Abstract
Entrepreneurship research has begun to examine the construction of an occupational identity for entrepreneurs, arguing that this identity is intersected by a variety of discourses, including gender, class and race/ethnicity. Yet, these studies only partially account for the myriad ways that entrepreneurial identity, and occupational identity more broadly, may manifest across the US or globally. In this article, we discuss how high-tech entrepreneurial identities are constructed in conjunction with place-based ‘transcendent’ and ‘locale-specific’ discourses. Empirical results from two studies of high-tech entrepreneurs in the western US demonstrate that place both shapes and constrains the possibilities for constructing an ‘ideal entrepreneurial self’. The implications of our research suggest: (i) the importance of ‘relocating place’ to understand the regional shaping of entrepreneurial identity and occupational identity; (ii) the significance of place serving as a rich organizing discourse for studies of intersectionality; and (iii) the complex ways in which entrepreneurial and occupational identities are shaped by place while simultaneously engaged in ‘place-making’.
Keywords
Shifting workplace structures and expectations over the previous decades have necessitated that scholars rethink how individuals construct occupational identities. As the contemporary work environment is said to be characterized by change, ‘boundaryless careers’ and entrepreneurial work (see e.g. Cheney et al., 2002; Roper et al., 2010), questions regarding how individuals ‘lend meaning to and set boundaries around their [career] trajectories’ (Barley and Kunda, 2001: 78) take on particular significance. Recognizing the need to refocus on occupational identity construction, organization scholars have highlighted a number of mitigating discourses, including profession, gender, race and education (e.g. Alvesson, 1998; Ashcraft, 2007; Kuhn, 2006). In this article, we turn our attention to place as an additional key discourse, focusing on how entrepreneurs develop identities that are usually not tethered to a single, established organization. Although entrepreneurs have enjoyed scholarly attention in terms of economic involvement and strategy, they have only recently been examined as discursively influenced identities (e.g. Bruni et al., 2004; Cohen and Musson, 2000; Essers and Benschop, 2007; Gill and Ganesh, 2007). Thus, for entrepreneurs, but also for other occupations, a key question is ‘what discourses do they draw upon in creating an ideal occupational identity?’.
Our article furthers scholarly understanding of entrepreneurialism by exploring entrepreneurship as an occupational identity influenced by geographic, place-based discourse. Based on our studies of high-tech entrepreneurs in two regions in the Rocky Mountain western part of the USA, we argue that high-tech entrepreneurs in the USA draw on discourses linked to ‘creative cities’ (Florida, 2008) such as Silicon Valley, and also the locale-specific discourses of their particular regions. Our research underscores the influence of place to demonstrate the processual nature of entrepreneurship and how entrepreneurs are engaged in constructing concurrently similar and different ‘ideal identities’. Ultimately, our research helps explain the resemblances and incongruities of entrepreneurs across the USA and signals the value of ‘relocating place’ in studies of entrepreneurial and occupational identity.
Identity, entrepreneurship and place
Increasingly, scholars have turned to understanding how individuals construct, negotiate and manage a work-related identity (e.g. Alvesson et al., 2008; Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003; Ybema et al., 2009), where identity refers to ‘the conception of the self reflexively and discursively understood by the self’ (Kuhn, 2006: 1340). This social constructionist approach recognizes that identity is not a fixed aspect of personality or character, but is constructed through the interplay of internal and external influences as individuals reflect on and talk about the essential question of identity: ‘who am I?’. Although this understanding suggests a subject largely in control of shaping her/his identity, the agency of individuals to freely construct their identities is variously constrained and contested.
Organizational scholars working within the discursive turn foreground the influence of discourse on identity construction and negotiation. From among the possibilities for defining discourse, we align with Ashcraft’s framing of discourse as ‘a (semi-)coherent system of representation that crafts a context for language use’ (Ashcraft, 2007: 11). Thus, discourse signals the available and overarching combinations of assumptions, ideologies and histories that inform everyday language and practice. By drawing on these discourses, we also legitimize and reproduce them, thereby continually affirming the persuasiveness of certain discourses. Accordingly, we agree with Ashcraft and others (e.g. Cohen and Musson, 2000; Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003) that discourses are not merely reflective of reality, but create the very reality they purport to represent. For identity, discourse therefore contributes to both the production and regulation of self, representing ‘the principal means by which organization members create a coherent social reality that frames their sense of who they are’ (Mumby and Clair, 1997: 181).
Pursuant to this idea, we adopt Alvesson’s (Alvesson et al., 2008; Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003) concept of identity work as the communicative and mental processes through which individuals attempt to craft self-narratives that create a ‘coherent, distinct and positively valued’ identity (Alvesson et al., 2008: 15). During everyday interaction, individuals enact identity work by drawing on an array of available discursive resources – ‘concepts, expressions, or other linguistic devices that, when deployed in talk, present explanations for past and/or future activity that guide interactants’ interpretation of experience’ (Kuhn, 2006: 1341) – that are evidenced, at least partially, in their accounts and self-narratives (Cohen and Musson, 2000). Resources for identity work may involve organization-specific values (Kuhn, 2006) as well as transcendent discourses that are not ‘site-bound’, but which are influential across space (Ashcraft, 2007) and generally considered widespread, like notions of enterprise or being an ‘entrepreneur of the self’ (Cohen and Musson, 2000; Holmer Nadesan and Trethewey, 2000).
Wieland (2010) suggests an additional resource for identity construction – contextually informed discourses of the ‘ideal self’. Here, ‘socially acceptable ideas of whom one should be are woven into an individual’s understanding of whom he or she is’ (Wieland, 2010: 504, emphasis added), and are entwined with how discourses inform occupational identity. In Wieland’s study of employees in Sweden, for instance, national and culturally sanctioned discourses of productivity and work−life balance contributed to an assumption of the ‘ideal worker’ that encouraged employees to limit their work hours and exhibit the existence of a full life outside of the organization. Thus, Wieland argues, employees performed the identity work of announcing when they were leaving for the day or reminding others to leave work at appropriate times as a way to demonstrate their success in achieving this identity. Wieland’s findings also illustrate that individuals are neither totally constrained by discourses nor completely free to choose which discourses will shape their identities, but that identity construction is an ongoing, everyday process in which some discourses possess more or less influence as they are more socially attractive and/or align with dominant interests (Cohen and Musson, 2000).
Occupational identity, then, is at least partially constructed and mobilized alongside discourses that also inform the ‘ideal self’ or ‘ideal occupational self’ within a given context or location. Arguably, entrepreneurs are similarly influenced to construct an identity that aligns not only with a broad conceptualization of the entrepreneur, but are also encouraged to align their identity with discourses of the ideal self. Yet, where do these messages of (ideal) identity come from, and with which discourses do entrepreneurs align and/or resist? We next turn to introduce relevant scholarship on entrepreneurs to extend our discussion.
