Neoliberalist Undercurrents in Entrepreneurship Policy

Introduction

‘Truth’—can we know it? The persistent pursuit of answers that enhance our lives is part of the human condition. As researchers, our quest is to try to uncover the sets of verifiable, factual principles upon which we can co-create our reality and provide evidence whereupon our political, economic and social governance structures can be shaped, in order to contribute to strong, sustainable and coordinated global efforts. History tells us, however, that ‘fact’ does not always point to resolved consensus on matters. Since we live in dynamic diversity, omnia mutantur is our reality, with some of our most ingrained ‘factual’ knowledge having been continuously contested—to our advantage. Our world is not flat. Matter is made up of 99.99 per cent empty space. And, capitalism is not only about capital. This leads us to notably keep questioning in areas where there are knowledge gaps, and to also question, in our changing times, the knowledge upon which we determine action. Alas, when ‘fact’ has been discovered, and a wave of studies supports its veracity, the value of re-examination can be complex.

At the foundation of research, optimistically, lies the splendour of all development: a question. Some sets of questions lead us to confirm or validate knowledge, others lead us to nullify and correct, and others still, lead us to deeper processes of inquiry. In our article, the latter will guide us. We take this opportunity to reflect upon a ‘common sense’, taken-for-granted premise that is heavily reinforced by research and strengthened by government policies alike: that entrepreneurship is a positive economic and social strategy—semper ad meliora.

Setting the stage for this reflection, we first come to acknowledge that neoliberalism is the dominant enacted ideology of our globalized world (Harvey, 2005; Morgan, 2015). And, not only does it influence governance frameworks and markets, but also—as ideology in general does—it influences scientific research (Greenwood & Van Buren, 2017). ‘Objective’ knowledge, thus, may inveigle or be inveigled by neoliberal ideals, and in turn, valuations of entrepreneurship’s fundamentals may be of the same hue, by design (Ogbor, 2000). The reflections presented in this article are especially inspired by Bal and Dóci (2018) who have analysed how neoliberal ideology has affected assumptions of work and organizational psychology as a field of research, also in terms of workplace practices. Within these processes, the role of neoliberal ideology oft became invisible and was therefore neglected in academic and professional discourses. Paralleling this, we contend that the field of entrepreneurship—research and policy—has equally neglected investigations into the role of neoliberal ideology.

This leads us to formulate the following question that will help to probe more deeply into the overwhelmingly positive affirmations attributed to entrepreneurship: How has neoliberal ideology affected our assumptions of the role of entrepreneurship for economic development and how has this unfolded in government policies on entrepreneurship? The modicum we present here is nevertheless a requisite to future studies and policies. Our intention is to generate further reflections, debate and open critical discussions by casting a light into a renewed awareness of the influence that ideology—and in this case, neoliberalism—has on our research and the conclusions it achieves. Karatas-Ozkan, Anderson, Fayolle, Howells, and Condor (2014) have postulated that in order to more deeply engage in philosophical and theoretical foundations of entrepreneurship research, it is our duty to clarify paradigms. Hence, as the better part of entrepreneurship literature delineates entrepreneurial activity as desirable, there is an existing need of critical perspectives (Verduyn, Dey, & Tedmanson, 2017).

Neoliberalism and the Entrepreneur

Neoliberalism, the current shape of capitalism, is nowadays widely perceived as the natural state of affairs (Harvey, 2005)—this is in spite of evidence that the latest financial and economic crises resulted in large part, due to the dominance of the ideology (Bal & Dóci, 2018; Harvey, 2005; Morgan, 2015). At its base, neoliberalism maintains that the maximization of individual economic freedom in society will enhance human well-being (Bal & Dóci, 2018; Fine & Saad-Filho, 2017; Harvey, 2005). Therefore, its political underpinnings concern: instrumentality, individualism and competition, among people and organizations. The effects of neoliberalism manifest in deregulation policy, privatization and the withdrawal of governments from social services.

