized. Jason partnered with web agencies rather than developed digital capabilities in-house: this freed him up to continue investing in his core business and seeking higher value brand design work. The reason for acquisition was motivated by a similar occupational logic. In two instances, acquisitions were projected as a means of developing a firm’s offering by acquiring expert technical knowledge. Demonstrating the value of such investments was fundamental to convincing others of the plausibility of the owner-founders’ projections. Acquisitions increased uncertainty and raised the possibility that a founder’s judgement could be proved fallible – this was reflected in Tim and Steve’s accounts. Tim’s account of acquisition showed that it had had a similar impact as project selection. He was the only participant with prior entrepreneurial experience, having been a co-founder of a very early e-learning business spun out from a university in the mid-1990s. Building on this success he founded a web design business that had completed groundbreaking digital content integration between digital TV and web interfaces. However, as competition in the digital media space grew, Tim moved more into e-commerce through acquisition: When the dot com bubble crashed we brought one of our clients (an e-commerce specialist). The plan was to strip out the code and develop e-commerce to supplement our successful interactive web design business. I thought that would be a good way to minimize the effects of competition we were facing from all these aggressive London digital agencies. Five years on it has taken multiple personnel changes and restructuring to figure out how we could balance the two services, and I still don’t think I’ve got it right. (Tim)

As with the above example of Steve, I also interviewed one of Tim’s former employees, Laura (see Table 1), who confirmed that Tim’s acquisition was the reason for her resignation. She pointed out


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how the move to e-commerce was ‘dull’ and inhibited her interest in digital design. The key suggestion is that entrepreneurial activities designed to build commitment to developing ventures are influenced by occupational boundary work that frames expectations. The experienced ownerfounders in the sample clearly struggled with the challenge of developing commitment to their ventures against the need to supply interesting projects that enabled employees to exercise occupational autonomy. Table 1. Occupational boundary work and entrepreneurial activities Occupational boundary work

Entrepreneurial activities

Examples

Occupational autonomy The pursuit of opportunities to exercise occupational specific knowledge Example actions: Autonomous judgement Novelty

Projections Creating innovative reconfigurations for the plausible use of occupational knowledge

Occupational centrality Utilizing occupational positioning to gain legitimacy via: Certification and credibility Associational, expert and locative power

Building legitimacy Reducing uncertainty and equivocal meanings through symbolic displays

‘I want to create new things, that’s the artistic ideal, and to be recognized for my style. After working in design studios, I realized I could only achieve this by becoming more entrepreneurial.’ (Rob) ‘I started up for a few reasons. My old boss for one. She said, “You’ll never make it as a writer,’ and I disagreed. So I set up my tone-of-voice agency partly out of frustration with her. I also have greater control over my clients. If I fall out with one over the direction of a project I can terminate it and find another client.’ (Jamie) ‘You never know when the next big shift is going to happen. Often it’s really left-ofcentre projects that save your bacon. Its happened to me three times now, so I could pre-empt the decline in public spending on cultural infrastructures and shift the agency into sustainable design.’ (Charles) ‘As you know, we’ve spent the best part of the last two years persuading architects of the value of wayfinding in public buildings. We’re now written into their project plans and a small percentage of their fees has been allocated to wayfinding.’ (Mark) ‘A few years back we couldn’t even get shortlisted. Then we went head to head with Tadao Ando on a memorial garden project. Since then we’ve been added to a pre-shortlist list, so we don’t have to compete with quite so many agencies.’ (Catherine) ‘I never wanted to compete against local agencies. I don’t waste my time with local stuff. This agency has always been a national player in my mind, and that’s why we’re successful.’ (Steve)


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Greenman Table 1. (Continued) Occupational boundary work

Occupational resources The selection, and use of communal occupational knowledge and industrial reflexivity through: recruitment, project selection, rewards partnerships and acquisitions

Entrepreneurial activities

Commitment-building Channelling the use of communal occupational resources to build commitment to the plausibility of a venture