Entrepreneurial occupational identity
Scholarship on entrepreneurial identity has addressed the psychological or character-driven traits of entrepreneurs as a way to predict and develop entrepreneurial tendencies (Clarke and Holt, 2010). More recently, however, entrepreneurship research has turned toward exploring the situated experiences of entrepreneurship and the meaning-making inherent in entrepreneurial activities as largely informing entrepreneurial identity (Hjorth and Steyaert, 2004; Hjorth et al., 2008). From this perspective, entrepreneurial identity is not an individualized psychological trait, but is developed in conjunction with external, societal influences, ‘continually constructed from within already existing environmental conditions’ (Clarke and Holt, 2010: 81).
Thus, one objective of researchers working within this shift is to interrogate the discourses associated with the entrepreneur over the past century. Scholars have critiqued how economic and related discourses continue to romanticize the entrepreneur with heroic and self-driven qualities (Clarke and Holt, 2010) that construct a fairly exclusive image of the entrepreneur as individualized and ruggedly masculine (e.g. Ahl, 2004; Drakopoulou Dodd and Anderson, 2007; Ogbor, 2000), young or youthful (e.g. Ainsworth and Hardy, 2008) and white (e.g. Knight, 2005). Arguably, these dominant images and constructions serve as resources for how those within the occupation make sense of their work (Ashcraft, 2007). Yet, alongside such critiques, research has also demonstrated that entrepreneurs are not merely constrained by regulatory discourses, but are able to resist, re-articulate and re-frame such discourse (e.g. Bruni et al., 2004; Essers and Benschop, 2007; Gill and Ganesh, 2007).
Transcendent discourses of gender, race/ethnicity or age that contribute to constructing an entrepreneurial identity circulate contextually such that ‘entrepreneurs are deeply embedded within the society in which they operate’ (Drakopoulou Dodd and Anderson, 2007: 342). Anderson and colleagues argue for a deeper understanding of national context on occupational and entrepreneurial identity, where ‘different histories, politics and economies may have formed different perceptions about enterprise’ (Anderson et al., 2009: 126−127). The US context, for instance, models the ideal entrepreneur after high-tech, celebrity entrepreneurs, who serve as symbols for innovation and change, global perspective and wealth creation (Boje and Smith, 2010), and the business press furthers this context by privileging high-tech, ‘innovative’ ventures over low-tech or ‘replicative’ business ventures (Gill, 2012; Holmer Nadesan, 2001). Certainly, Florida’s (2008) work on creative cities echoes the emphasis on innovation, technology, and research and development expected of entrepreneurs today.
In terms of how the ideal entrepreneur is constructed in the USA, we posit that Silicon Valley forwards a paragon of US high-tech entrepreneurship and presents an example of place-based discourse as not only influential, but also transcendent. Silicon Valley offers an image of an ‘ideal self’ with which entrepreneurs across the USA are encouraged to identify, not least because Silicon Valley is looked to as a frontrunner of innovation and growth that represents ‘Olympic-style capitalism’ (Rogers and Larsen, 1986: 28). Despite the existence of other recognized high–tech regions – such as Research Triangle in North Carolina, Boston’s Route 128 technology corridor or the semiconductor industry in Austin, Texas – that Silicon Valley may proffer a uniquely transcendent discourse is at least partially evident in the proliferation of ‘siliconia’ across the globe (Bahrami and Evans, 1995; Rogers and Larsen, 1986), where regional technology hubs mimic Silicon Valley by merging the ‘silicon’ name with a local, geographic feature such as Silicon Hills in Texas or Silicon Wadi in Israel. 2 Referring to this phenomenon as ‘silicon envy’, Wired magazine writes, ‘“Silicon Valley” translates the world over as a byword for cash flow and technological savvy’, and that ‘wannabes everywhere have ventured their own niche namesakes’ (Wieners and Hillner, 1998: para. 1).
Silicon Valley, then, figures prominently in the cultural imagination of high-tech entrepreneurship, largely spurred by the cultural and geographic qualities of this area (Rogers and Larsen, 1986; Saxenian, 1994). Located in the San Francisco Bay Area, Silicon Valley owes its name to the development of the silicon semiconductor that began there in the 1950s. As this region developed over the second half of the 20th century, the informal culture of northern California helped generate an environment of collaboration among workers, firms and industries that was less prominent in other technology regions (Saxenian, 1994). The collaborative character of the workforce encouraged high-tech employees in ‘the Valley’ to identify more with their careers than any one company, thus fueling exchanges in labor and prioritizing the development of products and innovations across companies rather than within a single, dominant company. Thus, the very informality of Silicon Valley somewhat ironically generated a model of high-tech work characterized by a ‘never-ending stream of kaleidoscopic changes’ (Bahrami and Evans, 1995: 62) that now seems to trend toward workaholism and a rejection of work−life balance (see, e.g. Shaywitz, 2012). Accordingly, Silicon Valley has been described as an ‘environment of incessant novelty and innovation’ and as ‘characterized by fleeting opportunities, shifting customer preferences, cascades of technological innovations, brutally short product life cycles and furious global competition’ (Bahrami and Evans, 1995: 62).
To be sure, as a metonym for an idealized model of US high-tech entrepreneurship, Silicon Valley is largely evocative of Schumpeter’s (and others’: e.g. Drucker, 1985) characterizations of the entrepreneur as completely subsumed within the market. Although Silicon Valley may not characterize the entrepreneur in a particularly ‘new’ way, as a discourse, it concentrates dominant beliefs about entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship into a popular ‘shorthand’ that values: (i) start-ups and a networking culture; (ii) technological innovation and risk-taking; (iii) product development driven by customer inclinations; and (iv) work as all-encompassing. As a popular discursive resource that individuals can draw upon to articulate their own entrepreneurial efforts, Silicon Valley is mobile, or ‘transferable’ to other identities and places; the metonym offers a ‘local’ manifestation of high-tech culture that has come to transcend Silicon Valley itself. Given this, we might expect to see US high-tech entrepreneurs identifying with Silicon Valley. Indeed, mobilizing this discursive resource would support assertions regarding the influence of transcendent occupational identity discourses (e.g. Ashcraft, 2007). Yet, as we articulate next, this tells only part of the story.
Regional identity discourses
Although we agree that national context impacts the construction of entrepreneurial and occupational identities (Anderson et al., 2009; Essers and Benschop, 2007; Wieland, 2010), our research is also driven by a curiosity regarding how entrepreneurs may construct regional identities in ways that are different, unique, resistant and/or similar to the prominent Silicon Valley model. Here, we take our understanding of place from Gieryn (2000), who describes places as possessing three defining characteristics: ‘geographic location … material form … [and] investment with meaning and value’ (464−465). A place is a specific spot in the world, embodied in built and natural things and infused with meaning. Place is distinct from space in that ‘place is space filled up by people, practices, objects and representations’ (Gieryn, 2000: 465).
