From despair to somewhere: activating students in a distance learning environment

Student engagement in part-time and distance learning is critical in terms of retention and progression. But ideas about engagement often focus on academic priorities and on students who collude with the concept of being “active” learners. To establish a virtual community called Student Connections the faculty of Social Sciences at The Open University held a one week online conference where students and academics presented their ideas. Supported by two audio downloads, a drama “This Student Life” and a news magazine “The Podmag”, students were encouraged to attend online ‘Activate sessions’ where they became part of a community and worked on collaborative extracurricular projects that were presented at the Student Connections conference. In reviewing the process of engagement it is proposed that there were four levels; ‘super-engaged’ ‘critically-engaged’, ‘passively-engaged’ and ‘none-engaged’. This paper includes a discussion about the importance of these groups in establishing a community and makes suggestions for further research into student engagement

Becoming entrepreneurial: gaining legitimacy in the nascent phase

Purpose - The purpose of the article is to examine how legitimacy as ‘an entrepreneur’ is gained in relation to others during the nascent phase. Design/methodology/approach – Two firm creating teams are studied over a 12 month incubation period. Data collected through participant observation, documentation and interviews is emploted as narratives in order to explore how nascent entrepreneurs gain legitimacy through social interaction. Positioning theory is used to explore how negotiated rights and duties are employed towards legitimacy gaining strategies. Findings – Conforming, selecting and manipulating strategies are used to gain legitimacy during a process of firm creation through interactive dialogue with key stakeholders (role-set). Positioning facilitates a process of negotiated rights and duties that helps to define the role of 'entrepreneur' to which the nascent entrepreneurs aspire. Research limitations/implications - The study is bounded to a specific contextual setting and thus initial findings would benefit from further investigation in comparable and control settings. Findings illustrate the ways in which nascent entrepreneurs employ legitimacy gaining strategies through interaction with key stakeholders, an area of research not well understood. This contributes to an understanding of how entrepreneurial identity is developed. Practical implications - Designed firm creation environments can facilitate interaction with key stakeholders and support positioning of nascent entrepreneurs as they attempt to gain legitimacy in the role of 'entrepreneur', while creating a new firm. Legitimacy gaining strategies can strengthen entrepreneurial identity development, which can be applied to multiple entrepreneurial processes. Originality/value - The article accesses individuals in the process of becoming entrepreneurs, a phenomenon most often studied in hindsight. Emphasis on stakeholder interaction as contributing to entrepreneurial development is also understudied. Legitimacy gaining strategies are explored through narratives using positioning theory, an approach which has been discussed conceptually but not readily applied empirically

Facilitating entrepreneurial behavior development through learning

Emphasis on developing new entrepreneurs is marked by the continued growth of entrepreneurial education programs (Finkle & Deeds, 2001; Katz, 2003; McMullan & Long, 1987; Solomon, 2007). While learning may be the dynamic process which enables entrepreneurial behavior to be enacted (Rae & Carswell, 2001), it is complex (Nicolini & Mesnar, 1995), and programs can have different objectives, methods and associated results (Kickul & Fayolle, 2007), with not all leading to the development of individuals capable of acting entrepreneurially. A review of entrepreneurship education literature (Mwasalwiba, 2010) draws distinctions between education conducted for, about, in or through entrepreneurship. Many scholars agree that entrepreneurial education has to have an experiential learning perspective together with interactive pedagogy in order to enhance learning and innovative capacity (Barrett & Peterson, 2000; Collins, Smith, & Hannon, 2006; Hjorth & Johannisson, 2007; Honig, 2004; Johannisson, Landstrom, & Rosenberg, 1998; Vinton & Alcock, 2004; Yballe & O'Connor, 2000). I propose there is a potential to change or develop entrepreneurial behavior through learning building upon learning through social interaction. Based on a review of learning concepts, I argue that ‘learning by doing’ combined with mentoring processes can facilitate a decision cycle for testing hypotheses, providing feedback through physical engagement, and through reaction from a surrounding role-set. I describe this as learning through interaction. Interaction with a set of key stakeholders, called a role-set, facilitates “generative learning” (Barrett & Peterson, 2000; Gibb, 1997) providing insights into potential future action, including abilities to see possibilities beyond problem barriers. Learning through interaction involves experiential learning including reflection-in-action (Schön, 1984) and generative learning based upon cycles of hypothesis testing and feedback between the nascent entrepreneur and her role-set

Team Conflict contributing to Entrepreneurial Learning: understanding conflict as positive within an Effectual Problem Space

The impact of team conflict seems to depend upon context. Entrepreneurship literature suggests that learning from diverse perspectives in teams can contribute to entrepreneurial action (Harper 2008; West III 2007; Williams Middleton 2010), while management literature has shown that conflict in teams negatively affects creativity (Jehn et al. 2010). Recent research streams suggest that entrepreneurial learning might be better understood by applying an effectual logic perspective, instead of causal logic (Sarasvathy and Venkataraman 2011). This causes us to question whether conflict is experienced similarly in entrepreneurial versus managerial teams. We suggest negative consequences of team conflict found in management literature may be due to the causal logic underlying this literature, and thus not readily applicable to entrepreneurial learning. Through exploring relationships between team work, conflict in teams and effectuation, we propose that positive learning outcomes can emerge from experience of team conflict within an effectual and uncertain problem space