Examples ‘I met Wally (Olins) through the private members group of writers I helped to found. He offered to mentor me on the spot and we’ve talked, traded emails and he invited me to a dinner party where I met Alan Fletcher and some Pentagram partners. It’s been key to gaining the inside track on branding and communication.’ (Jamie) ‘I pay for a hotdesk in London mainly because it gives me a springboard into networks. But it has also provided access to pitches for projects that are closed off to non-London agencies.’ (Laura) ‘Tim’s a great guy and I totally respect what he’s built up, but he never really got the idea of giving over creative control for projects. Ultimately, after five years, I left because I didn’t agree with driving the company away from interactive content development into mundane e-commerce and basic order fulfilment.’ (Shelly) ‘When we acquired Web-bubble we made two errors. First, I picked the wrong dot com company, and second, I picked the wrong person to manage it. That cost me financially, but also it lost me respect from peers and staff.’ (Steve)

Discussion and conclusion This study used an occupational lens to develop the concept of occupational boundary work in order to contribute to theories explaining how entrepreneurial activities emerge and shape venture creation and development. The following section will discuss the findings and contribution in more detail. As others have argued, entrepreneurial activities should be analytically separated from other forms of organizational activities (Gartner et al., 1992; Steyaert, 2007; Watson forthcoming, 2011a). This study used the concept of occupational boundary work to show how entrepreneurial activities are enabled and constrained by institutional forces. Therefore, occupational boundary work was an influence on how people accounted for the projective aspect of entrepreneurial activity. Occupations provide a frame (Fine, 1996), or set of expectations, that influenced how participants evaluated knowledge and the types of alternative projections they conceived of for ventures. Accordingly, the ability to create alternative plausible uses for


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knowledge is shaped partially by occupations. The influence of occupational autonomy (Van Maanen and Barley, 1984) was especially relevant for explaining how the knowledge circulating within an occupation partially shapes the formation of entrepreneurial beliefs and values (Felin and Zenger, 2009), visions (Witt, 2007) and imagination (Leiblein, 2007). As occupations provide a basis for categorization and social identification, so the pursuit of occupational autonomy and occupational control (Brain, 1991) influences self-identification. The frames provided by occupations provide reasons for engaging in entrepreneurial activities and influence the types of opportunities that people project for venture creation and development. Occupational boundary work also affected the degree of novelty that people ascribed to their projected ventures. Innovation and novelty were accounted for through occupational positioning. Again, the frame of reference (Greenfield and Strickon, 1981) provided by occupations influenced the intensity and types of innovative organizations that people sought to develop. This finding echoes Hayek’s (1945) theory, that occupations are central for providing access to knowledge useful for overcoming asymmetries. A counterpoint is the argument that occupations also may constrain novelty, for example through homophilous affiliation in entrepreneurial groups (Ruef, 2010). Further examination may help to explain how occupations enable or constrain innovation. The current study simply points to the relationship between entrepreneurial projections and positioning within an occupational field. This contribution could be developed further, for example by examining the reasons why some owner-founders create novel projections for occupational knowledge while others choose to replicate dominant uses of occupational knowledge. This could be extended to examine whether the degree of occupational novelty in a projected venture is related to organizational performance. The second contribution from using the concept of occupational boundary work is to theories of organizational legitimacy. The present study found that occupational centrality (Van Maanen and Barley, 1984) was used frequently to legitimize entrepreneurial activities. During the fieldwork the participants engaged in occupation-specific displays, such as the use of awards, connections to luminaries, professional associations and the kudos of a location. These displays showed how occupation is used to signal legitimacy to others through credibility contests (Rao, 1994) and visual symbols (Clarke, 2011). The occupational lens helps to contribute to theories of legitimacy by showing how occupation provides both institutional and strategic legitimacy (Aldrich and Fiol, 1995; Suchman, 1995). What occupations offer to new and developing ventures is cultural membership (Lamont and Molnar, 2002) through occupational centrality. These were used to gain proximity to individuals (e.g. mentors) and organizations (e.g. professional associations, universities) that could help to display legitimacy. Occupational boundary work has relevance for developing theory about the activities people engage in to legitimize their ventures and overcome liabilities of newness and scale. Since occupational boundary work was used to gain both institutional and strategic legitimacy (Suchman, 1995), further research could examine how occupations are used to gain different forms of legitimacy, which liabilities they help to overcome, and whether occupations are utilized at different stages of firm creation and development. In addition, occupational boundary work was useful for explaining how people develop commitment – a vital part of resource acquisition and developing entrepreneurial capabilities. Occupational knowledge influenced the type of resources that the participants expected to be valuable and the ways in which they sought to acquire and use them. In the cultural sector, but also more broadly (Grandori and Giordani, 2011), project selection is key for developing ventures: in this study it was central to attracting employees by providing opportunities for