Notwithstanding, it has been argued that left unattended, a purely neoliberal organization of societies will generate winners and losers (McGuigan, 2014; Bal & Dóci, 2018), with a small number of organizations and key figures who end up controlling a substantial share of the global resources and markets (Vitali, Glattfelder, & Battiston, 2011). With multinational corporations taking over (George, 2014), in a so-called free market, competition focuses on the maximization of profits (Lazonick, 2014). The result is an abundance of examples, globally, that demonstrate rising income inequality. Piketty (2015) claims that today’s levels of inequality in terms of wealth and incomes are the highest in human history and data indicate trends of ongoing unequal social mobility (Eurofound, 2017) and unequal access to human capital development programmes, such as education. Driving this, are neoliberalist ideals, developing institutional practices that enact the vision of the ‘enterprise form’, extending it ‘to all forms of conduct’ (Burchell, 1993, p. 275) and to subjectivity itself (McNay, 2009; Scharff, 2016). Therefore, as a compromise, and to regulate against exaggerated inequality, governments’ role has been one of intervention, making adjustments that are set to safeguard fair competition. Over time, policies have evolved in order to tune the forces of disparity so as to ensure the most amount of benefits attain the greatest number of people.

Yet, how did neoliberalism create such a strong link between economic development and entrepreneurship? Szeman (2015, p. 473) describes it as somewhat of a closed-loop logic: the entrepreneur is hailed as a glorious hero, the ‘perfect figure’ who ‘embodies the values and attributes that are celebrated as essential for the economy to operate smoothly and for the contemporary human being to flourish’. Highlighted as the ‘common-sense way of navigating the inevitable, irreproachable, and apparently unchangeable reality of global capitalism’ (Szeman, 2015, p. 473), the entrepreneur-hero further legitimizes neoliberalism. Consequently, entrepreneurship has come to embody the principles of our modern socioeconomy, in which markets synonymously denote societies, and which then, following Audretsch’s (2009) contention, become entrepreneurial societies.

As of late, entrepreneurship has come to be known as the new socioeconomic ‘common sense’ (Lewis-Kraus, 2014; Szeman, 2015). The entrepreneur is hailed as a cultural hero and self-employment has become an idealized aspiration—combining freedom and independence, wealth and hard work, while creating added value for the economy and society. This ‘common sense’ has infiltrated the public and private spheres alike, thus ‘we are all entrepreneurs now, or, at a minimum, we all live in a world in which unquestioned social value and legitimacy of entrepreneurship shapes public policy, social development, economic futures and cultural beliefs and expectations’ (Szeman, 2015, p. 472). In the academic discourse, this ‘common sense’ reflects the contextual embeddedness of entrepreneurship, befitting Scott’s (1995) institutional framework with the regulatory, normative and cognitive pillars, each offering a different rationale for providing legitimacy; either by virtue of being legally sanctioned, morally authorized, or culturally supported (Garud, Hardy, & Maguire, 2007).

Extended to the national level, countries have become ‘start-up nations’, such as Israel (Senor & Singer, 2009), encouraging entrepreneurship at the individual, business and nationwide levels (Bank & Almor, 2013). Based on 2012 European Commission data (European Commission, 2014), entrepreneurship in Israel is a desirable career choice for six out of ten Israelis and successful entrepreneurs enjoy a significantly higher status in Israel than in the EU, also reflected in a social atmosphere that celebrates entrepreneurship. At the same time, data published in the Central Bureau of Statistics’ report on industry for the years 2011–2016 (CBS, 2018; Levy, 2018) show that the great majority of start-ups fail and do not earn a return for their investors. In 2016, more start-ups closed down as compared to 2015 and 2014, even though 2016 was a record year at the time for fundraising by Israeli start-ups (Levy, 2018).

In spite of such bleak performances and political aggrandizement, the entrepreneur-hero as an archetype has arisen in popular culture as the outcome of ideology. Television shows such as ‘Shark Tank’ and ‘How I Made My Millions’ glorify the riskiness of entrepreneurial behaviour, along with New York Times Bestsellers, such as The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future by Chris Guillebeau (2013) and The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Ries (2011). All promote the narrative that entrepreneurship can lead to enormous success, and that who wins is largely a democratic process for anyone with a little creativity, willing to put in the persistent effort required: even Barbie has become an entrepreneur in 2014 (Lacina, 2014).

The Historical Context that Shapes the Positive Relationship Between Entrepreneurship and Economic Development

The roots of neoliberalism lead us back to the unfavourable global political and economic conditions of the late-1970s, followed by the elections of the U.S.’ Republican Ronald Reagan (1981–1989) and UK’s Conservative Margaret Thatcher (1979–1990). The Western economic model of large firms dominating the market shifted to one that embraced a large number of small firms who could operate within free international markets, with little or no state intervention (Nightingale & Coad, 2014). It was in this period that the entrepreneur as a hero emerged, as a panacea to the required change that could lift the veil of economic failures. Western markets became increasingly deindustrialized and nationalized industries began commercializing. The drastic shift in the organization of markets was one that convinced voters they could have more command over their prosperity, and this was a line of reasoning that was enchanting, given the devastating twentieth-century losses that took place under government intervention. Neoliberal processes were a reaction to the collapse of welfare mechanisms, the social democratic parties, and Keynesianism. As the rhetoric emerged in political spheres, momentum was picking up in new neoliberal policies which included tax cuts and support for new business. Moreover, since economic success largely characterized the 1980s, as did advances in technology, science and globalized coordination, free market values became the progressive ideal.

