Not all Entrepreneurship Is Created Equal: Theorising Entrepreneurial Disadvantage through Social Positionality

Published date01 September 2020
AuthorAngela Martinez Dy
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12390
Date01 September 2020
Not all Entrepreneurship Is Created Equal:
Theorising Entrepreneurial Disadvantage
through Social Positionality
ANGELA MARTINEZ DY
Loughborough University London
The phenomenon of entrepreneurship has historically been viewed as an agential and meritocratic activity,
wherein actors can creatively mobilise resources to overcome disadvantaged social positions. However, recent
literature highlights entrepreneurships socially embedded, processual nature, suggesting that enduring positions
in social hierarchies may be more relevant to opportunitypursuit than previously envisioned. This conceptualpaper
proposes and builds upon the notions of intersectionality and positionality to more fully theorise disadvantage in
entrepreneurial activity. Underpinned by philosophical realism, it makes an ontological argument about the nature
of entrepreneurial advantage and disadvantage, offering a reconceptualisation of its relationship to agency and
resources. The paper thus illuminates significant structural aspects of entrepreneurship that are currently under-
theorised, and without which the picture of entrepreneurial disadvantage is incomplete.
Keywords: Agency; entrepreneurship; disadvantage; positionality; resources; ontology
Introduction
The relationship between entrepreneurship and
disadvantage is a theoretically and politically contested
area (Acs and Kallas, 2007) that crosses disciplinary
boundaries, as scholars critically examine how
entrepreneurship may or may not enhance the lives of
disadvantaged people (Friedman, 1986; Teasdale, 2010;
Parker Harris et al., 2014). In business and management
studies specifically,entrepreneurship tendsto be portrayed
unproblematically,as a macro-economic driver and means
to personal empowerment and economic self-dependency
(Rindova et al., 2009; Bruton et al., 2013) with few
exceptions (Baumol, 1996; Acs, 2006; Calás et al.,
2009). Its perceived potential to enable economic
transformation and the overcoming of social and
economic inequality is underpinned by the implicit
assumption that it is, first and foremost, an agential and
meritocratic activity (Blundel, 2007; Mole and Mole,
2010; Ahl and Marlow, 2012).It is therefore expected that
disadvantaged people can and do succeed in enterprise
activity through hard work andingenuity, progressinglike
a Horatio Alger character from rags to riches(Ogbor,
2000; Verduijn and Essers, 2013).
A simplistic notion of disadvantage, however, belies
deep complexity, with dimensions usually explored in
silos rather than in combination (Carter et al., 2015). As
such, disparate literature streams exist on various aspects
of entrepreneurial disadvantage, related to, for example:
income and social class (Anderson and Miller, 2003;
Acs and Kallas, 2007), gender (Ahl and Marlow, 2012;
Marlow and Swail, 2014), minority ethnicity (Ram and
Jones, 2009); disability (Pavey, 2006; Maritz and
Laferriere, 2016); age (Mallett and Wapshott, 2015),
geography (Jack and Anderson, 2002; Robinson et al.,
2004; Faggio and Silva, 2014), migrant (Sepulveda
et al., 2011; Forson, 2013;Clark et al., 2017) and refugee
status (Al-Dajani and Marlow, 2013; Bizri, 2017;
Sandberg et al., 2018).While some scholars acknowledge
concurrent sources of disadvantage, such as low income
and rural geography (Thompson Jackson, 2009), the
field appears to lack an overarching explicit ontology
of entrepreneur ial advantage and disad vantage. To
this end, the purpose of this paper is to introduce the
notion of social positionality (Anthias, 2008; Villares-
Varela, 2018).
Entrepreneurships relationship to disadvantage begins
with its embeddedness in the social world (Jack and
Anderson, 2002; Anderson and Miller, 2003; Ruef,
2009), undertaken by diverse agents interacting with a
Correspondence: AngelaMartinez Dy, Loughborough UniversityLondon.
The BroadcastCentre, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, LondonE15 2GZ
UK. E-mail: a.dy@lboro.ac.uk
European Management Review, Vol. 17, 687699, (2020)
DOI: 10.1111/emre.12390
©2020 European Academy of Management

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