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occupational autonomy. This suggests that the occupational boundary work of owner-founders is central to balancing opportunities to develop reflexive knowledge of a sector, in this case aesthetic (Caldwell, 2008; Lash and Urry, 1994; Thrift, 2004), with judgement over how to exploit occupational knowledge. This finding has relevance for explaining how entrepreneurial activities contribute to organizational development. As ventures emerge, they become embedded within institutional fields that shape working relationships and control in small firms (Edwards et al., 2006). Therefore, the interrelationship between the occupational boundary work of founders and employees presents a space within which to examine how entrepreneurial capabilities (Kor et al., 2008) are developed from communal knowledge (Felin et al., 2009). The suggestion is that a key under-examined entrepreneurial activity is how occupations affect the activities that owner-founders use to build commitment within their ventures. Some may encourage occupational autonomy, while others focus on organizational control (Van Maanen and Barley, 1984). Although focused on one subsector of the cultural industries, this finding suggests that occupational boundary work may be of central importance to the development of organizations in general.

Limitations of the study The current study has a number of limitations. First, bounding the study within a single location was necessary to examine the spatial forces believed to be vital to creativity (Florida, 2002), and cultural production (Grabher, 2001). While spatial forces were significant, this limited the range of cultural businesses that could be sampled. Although a mix of firm size and age were present in the chosen city, a larger urban area would have been beneficial, especially for including mediumsized firms. Second, there was a lack of sampling and selection control based on former business ownership experience. Including heterogeneity of ownership experience, for example including habitual and serial entrepreneurs (Westhead and Wright, 1998), would have been useful for developing an understanding about how occupation and business ownership experience are interrelated. Third, the decision to examine one subsector of the cultural industries prevented examining adjacent subsectors. Such an extension would be relatively uncomplicated and could be helpful for examining whether differences in occupational status (Zhou, 2005) between cultural subsectors have an impact on entrepreneurial activities. These limitations were consequences of the research design rather than weaknesses in the methodology. As others have demonstrated, the benefit of conducting ethnography is to develop analytical generalizations (Clarke, 2011). In this study, this meant moving away from studying occupation in terms of employment status and utilizing a reflexive methodology (Alvesson and Sköldberg, 2009) and pragmatist-inspired definition of entrepreneurial activity to examine how occupational boundary work is utilized during the creative process (Steyaert, 2007) of venture creation and development. This article has developed the concept of occupational boundary work to explain how institutional forces enable and constrain entrepreneurial activities. Applying an occupational lens provided insights into how people’s identification and expectations shaped the entrepreneurial activities that they engaged in to create and develop an organization. Occupations are central to the distribution of knowledge (Hayek, 1945), status (Zhou, 2005) and to the social organization of work and organization (Fine, 1996; Krause, 1971; Salaman, 1974). However, the importance of occupations has been obscured in enterprise research. Future research can redress this by examining how occupational boundary work and entrepreneurial activities are interrelated.