Technological changes and innovations developed, interwoven within neoliberalism, as the material and ideational coalesced in a waltz of socioeconomic growth. Uber can serve as a more modern example of such technological changes, Influencing new user-producer relationships. Using smartphone technology, Uber effectively outsourced work to individual private drivers; improving transportation service for the masses on the one-hand, while driving temporary and independent work as the new norm on the other-hand, squeezing taxi and transport delivery businesses into a suspended future. Uber became the ‘poster child for the gig economy’ (Brooks, 2018); encouraging the collective (sharing) economy at a micro-level, as the incarnation of neoliberalism at the macro-level. This also serves as an example of how we can position innovation as a ‘value-neutral process of supply and demand’ (Papaioannou, 2019, p. 1), which upon closer inspection, may equally serve to promulgate ostensibly combating forces within our socio-economies. Indeed, technological advances of the 1980s have made outsourcing and subcontracting infinitely more profitable, thereby reinforcing the neoliberal ideal and placing the individual at the centre of market forces, responsible for making good on individualized strategies for added value in an unstructured professional life cycle. As a whole, these seemingly positive shifts came to be attributed to a minimization of government regulation and—at least in part—to greater entrepreneurship, giving rise to an important demand for research that could support the new order (Nightingale & Coad, 2014).

More recently, we can find a wide array of government policies that strengthen the promotion of entrepreneurship. Europe has an Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan (European Commission, 2013), the Bologna Process also includes policies on SMEs and entrepreneurship. In 2000, the first OECD SME Ministerial Conference took place in Bologna (14–15 June), entitled ‘Enhancing the competitiveness of SMEs in the global economy: Strategies and policies’, followed by its second, ‘Promoting entrepreneurship and innovative SMEs in a global economy’ in Istanbul (3–5 June 2004) and third, ‘Better financing for entrepreneurship and SME growth’ in Brasilia (27–29 March 2006). In the United States, the Global Entrepreneurship Program, run by the Department of States, aims to stimulate entrepreneurship ecosystems for scaling small businesses and Partnering to Accelerate Entrepreneurship, a USAID-private sector partnership, draws upon venture capital, as well as U.S. social investment funds to invest in new business nationally as well as internationally. Also, funds from the U.S.’ Department of Commerce are used to catalyse, foster and monetize new ideas through the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, as well as the Regional Innovation Strategies Program. In Australia, the Innovation Policy Platform provides grants and assistance to entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship non-formal training programmes. These are but a few examples from around the globe that illustrate how well-oiled the engine of entrepreneurialism has become. Goffee and Scase (2015) equally note that entrepreneurship holds strong symbolic and cultural value, which they attribute to tales of the modern world being built by ‘self-made men’.

Evidence of the (Non-) Contributions of SMEs to the Economy

A number of critical perspectives on the link between entrepreneurship and economic prosperity highlight the research challenges of supporting this ideal. Nightingale and Coad (2014) draw attention to serious research flaws that in turn, undermine the legitimacy of political claims and government policies that heavily promote entrepreneurship. They explain that the poor quality of available of data on SMEs gives way to uncertain analyses at best and often biased statistics, leading to poor, unreliable results. The high proportion of SMEs that exit the market within three years or less, makes for missing data, inaccurate data (also due to low reporting requirements for small firms) and unrepresentative data (e.g. in large part, only survivor data is being analysed). Secondly, they criticize data samples for being unrepresentative as some of the most seminal work on entrepreneurship examines an ‘atypical […] tiny minority of the most successful cases, and, although highly visible, [these] give a misleading picture of entrepreneurship in general’ (Nightingale & Coad, 2014, p. 120). Within this logic, they argue that focus on the average performance of a certain group of firms provides ‘extremely skewed’ conclusions; again, because ‘it is potentially misleading to connect the properties of atypical subsamples to the entire populations of firms’ (Nightingale & Coad, 2014, pp. 120–121). Lauding the incredible successes of start-ups such as Google, SAP and EasyJet essentially propagates a myth that is founded on atypical cases and exemplifies the ideological mechanism promoting neoliberalism in itself and for itself: take the exception and make it the rule—just like Oprah Winfrey’s pathos of ‘anyone can do it’. Rather, Shane contends that SMEs can often be considered as ‘wage-substitution businesses that have more in common with self-employment than with the creation of high growth companies’ (Shane, 2009, p. 142).