Notably, a more ‘local’ (as opposed to ‘national’) understanding of the relationship between place and identity is starting to receive attention in the organizational literature (e.g. Elsbach, 2003; Elsbach and Pratt, 2007; Rooney et al., 2010), though often in a way that conceives of place at the level of the work site (Larson and Pearson, 2012). In contrast, our study focuses on place at the level of the city or region. Discussing the importance of regional – or what he refers to as locale-specific – discourse, Kuhn (2006) observed that regions provide a significant resource on which individuals draw in the construction of identity. Regional place is central to the formation of identity because of the combination of physical location and the meanings attached to the location. Places ‘do not exist nowhere’, but ‘bring to the table their own sets of considerations in which the setting becomes “active”’ (Sampson and Goodrich, 2009: 903). This idea of place as ‘active’ recognizes place as a character in the construction of identity rather than a container or context in which identity is constructed and played out.
As an active dimension in the construction of identity, locale-specific discourses offer an assortment of values, symbols, practices and material objects that people can mobilize to describe themselves (Sampson and Goodrich, 2009), including the history and stereotypes, architecture and urban design, and landscape and natural environment of a region (Paasi, 2003). Such discursive resources both enable and constrain identity formation because, on one hand, they clarify the legitimate options for identity construction vis-a-vis ‘local’ processes and norms, and on the other hand, they tether individuals to the dominant discursive preferences for identity within the regional community. To the degree that identification with a region is linked to the identity of that region, then, the symbols and practices related to locale-specific occupations – along with other arenas of life – influence the identities of those within that place (Paasi, 2003).
Ultimately, given the import of place-based discourses as resources for identity work, we explore the influence of transcendent and locale-specific discourses – and how they may or may not be entwined – in the construction of an ‘ideal’ high-tech entrepreneurial identity. Based on the literature we reviewed above, we surmise that not only do prominent high-tech discourses as represented by Silicon Valley influence the construction of entrepreneurial identity in the USA, but also that discourses tethered to particular regions influence identity. Our analysis therefore explores the meshing of transcendent and locale-specific discourses as guided by three overarching questions: How might Silicon Valley be used as a discursive resource in the occupational identity work of entrepreneurs who live and work outside of Silicon Valley? In what ways might entrepreneurs draw on locale-specific resources to explain or justify their entrepreneurial efforts? And, how might transcendent and locale-specific discourses interact during identity work as entrepreneurs construct an ideal entrepreneurial identity?
Methods
To help orient our readers, we introduce the places that are central to our analysis (see Figure 1) at the same time that we introduce our participants. Familiar to many around the world, Silicon Valley is nestled between two mountain ranges in northern California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Encompassing San Jose, Palo Alto and other cities, Silicon Valley is home to numerous universities and colleges, including Stanford, and attracts visitors with its mild climate, hiking trails and wineries. Notable as the largest high-tech region in the USA, Silicon Valley houses Facebook, Apple, Intel, Google, eBay, Netflix and Yahoo alongside thousands of other start-ups. As noted previously, smaller technology hubs and ‘siliconia’ sites are cropping up across the USA, and this is where we locate our study. Approximately 900 miles to the north and west of Silicon Valley are the regions where we collected our data. Both regions are located in the Rocky Mountains, a mountain chain that runs the longitudinal length of the USA.
Approximate locations of the Silicon Valley (California), Silicon Slopes (Utah) and the possible Silicon Glacier (Montana). Source: Wikimapia.
Utah: The 45th US state
Officially made a state in 1896, the area known as Utah was for centuries settled by Fremont, Pueblo, Ute and Navajo Indian tribes, among others. By the early 1800s, fur trappers and other European explorers had established trade in Utah, and westward-headed families and prospectors crossed the area on their way to California. It was not until the late 1800s that the state began to be more ‘formally’ settled, when members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS, or Mormons), escaping religious and cultural persecution from the east and north, migrated to the Salt Lake Valley and surrounding areas (Mauss, 1994b).
A religion that falls generally within the purview of Christianity, Mormonism was founded in the 1820s in upstate New York by Joseph Smith, Jr, who unearthed and sought to restore to the Christian church principles that had been lost. Although the Mormon religion draws from the traditional texts of Christianity and believes in the Old and New Testament, it also maintains that these texts are inaccurate or incomplete in some respects, as indicated in the religion’s primary text, the Book of Mormon. Values emphasized by the Mormon Church (see Cornwall et al., 1994; Mauss, 1994a, 1994b) include: traditional family values and a tight-knit community structured through Wards (neighborhood churches); an emphasis on education supported by high-school seminaries and Mormon-sponsored universities; and service to others, reflected in large-scale humanitarian programs, as well as the expectation that young men and women (at 18 and 19 years, respectively) complete missions to serve others and baptize converts.
The history of Utah as a state is largely entwined with the history of the Mormon people and one is hard pressed to consider one without the other. The Mormon history of persecution and fight to be recognized as ‘mainstream’ informs much of the state’s political and cultural context. Despite the Mormon Church’s early communitarian and grass-roots organizing, the Utah business landscape has developed to largely embrace mainstream, capitalist values shared across the USA (Mauss, 1994b), albeit combined with particular emphasis on doctrinal values such as those noted above (Mauss, 1994a). This region has emerged in the past 30 years as a growing technology hub, partly influenced by the local religion (James, 2006). As such, Utah appears to be a state that strives to assimilate, while also remaining unique in religious and family values.
It is within this context that the first author studied entrepreneurship and identity along Utah’s Wasatch Front, a roughly 80-mile corridor that runs just west of the Wasatch Mountains. With over 2 million people in residence, the Wasatch Front includes the cities of Ogden, Salt Lake City and Provo/Orem. For a period of six months, the first author conducted interviews and observations with entrepreneurs and networking organizations in these and other cities as part of a larger project (see Gill, 2011); the interviews with 11 entrepreneurs in technology-related industries – such as online ventures, software design and start-up/incubator development – were included for this article. The interviewees were four women and seven men, all of whom were white. These demographics reflect those of the state, as well as the overall composition of entrepreneurship in Utah. Furthermore, all of the participants identified as active members of the Mormon Church. Interviews ranged from 60 minutes to 90 minutes, with the majority averaging 80−90 minutes. The interviewees had lived in Utah for at least several years, if not for their whole lives. Most made their homes in Utah for socio-cultural reasons and wanted to continue to do so, despite the allure of entrepreneurial opportunities in other areas, particularly California.
