Conceptual and Cultural
Entrepreneurship is a historically contingent idea, shaped by shifting cultural meanings and symbolic associations. This section foregrounds entrepreneurship as a constructed category; one that changes across time, media, and institutional settings. By treating entrepreneurship as a cultural artifact, these studies open critical conversations about power, narrative, and ideology in entrepreneurial discourse.
Introduction
Entrepreneurship is not a timeless or universally stable concept. Historical research reveals that what counts as “entrepreneurship”, and related ideas such as risk, uncertainty, hype, hustle, and opportunity, has shifted significantly across time, place, and discourse. Rather than treating entrepreneurship as a fixed behavior or role, this perspective approaches it as a cultural and conceptual construct that is socially produced and historically contingent.
Through methodologies drawn from cultural history, conceptual history, and Foucauldian discourse analysis, scholars have examined how entrepreneurship has been defined, represented, and legitimized in different eras. This work interrogates the origins and transformations of the term itself as well as its moral and political dimensions.
Historical inquiry also enables a critique of the present, challenging the taken-for-granted centrality of entrepreneurship in contemporary business culture and policy. By tracing the evolving meanings and uses of its core concepts, historians expose how entrepreneurship has acquired symbolic power in shaping modern economic identities, aspirations, and social hierarchies.
Key References
Jepsen, N. C., & Eaton, L. 2025. Hustle: A Conceptual Exploration of Work at the Margins. Management & Organizational History.
Explores “hustle” as a cultural and conceptual category tied to entrepreneurs at the social and economic margins. Analyzes how the discourse of hustle reframes precarity as empowerment, revealing tensions in the ideology of entrepreneurial self-making.
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Wadhwani, R. D., & Lubinski, C. 2025. Hype: Marker and Maker of Entrepreneurial Culture. Journal of Business Venturing, 40(2): 106455.
Explores how “hype” functions both as marker and maker of entrepreneurial culture. Highlights the performative and affective dimensions of entrepreneurial discourse through a conceptual history of hype.
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Wadhwani, R. D. & Tucker, H. K. Forthcoming. Freedom’s Frictions: Entrepreneurial Imaginaries in the Making of American Capitalism and Democracy,” in Scott Miller and Sidney Minkis (eds), Free People, Free Markets: Can Democracy & Capitalism be Reconciled? Oxford University Press: New York.
Explores the historical tensions between entrepreneurial ideals and democratic values in the development of American capitalism. This chapter traces how conflicting “entrepreneurial imaginaries” have shaped public discourse and policy, offering a nuanced view of entrepreneurship’s role in American political and economic life.
Foucault, M. 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics. Translated by G. Burchell, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Introduces the concept of “entrepreneur of the self” as central to neoliberal governance. A foundational work for scholars analyzing how entrepreneurship became a normative model of subjectivity and economic behavior.
Burgin, A. 2018. The Reinvention of Entrepreneurship. In R. Haberski, & A. Hartman (Eds.), American Labyrinth: Intellectual History for Complicated Times: 163-180. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Traces the intellectual and political evolution of entrepreneurship in postwar American thought. Shows how entrepreneurship was reimagined as a moral and economic ideal in neoliberal discourse.
Lubinski, C., & Gartner, W. B. 2023. Talking About (My) Generation: The Use of Generation as Rhetorical History in Family Business. Family Business Review, 36(1): 119-142.
Explores how the concept of “generation” functions as a rhetorical device in family businesses. Shows how generational narratives serve as strategic tools for justifying succession, preserving legacy, and negotiating change.
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Horowitz, D. 2020. Entertaining Entrepreneurship: Reality TV’s Shark Tank and the American Dream in Uncertain Times. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
A cultural analysis of Shark Tank as a site where entrepreneurship is dramatized and moralized. Reveals how popular media reinforce entrepreneurial myths amid economic precarity.
O’Connor, E. 2004. Storytelling to Be Real: Narrative, Legitimacy Building, and Venturing. In Hjorth, D., and Steyaert, C. (eds.). Narrative and Discursive Approaches to Entrepreneurship. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Explores how entrepreneurs use storytelling to construct legitimacy and identity. Offers insights into narrative as a cultural resource in the entrepreneurial process.
O’Connor, E. 2002. Storied Business: Typology, Intertextuality, and Traffic in Entrepreneurial Narrative. Journal of Business Communication 39(1): 36-54.
Investigates how entrepreneurial narratives draw from cultural tropes and intertextual sources. An important contribution to understanding entrepreneurship as a discursive and symbolic act.
Levy, J. 2012. Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
A conceptual history of risk in 19th-century America. Levy shows how new economic actors, including entrepreneurs, emerged in tandem with changing notions of uncertainty and speculation.
Sandage, S. 2006. Born Losers: A History of Failure in America. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Explores how the cultural ideal of the entrepreneur is mirrored by its opposite, the “loser.” A rich cultural history of failure and its entwinement with American entrepreneurial mythology.
Glaser, V, Fiss, P., Kennedy, M. 2016. Making Snowflakes Like Stocks: Stretching, Bending, and Positioning to Make Financial Market Analogies Work in Online Advertising. Organization Science 27(4): 1029-1048.
Examines how analogical reasoning helps entrepreneurs construct new markets. Highlights the cultural and rhetorical strategies involved in making entrepreneurial innovations intelligible and legitimate.