Moreover, Nightingale and Coad (2014) have highlighted the critical problem of definitional ambiguity that, consequently, renders comparative studies troublesome. Small business and entrepreneurship are terms often used interchangeably in research, as well as in policy. Other definitions that seem malleable include ‘small’, which can differ from country to country, and ‘new business’ or ‘start-up’, which may come to include older firms that are re-started. The temporal problematic confounds data once more, as determining the ‘birth’ of a firm is not always straightforward; some use profits, others use payroll, others use date of registration or registration of VAT (among others) (Nightingale & Coad, 2014, p. 122). In addition, regression bias has contributed to the potential fallacy that SMEs disproportionately create jobs (as growth is typically attributed to SMEs, and decline is mostly attributed to large firms) (Nightingale & Coad, 2014, pp. 122–123).

Beck, Demirgüç-Kunt, and Levine (2003) have made similar critiques of available data, and misguided conclusions drawn from flawed studies, having analysed an association (not a causation) between SMEs and economic growth across 76 countries. They insist that the relationship between SMEs and overall economic performance and growth is not robust enough; moreover, that the associations made about SMEs alleviating poverty are weak. In developing and transitioning market economies, such as former Soviet countries as well as periphery and semi-periphery countries, self-employment is more commonplace (Bråten, 2013; Shane, 2009; Smallbone & Welter, 2001) and contributes to survival, sometimes supplementing a poor wage from full-time employment or making up for the precariousness of work and unemployment. However this does not necessarily equate to economic growth. Shane (2009, p. 143) notes that as countries become wealthier, the number of start-ups diminishes given that the opportunity cost of opening a business grows with wage increases and, that economic value shifts from agriculture, to manufacturing to services. In Figure 1, the trend of self-employment reflects a somewhat stabilized rate in core countries, as well as for SMEs in general, depicting Shane’s (2009) conjecture. Notable in Figure 2 is a sharper increase of employment in SMEs only within the listed periphery country. In core countries, rates have either declined or have only slightly increased.

Shane (2009, p. 145) has further noted that start-ups in typical start-up fields such as service industries and manufacturing offer fewer benefits, lower wages, less full-time hours, less job-security and have a crude survival rate to employment—the latter is a non-deterring fact well known to policymakers, researchers and the general public. Thus, his overall appraisal is to question why entry barriers into typical businesses are so low and unregulated, especially if these market sectors lure unemployed persons (who have the least opportunity cost) to start a business? Within a natural life-and-death cycle of business, one may infer the shadow of an answer: the unemployed become actively ‘employed’, even if temporarily, pouring out savings into the economy towards their entrepreneurial goals, taking out loans and making purchases in acquiring the necessary start-up capital. Thus, they contribute to the market and the sustainability of neoliberal ideals.

Reinforcing the notion that the link made between growth and entrepreneurship is more allegoric than fact, Acs, Åstebro, Audretsch, and Robinson (2016, p. 45) contend that ‘most new firms create no additional jobs beyond those for the entrepreneur himself’. As a result, they lay the argument that government policy should not remarkably support individuals who seek self-employment; rather, individuals should achieve this through their own desires and strategies. Simply, they critique that ‘most [would be] better off not becoming entrepreneurs’ (Acs et al., 2016, p. 40).

On a more fundamental level, Perren and Jennings (2005) have cautioned that entrepreneurship researchers whose studies support current generative—rather than regulative—policies do not elaborate upon their underlying philosophical assumptions. They put us on notice regarding inherent bias in how entrepreneurship impact is examined, interpreted and enacted. The conflict is with governments and researchers who both evaluate entrepreneurship as functional in the economy while ignoring cardinal questions of individual and lobby interests. As a consequence, and in this same vein, Beck et al. (2003) contend that the scale of government resources made available to new businesses cannot be adequately justified. This controverts public policy that encourages and supports business start-ups. As Shane (2009) put it, it is ‘bad public policy’, despite popular arguments. Optimistically, however, is that more recent studies highlight the difficulties of attributing positive macroeconomic causality through entrepreneurship studies. Nevertheless, there is a large body of literature that already does (Nightingale & Coad, 2014).