Montana: The 41st US state
Farther north, Montana boasts the fourth largest landmass in the USA, but is the third least densely populated state, with about 1 million inhabitants. Achieving statehood in 1889, the indigenous populations of Montana include, among others, the Crow, Blackfeet, Shoshone, Kootenai and Salish tribes. The topography and geography of Montana greatly influence the past and present economy in different parts of the state and historically provided the primary draw for pioneering individuals. In the western, mountainous parts of the state, early occupations were based upon natural resource extraction. Butte, with its vast reserves of copper, became the center of the state’s mining operations and, for a time in the late 1800s, home to some of the wealthiest industrialists and the fourth largest company in the world, Anaconda Copper (Glasscock, 1935). In addition to mining, the other great natural resource on the western side of the state has been its forests. After the railroad came through in the 1880s, logging became a mainstay of the economy for the next 100 years, with Missoula as the center of that economy.
In more recent years, however, the western parts of the state have had to cope with the decline of the mining and timber industries. In Missoula, where this research was conducted, the last lumber mill closed down a few years ago and the economy is increasingly centered on education, health care, government, retail sales and professional services (Montana Department of Labor and Industry, 2011). People are drawn to Missoula because of the mountains, rivers – opportunities for outdoor recreation – and more rural lifestyle. Popularly referred to as the ‘last best place’, Montana promotes a balance between work and life that centers on the outdoors. For instance, people living in the area of Missoula appreciate the easy access to wilderness, the solitude and lack of human infrastructure, and the historical and cultural significance of the land itself (Gunderson and Watson, 2007). In addition to the appeal of the outdoors, the University of Montana and two major hospitals draw educated professionals. As the economy of Missoula has changed, there is a small but growing group of entrepreneurs trying to conduct high-tech entrepreneurial work, and these individuals were the focus of this study.
Data for the Montana entrepreneurs were collected by both authors as part of separate projects (see, e.g Gill and Ganesh, 2007; Larson and Pearson, 2012). Combined, these data consist of interviews with 30 high-tech entrepreneurs. 3 Interviews lasted between 30 and 120 minutes, with most between 30 and 60 minutes. Interviewees were mainly white men (three interviewees were white women) and most were middle-aged. The gender and racial composition of the interviewees reflects the gender and racial composition of the people involved in high-tech work in this region. Many of the participants had previously lived in or visited Montana and talked about specific decisions to move (back) to Missoula and engage in entrepreneurial high-tech work as a way of living in a desired place while supporting themselves and their families. The participants were involved in a wide array of enterprises and industries, including computer software and computer-aided consulting, research instruments, bio-medicine and aerospace.
Procedures and analysis
Although discourse is not determinant of identity (Cohen and Musson, 2000; Down, 2006), it does play a role in shaping available identity scripts (Wetherell et al., 2001). We assume, therefore, that individuals mobilize ‘interpretive repertoires’ when articulating their experiences, or use common terms, phrases and metaphors associated with particular discourses (Wetherell et al., 2001). As such, our data provide a window into the construction of identity in that interviews allow for reflection and self-expression (Fontana and Frey, 2005), thus providing opportunities for individuals to mobilize interpretive repertoires. To create space for this kind of reflection, we conducted semi-structured and open-ended interviews, asking questions such as, ‘what does entrepreneurship mean to you?’ and ‘why do you consider yourself an entrepreneur?’.
For each data set, we separately conducted a modified grounded theory analysis, generating themes as they emerged from the transcripts and observation notes (Charmaz, 2003; Strauss and Corbin, 1998). Specifically, we coded (Emerson et al., 1995) to initially highlight moments where participants defined entrepreneurship and articulated related goals and/or tensions. We gathered these comments into themes that we compared to the ideal discourse of high-tech work in the USA, as represented by Silicon Valley (e.g. promoting technology start-ups). From there, we revisited the data to focus on remarks made specifically about place (e.g. comments about the pace of Silicon Valley or explanations for why participants sought to remain in Utah/Montana). This second round of coding encouraged us to pay attention to how the ideal entrepreneur was constructed vis-a-vis that particular locale.
Constructing the ideal entrepreneurial identity: A tale of two regions
The ways in which participants expressed an entrepreneurial identity evidenced the influence of the transcendent, Silicon Valley discourse and also locale-specific discourses of that particular region. We seek to ‘tell the tales’ of the Utah and Montana participants by describing how they viewed themselves in relation to the ‘ideal’ self forwarded at the intersection of high-tech entrepreneurial discourse and the history and geography of their regions.
Silicon Slopes: High-tech entrepreneurship in Utah
Our data indicated that the Utah participants relied heavily on the discourse of the ideal high-tech entrepreneur in describing and justifying their identities and that this discourse strongly aligned with locale-specific discourses related to the Mormon Church. Silicon Valley was evoked by the participants to explain their entrepreneurial endeavors and thereby shaped how local entrepreneurship ‘looked’. Yet, as we discuss, participants did not wholly mimic Silicon Valley. Rather, our interviewees indicated that they upheld locale-specific discourses of religion to meet religious expectations and align with the transcendent, high-tech discourse.
Drawing on the transcendent to be the ‘ideal entrepreneur’
The Utah participants strongly aligned with the Silicon Valley entrepreneur, defining entrepreneurship in ways that positioned them as ‘ideal entrepreneurs’ by evoking: (i) entrepreneurship as high-growth; (ii) the entrepreneur as a risk-taker; and (iii) support for a technology ecosystem in Utah. Mobilizing these particular values in the service of their occupational identities indicates the influence of the transcendent, high-tech entrepreneurial discourse on these entrepreneurs.
First, to a compelling degree, the Utah participants aligned with the fast-paced, high-growth culture of Silicon Valley. Virtually all of the entrepreneurs spoke of the need to grow and harvest for-profit companies. Entrepreneurship was described as, ‘you plant a seed and you grow it and then you sell the goods’ or as ‘always thinking of new things and trying out different things and also seeing what’s available, so it’s a, it’s a continual valuation process’. Similarly, a young 20-something male shared that his plan is to ‘see this company sell, in the next three to five years … and do this all over again … constantly [be] an entrepreneur’. Another entrepreneur expressed the need for Utah to ‘get the kind of expertise on the financing side, and the kind of capital that Silicon Valley has’. In these statements, the participants draw on the Silicon Valley metonym that favors high growth and the capital to support it.
Second, the participants distinguished themselves as legitimate entrepreneurial actors by labeling themselves as risk-takers. According to one participant, although many people may start companies, the entrepreneur is a particular kind of risk-taking, value-creating individual: [An entrepreneur is] somebody who decides to take a risk in creating something of value and it’s not usually an easy road. They’re usually trailblazers in what they’re doing and to me that’s, that’s what a true entrepreneur is. I think there’s a lot of people who start companies who claim to be entrepreneurs, but I don’t think it’s the same thing.