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Occupational boundary work is a concept useful for multi-level analyses of entrepreneurial activities. This article has examined how occupational boundary work, through identification, affects activities including projection, legitimacy and commitment. The present study of occupational boundary work also contributes to a more general understanding of how communal forms of knowledge, such as those institutionalized in occupations, are related to entrepreneurial activities. The article has drawn attention to one form of reflexive knowledge, that of design, but highlights the more general role that occupations play in developing ventures in knowledge-intensive economies (Felin et al., 2009; Powell and Snellman, 2004). This has relevance for those engaging in entrepreneurial activities and those supporting such action. It suggests that the enduring institutionalization of occupations is critical for enmeshing communal knowledge with individual entrepreneurial activities. This article has demonstrated how occupational boundary work can be examined to address how, through entrepreneurial activities, people acquire and transform knowledge derived from occupations to project novel ventures capable of wealth creation.

Appendix 1. Field roles and activities Role

Activities

Relevance

Assistant project manager – ‘Creative Interactions’ ‘The Media Centre’ (cinema café and bar)

18-month part-time role organizing professional development courses for 140 cultural entrepreneurs

Business coaching sponsored by the Arts Council England Researcher for the Prince’s Trust Creative Industries

Business coaching

Legitimate presence in a key site of cultural production and networking in city centre Ability to conduct informal interviews and recruit participants Working closely on business plans and proposals with participants (Abigail, Jamie, Mark) Recruiting early stage businesses; attending award ceremonies and industry events Formed a project team including designers (Mark, Rachel) to create a film and map Discussions and contact with lecturers who provided access to local design agencies Access to debates about the future of design education and sector

Freelancer Design education

Conference, symposium, exhibition, industry networking and festival attendee

Commissioned to survey and interview creative industry start-ups Created a business (sole trader) to conduct ethnographic futures research Presenter at a Design Research Society conference. Participant in multiple Design Council events Commissioned to interview lecturers to discuss the role of entrepreneurship in art and design education Visiting trade events within the focal city, nationally and internationally either alone or with participants

Ability to observe industrial reflexivity in action as participants or other designers discussed the past, present and future of their occupation


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Greenman Appendix 2. Participants and depth of ethnographic encounters Participant/firm

Occupational sub-specialism

Firm details

Ethnographic encounters

Mark

Visual communication and wayfinding studio

3-person agency

Jamie

Tone of voice consultant, later tone of voice agency

2 full-time and 15 freelance writers

Abigail

Web design, digital art and mobile gaming studio

4 full-time plus network of part-time and freelancer technical developers

Rob

Digital animation studio

Steve

Brand communications agency Web and digital design studio

2 employees plus a network of agents worldwide 15-25 employees, two offices 20 employees

Multiple formal and informal interviews; business mentoring and codevelopment of commercial design product; attending design-related events together Multiple formal and informal interviews; attending design-related events together Multiple formal and informal interviews; attending design-related events together Business coaching Multiple formal interviews and attending design related events together Multiple formal interviews

Tim Jason

Visual communications studio

15 employees

Clare

Glass design studio

4 employees

Charles

Interior design studio

12 employees

Catherine

Landscape design

4 employees

Greg Antony

Digital animation studio Web design and games studio Design project management Brand communications Web design agency Print only graphic design studio

2 employees 2 employees

Formal interview; attending design related events together Multiple formal interviews; attending design-related events together Formal interview and attending design-related events together Formal interview and attending design-related events together Formal interview and attending design-related events together Formal interview Formal interview

2 employees

Formal interview

2 employees 2 employees 3 employees

Formal interview Formal interview Formal interview

Liz Laura Shelly Paul


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Funding This research was supported by Economic Social Research Council studentship PTA-030-2004-00593.

Notes 1. The names of the participants in the study and their organizations have been pseudonymised in order to protect their anonymity. 2. This extract combines elements from multiple ethnographic encounters. As with other quotes, some of the details about events, competitions, organizations, locations and persons have been combined during the writing-up process. However, the meanings that participants drew upon in their accounts remain unchanged.

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