Strategies for creating new venture legitimacy

New ventures, being heavily subjected to liabilities of newness, are seen to engage in legitimacy strategies to overcome these liabilities. Building on an adapted theoretical framework of organizational legitimacy, self-reported weekly diaries of twelve entrepreneurs were analysed to identify strategies used by new ventures to create legitimacy. New ventures appear to prefer pragmatically related strategies over moral and cognitive ones, and adopt malleability with respect to moral strategies. The novelty of the venture technology increases the focus on conformity strategies, whereas more established technologies use manipulative strategies to gain legitimacy. New ventures also appear to engage strongly in moral selection strategies in terms of goal formulation

The relatable entrepreneur: Combating stereotypes in entrepreneurship education

Despite an estimated 582 million entrepreneurs globally, stereotypes plague the social cognitive concept of ‘the entrepreneur’, shaping assumptions of what entrepreneurship is while being far from representative of possible entrepreneurial identities. ‘Heroic’ stereotypes of entrepreneurs (e.g., Steve Jobs or Elon Musk) stemming from the popular media shape the assumptions of students entering entrepreneurship classrooms. These stereotypes are strong and limiting, framing entrepreneurship as attainable only through exceptional skill and talent, and are often characterized by exclusively masculine qualities. Involving identity work in entrepreneurship education can expose the limitations that stereotypes impose on students aspiring to be entrepreneurs and introduce more heterogeneity. The use of narrative cases allows educators to facilitate a threefold approach: (1) raising awareness of stereotypes, (2) creating a structure for more realistic examples and socialization through narrative comparisons and (3) teaching students the basics of identity management for sustaining their entrepreneurial careers. The approach encourages direct conversations about what is – and who can become – an entrepreneur and reveals the limiting beliefs that students may bring with them into the classroom. Such discussion informs the educator on how to foster students’ entrepreneurial identity and empower their identity management

Entrepreneurial Prototypes: Identity Construction in Entrepreneurship Education

Questions we care aboutThere are an estimated 582 million entrepreneurs globally. Despite this, popular literature and social media still focus on a narrow set of stereotypes. Entrepreneurial stereotypes plague the educational environment, as they set preconceptions of what entrepreneurship is, but they are far from representative of the early-stage of venturing, or the broad spectrum of entrepreneurial careers accounted for globally. Entrepreneurial prototypes embody attributes that characterize entrepreneurs “and distinguish them from other groups, including beliefs, attitudes, feelings, and behaviors” used to establish provisional selves when aiming to adopt a new professional role. Entrepreneurial prototypes can serve to provide identity comparisons between an actual self and a possible (future) entrepreneurial self. When addressing preconceptions, prototypes which include counter-stereotypical models are necessary to highlight the breadth of how entrepreneurs are understood. But, one may be challenged to identify such examples, and legitimize them relative to the strongly anchored ‘heroes’. Therefore, the question we care about is: What is the utility and what is the risk in presenting entrepreneurial prototypes in entrepreneurship education? ApproachThis paper builds upon narratives from individuals who have recently transitioned into an entrepreneurial role in the last 3.5yrs, defined as ‘early-stage entrepreneurs’. The study employed non-representative, purposeful, criterion sampling. Participants were recruited through relevant professional context/networks. Confirmed participants completed an online questionnaire and 60 minute phone interview. Interviews were recorded and transcribed. Selected participants were coded for prototyping themes established from the literature. ResultsThe participants studied sought out prototypes to help guide their identity development and practice in their entrepreneurial journey. Typical venues for such prototypes included stories of entrepreneurs as depicted via podcasts, TV shows or in person. Participants were disappointed by or resistant to stories available, as these highlighted high-profile success cases. Rather, participants sought stories of entrepreneurs that did not fall into the “heroic” stereotype, but seemed realistic and relevant to their own context. More realistic prototypes were found through personal networks, sometimes associated to institutional ecosystems. Prototyping was not exclusive to identifying representative individuals in the ‘role’ entrepreneur – such as a provisional self, but also involved prototyping the practices which were attributed to acting entrepreneurially. Socializing a new entrepreneurial identity was particularly valuable when within an entrepreneurial community, as the legitimizing expanded beyond a role-set, towards a community of practice.ImplicationsThere is a need to directly discuss the breadth of definitions of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship and to engage an appropriate spectrum of prototypes to reflect them. Addressing entrepreneurial prototypes, particularly in comparison to oneself, allows for rich discussion as comparing oneself to an entrepreneurial prototype can indicate comfort levels with certain elements of being an entrepreneur and point to areas where new entrepreneurs are feeling a conflict with another existing identity. While bringing-in ‘real-life’ entrepreneurs from the community can help energize the classroom with stories of real-life experience, it is critical to be mindful to present a broad diversity of entrepreneurs (race, gender, age, personality, background, field, experience-level, etc.), as having students perceive patterns in the speakers may inadvertently aid in reinforcing entrepreneurial stereotypes. Educators can use targeted conversation helped to raise identity reflections that illustrate challenges in associating to the entrepreneurial prototype. Being able to have targeted discussions on how students can reconceptualize themselves as entrepreneurs can be helpful for strategizing with students on how to become comfortable with both their intended future selves and their existing self-concept. Educators also need to consider the impact of social media and popular culture, and train students in filtering inputs and information and find means to appropriately select prototypes that fit their particular interests and context. Value/originalityThe paper investigates the way in which preconceptions of entrepreneurship influence entrepreneurial identity development and how this can be utilized or mitigated in the classroom. The paper helps to merge role and activity mimicry in the concept of entrepreneurial prototype, and allow for entrepreneurial prototypes to be ‘future’-oriented rather than dependent upon existing societal images of entrepreneurs/-ship