Another entrepreneur made a similar claim, defining himself through risk-taking by claiming, ‘I think I’m an entrepreneur because I’m willing to take a risk. I mean there’s not a whole lot that makes me necessarily different than someone else other than I’m doing it, you know?’. Here, by insisting that risk-taking distinguishes entrepreneurs, these participants evoke the high-tech entrepreneurial ideal, aligning themselves with the discourse of Silicon Valley.
Third, Silicon Valley as a discursive resource was evident in how participants envisioned Utah as a growing technology corridor or ecosystem (one participant’s term), explicitly along the lines of Silicon Valley. Participants evoked Silicon Valley by making heroes out of local entrepreneurs and investors, including one company founder – mentioned by three participants and featured as a speaker at networking luncheons – who had been generating attention because he had closed on nearly $50 million in Silicon Valley investment funding and was forecast to be the ‘next billion dollar company out of Utah’.The excitement around this deal was cited by participants as evidence that Silicon Valley is looking to Utah for opportunities and of Utah’s viability as a technology hotspot. Another entrepreneur talked about the importance of venture capitalists in Utah as ‘responsible for so much of the entrepreneurship because they create an environment that the Silicon Valley naturally has’. The popular ‘Silicon Slopes’ campaign further manifests how these entrepreneurs rely on Silicon Valley as a discursive resource. Launched by the founders of local technology companies in 2007, this ‘siliconia’ campaign promotes Utah as possessing similar infrastructure, technology, and research and development focus to that of Silicon Valley (see http://www.siliconslopes.com). In our data, the campaign and the idea of a growing technology network resonated with most of the participants as a way to reproduce Silicon Valley at the local level. We take this as evidence of the alignment of Utah entrepreneurs with the Silicon Valley ideal entrepreneurial identity.
Meshing the local and transcendent to be the ‘ideal Mormon entrepreneur’
In Utah, the attractiveness of Silicon Valley as a resource for identity work is supported by the locale-specific discourse. Specifically, we see a persuasive alignment between the Silicon Valley ideal entrepreneur and celebrated narratives of the Mormon Church. The ideal identity constructed by the participants justified Utahans as high-tech entrepreneurs and provided moral validation for entrepreneurship. Here, the participants were not only striving to be ideal entrepreneurs, but ideal Mormon entrepreneurs. This manifested in participants’ reflections about both local religious history and current Mormon values and practices.
First, the combined religious history and topography of Utah represented discursive resources. Specifically, the migration of the Mormons into the Salt Lake Valley in the 1800s was a touch point for the participants to connect present-day entrepreneurship to a religious past. Several of the participants insisted that the history of religious persecution and the subsequent Mormon migration fostered entrepreneurship, with one participant explaining: … these crazy people that settled this area were kind of a wild group of pioneers. They had a focus here that come hell or high water, come Johnson’s army or whoever else, we were staying here. And, we were going to make it work. Well, ‘how do I make it work and still have a large family? I may have to start [a business], I may have to build something on my own.’
Here, this entrepreneur conjures an image of the settlers as innovative risk-takers in the face of adversity. Stories such as this nuance the claims made by other participants that the Mormons are a ‘driven people’ or that ‘people here just want to be self-sufficient, they have that pioneer attitude and they are self-made people’. Mormon history and its rootedness in local topography (i.e. migration into the valley) thus claimed entrepreneurship as a historical and ‘natural’ quality unique to Utah and the Mormon community. Drawing on this discourse enabled these entrepreneurs to align with both a local religious heritage and the ideal, high-tech entrepreneur.
Second, participants drew on the more contemporary teachings and practices of the Mormon Church in narrating their identities. Virtually all of the Utah participants spoke of self-reliance and hard work as local values, despite the fact that these are generally considered national, or transcendent, values associated with the Protestant Work Ethic or the American Dream (Cullen, 2004). One participant talked about self-reliance as explicit to the Mormon Church: I do think that self-sufficiency is big [here] because if you’re – and I wouldn’t even say self-sufficiency, I’d say self-reliance – because if you’re relying on yourself, like, that’s your food storage, that’s your education, that’s your being raised to be reliant. I mean there’s a focus on education [in the Mormon Church]. I mean, look at their perpetual education fund. (Emphasis in original)
Here, this participant references programs sponsored by the Mormon Church, which involve emergency preparedness (i.e. food storage) and education. Another participant said the same: There has always been an emphasis in the LDS church on self-sufficiency, taking care of yourself. That’s why they teach things like getting a good education as much as you can, having food storage, you know, watching your finances carefully, working hard. There’s always been an emphasis on working hard and working smart.
In these examples, we see locale-specific values of preparedness and self-reliance as parallel to the ideal entrepreneurial identity. In addition to preparedness and food storage programs, the participants were quick to suggest that the LDS missionary experience fosters entrepreneurship. As one participant surmised, and others echoed, about start-up entrepreneurs and employees: You can bring in a lot of experiences from the mission or from church settings or whatever that really help with organization and delegation and reporting. Most people that I work with understand and accept those principles you know because they’ve been raised with them or they went on a mission and they know what it’s like to knock doors.
In all of these examples, participants drew upon locale-specific discourses to construct the ideal entrepreneur as one who reflects the Silicon Valley entrepreneur.
Drawing on the local to separate the ‘ideal Mormon’ entrepreneur
Although most of the participants aligned with the Silicon Valley metonym, they also resisted what they saw as less desirable aspects of Silicon Valley. Here, locale-specific Mormon values of family and community were evoked to resist Silicon Valley and align with ideas about being an ‘ideal Mormon’. More specifically, locale-specific discourses pushed back against assumptions of lifestyle in Silicon Valley. For instance, one entrepreneur in his early 30s expressed his belief that ‘everybody knows that as soon as you get an investment from a VC firm, out in San Jose, they want you to move’. Yet, he articulated a tension inherent in this expectation: Well if you’re Mormon, typically Mormons only marry Mormons, so you have this Utah situation where you know, even if you’re really, really open minded you’d at least like to be around Mormons to at least date and hopefully meet a nice Mormon girl and so you’re thinking, ‘do I really want to pack up and move out [to Silicon Valley]?’.
For this participant, his identity as a Mormon and the related expectations he holds about marriage and family come into play when he considers whether or not he might move from Utah, specifically to Silicon Valley. Other participants similarly centered family. A 30-something female, for instance, explained that ‘a lot of families, especially the [Mormon] people, want to have vacation time, and so [entrepreneurship] kind of fits that … I took six weeks of vacation last year. You know, that’s a lot.’ The emphasis on family was further evidenced in another’s recollection of an explicit contrast made between Silicon Valley and Utah: I don’t know if you came to the lectures [put on by the founder of Mozy] … [but] in his lecture series, he mentioned that there’s a difference between Utah and the Bay Area. He’s saying that when you go to the [San Francisco] Bay Area, you see cars in the parking lot all the time. You, you come here [to Utah] and there’s no cars in the parking lot on Sunday or Monday nights, you know. And so it’s a different, it’s a different kind of twist.
In repeating this anecdote, this participant referenced important Mormon religious days (the Sabbath and Family Home Evening, respectively) while using Silicon Valley as a touchstone for identity. In this way, the participants drew upon locale-specific resources to articulate being an ‘ideal Mormon’, but also shape a localized version of the ideal (Mormon) high-tech entrepreneur.
Overall, our analysis of how the Utah participants constructed the ‘ideal Mormon entrepreneur’ identity indicates a largely fortuitous alignment between transcendent and locale-specific discourses, where locale-specific discourses bolstered high-tech entrepreneurial initiatives and appeals. Here, Silicon Valley represented a model for these entrepreneurs, and they culled locale-specific discourses as a way to make the claim that they are or ‘should be’ like (Wieland, 2010) Silicon Valley. At the same time, however, locale-specific discourses rejected some of the less appealing aspects of Silicon Valley, and the ideal Utah/Mormon entrepreneurial identity emerged as one that resisted these aspects.
Silicon Glacier? High-tech entrepreneurship in Montana
Montana participants, like those in Utah, took up the discourse of the ideal high-tech entrepreneur to articulate their occupational identities. In contrast to those in Utah, however, the Montana participants were more likely to draw on the local to resist the transcendent; accordingly, the locale-specific discourse guided entrepreneurial identity as participants navigated being an ‘ideal entrepreneur’ and an ‘ideal Montanan’. To begin, we examine how the ideal high-tech entrepreneurial discourse was taken up by these entrepreneurs, but then underscore how this Silicon Valley ideal was kept in check by locale-specific discourses.
Drawing on the transcendent to be the ‘ideal entrepreneur’
As was the case with the Utah entrepreneurs, the Montana participants talked about their entrepreneurship in ways that aligned with the ideal Silicon Valley entrepreneur. Specifically, values associated with Silicon Valley that were evoked included risk-taking and a focus on the customer. One participant talked about a ‘willingness to take a risk’ as part of what it meant to be an entrepreneur, and another stated, ‘you do have to take risks – there is no getting around that component so you have to be okay with that’. Another linked risk explicitly to the identity of the entrepreneur when he stated: But an entrepreneur is definitely someone who has a taste for and an appreciation for risk, it’s all about risk and I’ve, just like anyone else, I’ve taken, um, some good risks and some that were bad, or that didn’t pay off, but that’s all part of being an entrepreneur.
Participants also talked about a focus on the customer as part of what it meant to be an entrepreneur. One entrepreneur spoke of the need to ‘really put forth the great effort for customers’. Another summed up the customer service mantra when he stated, ‘treat your customers like royalty and your best customers like family, that kind of do right by the customer, and you’ll be rewarded’. In these examples of risk-taking and customer service, the discourse of the ideal high-tech entrepreneur is reproduced to frame a particular entrepreneurial occupational identity. When a participant uses this discourse to describe what it means to be an entrepreneur, they align their identities, at least partially, with the transcendent, Silicon Valley ideal.
Drawing on the local to be the ‘ideal Montanan’
The story of Montana entrepreneurs is more complicated than the taking-up of the ideal high-tech entrepreneur, though. Although Montana entrepreneurs embraced this transcendent discourse in some ways, they also mobilized locale-specific discourses to resist it. Many of the Montana participants discussed their decision to (re)locate to Montana as a way to avoid the pace and pressure of places like Silicon Valley. These participants, many having previous roots in Montana and others having visited on vacation, had assumptions that Montana offered a different way of life and of engaging high-tech entrepreneurship. One participant put it this way: ‘It’s a different business culture here, it’s definitely not as intense and fast-paced as it is in Silicon Valley’. Another stated: I mean there’s no reason why somebody can’t work 40, 45 hours a week and run a business and make it successful. Those people who say they’re working 80, 90 hours a week and are proud of it, I say, that sucks. Why live in Missoula, why don’t you go live in LA and not have a life? I mean, I didn’t [have a life there]. That’s the reason we moved here, was to have a life.
Similarly, another explained that she detested the environment: ‘I used to hate having to drive forty, you know, it took me forty five minutes to go seven miles in Silicon Valley. It was awful’ (emphasis in original). In these examples, the long hours and distracted pace of Silicon Valley are posed as counter-productive to achieving the ideal entrepreneurial self.
It is perhaps not surprising, then, that even though the Montana participants identified with risk-taking and customer focus, they also discouraged a one-dimensional focus on work, consistent with the locale-specific valuing of Montana for its remoteness and recreational opportunities (Gunderson and Watson, 2007). In other words, the locale-specific discourse of work−life balance offered an alternative conceptualization of hard work − something different from the frenetic pace and all-consuming attention to work in Silicon Valley. Illustrating this point, one participant stated his belief that ‘you’re not really an entrepreneur until you’re making money while you’re playing golf’, and another talked about his role models as people who ‘have a good balance between business and life and realize that it’s not all about making money, it’s not all about business, it’s about living’. In the locale-specific discourse, someone who works all the time is someone with backward priorities. In this way, we see the ideal entrepreneur as aligning with what it means to be an ‘ideal Montanan’.
Accordingly, participants played off the transcendent discourse by stressing the local landscape and culture as offering a balanced work−life that is more difficult to achieve in urban environments and traditional high-tech hotspots. Entrepreneurs strove to be ‘ideal Montanans’ by aligning with local understandings of work−life: I want the flexibility to be able to walk to my office and work my hours when I want to, enjoy the surroundings of Missoula, play golf, go kayaking, go skiing, go biking. Now mind you, I work a great deal, but I do have flexibility when I want to, to take time off because life is too short just to work.
Another stated of a fellow entrepreneur: They started when we started and I’ve watched them just kill themselves over getting launched, but they’re a 10 million dollar company now. And, it’s a case where ‘wow guys, you did it right’. I kinda wish I had done that, ya know, but at the same time [the owner of the other business] and I have had discussions where ‘wow this is taking everything, my family, my whole shooting match’. I personally have, I’m trying to achieve a little more balance.
Others spoke of the remoteness of Montana as attractive, with one 30-something entrepreneur who moved from Los Angeles explaining, ‘I didn’t move to Montana to live in a town. I have no neighbors but my family. It’s thirty miles to the grocery store. I drive here into town every day … and that’s why I moved to Montana’. In these and other examples, entrepreneurship was recast as allowing participants to achieve the locale-specific work−life balance, even at the expense of economic success. In this community, quickly scaling or harvesting a business were not seen as the highest degree of success. Rather, sustaining a long-term lifestyle that combined (upper)middle class wealth with ample free time was more celebrated.
Navigating the tension between ‘ideal entrepreneur’ and ‘ideal Montanan’
Ironically, though locale-specific discourses in Missoula resisted the pace of Silicon Valley, these discourses also potentially restrained participants who actually wanted to create high-growth companies. That is, the emphasis on ‘balance’ sometimes discouraged entrepreneurs from embracing the kind of work pace and lifestyle that is sometimes necessary for high-tech success.
Thus, the locale-specific notion of ‘balance’ was criticized by participants who felt that some might take this notion to an extreme. Some of the interviewees viewed the locale-specific lifestyle discourses as problematic, expressing that such discourses limited possibilities for developing high-tech entrepreneurship in the state. For example, one participant discussed the challenges related to building a company by admitting, ‘We have a kind of “work hard/play hard” philosophy in MT, but people have to be willing to give up the fishing, hiking, hunting, skiing behavior for a year [while we get the company up and running] …’. Giving up such activities means going against powerful locale-specific discourses that value the number of days spent on the ski slopes or on the river as much as the value of a company.
It should be apparent that the articulation of an ideal identity for the Montana participants stands in fairly stark contrast to that of the Utah participants. In particular, we are able to glean how the Montana participants identified with the ideal entrepreneur (i.e. in appeals to customer focus), but also strongly rejected dimensions of this ideal. Their rejections of Silicon Valley lifestyle reflect identity work where these participants drew on locale-specific discourse to create an alternative idealized (local) entrepreneurial identity − one that was defined at least partially in a contrasting relationship to Silicon Valley. On the other hand, a few participants were ambivalent about these local discourses as they recognized some limitations of the localized ideal.
Discussion: Ideal entrepreneurial identity and place-based discourse
Our analysis distinguished the results from the Utah and Montana sites as a way to explore what these locales can teach us about place and the construction of an ideal entrepreneurial identity. In this, our findings indicate the value in a comparative approach to studying entrepreneurship and identity. As scholars seek to develop methods for examining the processural nature of ‘multiple entrepreneurships’ (see Hjorth and Steyaert, 2004; Hjorth et al., 2008), we believe that engaging in in-depth studies across place allows for the development of theory in ways that are both conceptually interesting and practically useful. More than this, an exploration of the meshing of locale-specific and transcendent discourses complicates how we understand the ideal entrepreneurial self; entrepreneurial identity – and occupational identity more broadly – is not only constructed alongside the gendered and raced history and images of entrepreneurship (Ahl, 2004; Ogbor, 2000) or discourses entwined with national culture (Anderson et al., 2009; Wieland, 2010), but regional place also represents a particularly influential resource for reinforcing and/or resisting ‘ideal’ identity discourses. From these initial observations, we identify three additive implications of this research that center the importance of place in organization and identity studies: (i) entrepreneurial and other occupational identities as constructed in locale-specific, place-based ways; (ii) occupational identity work as an intersectional mixture of locale-specific and transcendent discursive resources; and (iii) entrepreneurial and other occupational identities as involved in ‘place-making’.
Locale-specific place and the construction of ideal identity(ies)
First, our research points to the importance of locale-specific discourses for the construction of entrepreneurial identities, particularly those that develop in one specific city or region (Larson and Pearson, 2012). Recent scholarship suggests that cities and regions feature prominently in the new economy (e.g. Florida, 2008), but organization and identity literature has not yet adequately accounted for this research. By connecting to this research, our study provides empirical illustration to Gieryn’s claim that we must see ‘all social phenomena as emplaced’ (Gieryn, 2000: 467) and that places are complex intersections of location, materiality and meaningfulness. In Utah and Montana, topography, material resources and religious and/or cultural histories all influenced how the participants shaped idealized identities. Although a handful of other studies have also examined the intersection of the local and the transcendent (e.g. Kondo, 1990; Kuhn, 2006), we contend that conceiving of place at the level of region provides valuable nuance to understanding the construction of entrepreneurial and occupational identities.
Accordingly, attention to place complicates current academic discussion regarding the need to ‘dislocate’ organizational studies from the work site (Ashcraft, 2007). On one hand, we support notions of moving past the work site as the primary influencer of work-related identities and moving to broader constructions of work as represented in occupations or industries. For instance, our research backs assertions that idealized occupational identities are contested and changing (Meisenbach, 2008; Wieland, 2010) and developed, at least partially, outside of the influence of the ‘artificial boundaries of the organization’ (Kuhn, 2006: 1342; Watson, 1995). On the other hand, rather than ‘dislocating’ we suggest ‘relocating’ place as an influence on occupational identity. Different places, including work sites, regions and nations, all may provide some of the key discursive resources for constructing identity. Whereas some studies show consistency across occupations (i.e. Ashcraft’s pilots), our study demonstrates how locales – particularly regions – provide some of the resources that shape ideal occupational identities. By extension, this finding allows us to confront our understanding of other occupational identities, for example, asking how the identities of autoworkers in South Carolina may compare to those entrenched within the powerful discourse of the Detroit, Michigan auto industry.
Practically speaking, this implication may be useful for individuals and groups engaged in fostering entrepreneurial efforts. When it comes to creating entrepreneurial programs, for example – like those sponsored by the US Small Business Administration − a more robust but nuanced understanding of place can help in understanding and assisting both mainstream and marginalized entrepreneurs. Relatedly, city leaders who use public dollars in attempts to attract high-tech entrepreneurs need to be mindful of how local discourses may align with and/or resist entrepreneurial activities because of how place patterns employment trends, business development and industry involvement (James, 2006). Efforts made to consider the appropriate mix of discourses can usefully foster entrepreneurial initiatives.
Mixing the ingredients of occupational identity
Second, and moreover, our research recognizes that the ‘ingredients’ matter in shaping occupational identities and that place offers an important empirical lens for assessing the mix of discourses available. So while the idea that people draw on and position themselves in relation to diverse discursive resources in an ongoing process of constructing identities is well documented in the literature, we argue that our comparative research sheds light on how such ingredients may manifest differently. As Massey states about place: There is the specificity of place which derives from the fact that each place is the focus of a distinct mixture of wider and more local social relations. There is the fact that this very mixture together in one place may produce effects which would not have happened otherwise. And finally, all these relations interact with and take a further element of specificity from the accumulated history of a place, with that history itself imagined as the product of layer upon layer of different sets of linkages, both local and to the wider world. (Massey, 1994: 156)
The two places studied in this research provide an empirical demonstration of how unique ingredients, usefully conceived through the lens of place, can provide insight into the similarities and differences that develop in regard to occupational identity.
As a result, place can represent an organizing discourse for exploring intersectionality, where intersectionality ‘claim[s] that systems of race, economic class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation and age form mutually constructing features of social organization’ (Collins, 1998: 278). As seen in our study, place can add to this analytic focus because it encapsulates numerous additional ‘ingredients’, such as religion, historical development, geography, relationship to the dominant culture and current economic environment that can add to and/or calibrate an understanding of the discourses that shape occupational identities. This focus on place does not diminish the importance of studying race, gender or other social identities, but rather suggests that our mix of discursive resources must be both expanded and refined, recognizing, of course, that place may not represent a key resource for identity in all contexts.
Our study is therefore an example of how attention to place can serve as a lens for exploring the mix of discourses that ultimately frame occupational identities in specific locations. Specifically, we explored the relationship between locale-specific and transcendent discourses in the construction of ideal selves. Our data showed that when locale-specific discourses align with transcendent discourses – as in Utah – individuals are more likely to reproduce and reinforce aspects of the transcendent discourse. This combining and reinforcing created a discourse that exerted complex and considerable influence, to which many entrepreneurs consented, and which constructed the Utah participants as ‘ideal entrepreneurs’ and also ‘ideal Mormons’ in light of both sets of discourses. Our data also indicated that when locale-specific discourses conflict with transcendent discourse – as in Montana – individuals are more likely to express identities that reject the transcendent discourse. In Montana, local values related to work−life balance provided an alternative understanding of the meaning of entrepreneurship that went against the grain of more widely accepted entrepreneurial images and ideals (e.g. a fast-paced, all-encompassing, workaholic environment).
When considering how transcendent and locale-specific discourses manifested in these two regions, we are curious about the overlaps and distinctions. First, we can surmise that part of the reason these discourses aligned in Utah is owing to the Mormon Church’s presence. As a powerful discursive force in this state, the Mormon Church has tended to align with pro-business sentiments as part of its struggle to assimilate (Mauss, 1994a, 1994b; see also James, 2006). In Montana, however, there is no similar, dominant voice, and in fact, residents have often shunned attempts to dictate or control individuals’ lifestyles. Thus, one of the factors regarding how the entrepreneurial identities of a region align with transcendent discourses may be related to how much the region itself is coherent and formalized, and presents a collective mindset.
Additionally, one area where both sets of participants seemed unwilling to make concessions was related to personal issues such as family, marriage and lifestyle. In the case of Mormon participants, they were unwilling to sacrifice marriage and family values integral to Mormon doctrine in order to move to Silicon Valley or take on its associated values. Similarly, the Montana participants were unwilling to make concessions regarding their personal lives and recreational lifestyles. Both sets of participants, in fact, ‘wanted it all’ – a blend of business and family or lifestyle success. In this, our research suggests that although the ‘corporate colonization’ of life (Deetz, 1992) may be prevalent, it may also be the case that individuals are willing to draw the line at how much they will allow transcendent discourses to shape their lives.
Entrepreneurial and occupational identities contribute to place-making
Third, our findings illuminate not only how place shapes identity, but also shed light on how entrepreneurial or occupational identity might shape place. Places have multiple meanings and identities and, although there are shared meanings, there is not one sense of place that everyone holds in common (Massey, 1994). By conducting high-tech work in Utah and Montana, our participants are involved in the construction of those places. In our interviews, the participants positioned themselves as entrepreneurs, but also saw their efforts as connected to a broader effort of re-imagining the places where they lived. Utah participants connected with both the pioneering heritage of the Mormon Church and the new economy prestige of Silicon Valley in trying to shape Utah into the ‘Silicon Slopes’. Montana participants attempted to establish a high-tech sector in a place known for occupations associated with natural resource extraction. In doing high-tech work in Montana, they were implicitly influencing and shaping the occupational identity of the region. These observations lead us to consider how occupational identity discourses can be mobilized in the service of ‘place-making’, which ‘involves making sense of, inhabiting and/or modifying the physical form and content of a particular place’ (Thanem, 2012: 444). By exploring the productive overlap between identity and place, we might consider questions such as how does place get made, transformed or altered? And, who gets to contribute to place-making, and how? The participants we interviewed might argue that, as entrepreneurs, they have valuable and innovative strengths for place-making. But how might entrepreneurial influences on the construction of place also constrain possibilities for community identity and practice, even for marginalized groups deemed not ‘entrepreneurial enough’?
In place-making, we can also consider the making of place by occupation – that is, Silicon Valley or The Motor City. Where scholars have argued that place is formed within a particular location and the material forms and meanings attributed within that location (e.g. Gieryn, 2000; Sampson and Goodrich, 2009), our research recognizes place as a (semi-)coherent discourse open to fluctuation and fragmentation (Massey, 1994). Place-based discourse is not always fixed to a particular location, and the values generated around place can be mobilized to and manipulated within other places. In other words, place-based meanings do not always initiate at the particular, physical place in question, or in predictable ways. Although this might encourage us to consider transcendent identity discourses – including the Silicon Valley metonym – as ‘beyond place’, our research instead confirms that entrepreneurial and other occupational identities are not ‘place-less’. Rather, such identities are reinvested in the places in which they resonate by how they are transformed and combined with other (locale-specific) discourses.
Conclusion
By expanding attention to the array of discourses available for identity work, we have provided additional insight into how ideal entrepreneurial – and by extension, ideal occupational – identities are constructed in contemporary work discourses. Our analysis focused on three places where entrepreneurial identities are dominant or emergent to varying degrees: Silicon Valley, Utah and Montana. Our study shows that in the case of entrepreneurs in Utah and Montana, the locale-specific understandings of place are not the only place-based influences on entrepreneurial identity. Rather, transcendent discourses and locale-specific discourses interact to construct the ideal entrepreneurial identity. When these sets of discourses align, individuals are likely to draw more freely from each to articulate an identity. When they conflict, individuals are more likely to outwardly identify with the locale-specific discourse, yet still acknowledge the desirability of the transcendent discourse. In these discursive struggles, place is not a fixed, bounded dimension of identity, but a discourse that can be challenged, fragmented and (re)appropriated. Yet, we hope that research on occupational identity and place does not stop here. Considering entrepreneurial identity at the intersection of place offers numerous possibilities for additional research, as does the provocative question of how identity constructions themselves engage in ‘place-making’.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Tim Kuhn, Kevin Barge, the editor, and the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful and encouraging comments. Some of the data for this article were drawn from Rebecca Gill’s MA thesis directed by Shiv Ganesh and PhD dissertation directed by Karen Lee Ashcraft.
Funding
Portions of this research were supported by the Steffensen-Cannon Fellowship at the University of Utah, USA and the University Small Grant Program at the University of Montana, USA.
1
Both authors contributed equally to this article, and our names are listed alphabetically to reflect this.