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Figure 1.

Source: European Commission (2017, p. 520).

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Figure 2.

Source: European Commission (2017, p. 31).

Why Then, do Governments Promote Entrepreneurship?

It appears as though governments are investing in businesses that will either never scale or are destined to fail. How then, can consensus for entrepreneurially generative public policy resound? Perhaps policy support should be more discriminating, while maintaining its ideology and overarching neoliberal penchant? Investing through loans, tax incentives, subsidies, grants and other enticements could shift from promoting typical, high-failure-rate start-ups to atypical, high-growth, high-potential businesses—in a similar fashion to how venture capitalists would invest. As we have seen in the previous section, current empirical data does not evidence that typical entrepreneurships contribute to macroeconomic growth. They are also not ordinarily innovative, nor do they invest in research and development, add to greater employment or higher rates of country productivity. From Naudé’s (2016, p. 2) point of view, it ‘seems more reasonable to conclude that economic growth drives entrepreneurship and small business start-up rather than vice versa’. And, following this line of reasoning, governments promote entrepreneurship for self-legitimization and other similar validation needs. In other words, governments are actively creating entrepreneurs, thereby once again proving the fact that markets are not free from governmental interventions under neoliberalism (Harvey, 2005). Governments do intervene, but only in order to expand and enhance market dynamics, rather than limit and restrict them (Springer, 2016).

Adding to Naudé’s (2016) perspective, Perren and Jennings (2005) undertook a study that explores government discourses on entrepreneurship and found that governments’ initiatives are what make entrepreneurship possible; as a result of the provision of the necessary conditions to start-up. Through their analysis of seven national discourses (Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Thailand, the UK and the United States), the authors uncovered strong traces of political power and self-legitimization, imbued with entrepreneurial subjugation; a subjugation that bonds the small, risk-stricken entrepreneur to the patriarchal, colonial super-power of a legal structure and political purse. What ensues from such an interpretation is a paradox: SMEs are to scale in order to contribute to growth, but government discourse reveals the need to keep SMEs somewhat strapped, or at least, curbed in size and power. Around the globe, size generally ranges between < 100 and < 500 (Ayyagari, Beck, & Demirgüç-Kunt, 2007) and in Europe, the main characteristics of an SME are illustrated in Table 1.

As Figure 3 depicts, the majority of SMEs in Europe (56 per cent of all active businesses) are run for the purposes of self-employment. The EU provides several reasons for this trend, including the changing context of work towards ‘the “gig” economy and the “sharing” or “collaborative” economy’ in which specific skills and expertise are supplied temporarily—a desire by relatively young market participants to work independently, a stagnation in job offerings, downsizing and outsourcing work trends and government policies geared towards stimulating self-employment (European Commission, 2017, pp. 48–49).

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Table 1.

An SME in Europe

Company category	Staff headcount	Turnover or balance sheet total
Medium-sized	< 250	< € 50 m	< € 43 m
Small	< 50	< € 10 m	< € 10 m
Micro	< 10	< € 2 m	< € 2 m

Source: European Commission (2017, p. 11).

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Figure 3.

Source: European Commission (2017, p. 18).

Altogether, this illustrates a different kind of precariousness to work in core countries, as might be expected in periphery countries. Nevertheless, the temporality of work, whether specialized or general, appears as somewhat global.

Leading from this, it may be argued that entrepreneurship is a means through which governments and large employers may also shift the responsibility for full employment onto the individual, reflecting neoliberal ideology as well. Very much in line with Brown’s (2015) notion of ‘homo-economicus’ but focusing more on the micro-level, Scharff (2016) makes the point that contemporary entrepreneurs have internalized neoliberalism into their entrepreneurial subjectivity. Her research data points to an entrepreneurial subjectivity that rejects non-entrepreneurs, perceiving the self as a business, surviving difficulties in a constantly competitive discourse with the self and others. ‘Homo-economicus’ is a person that perceives everything in terms of profits, including things that were once extra-economic, like personal relationships or social and political justice. This particular entrepreneurial perspective strongly fits with current entrepreneurial governmental policies.

On a more macro-level, de Sá Mello da Costa and Silva Saraiva (2012) discuss the hegemonic discourse on entrepreneurship as a means to question how entrepreneurship has become the ideology of the ‘new capitalist spirit’. They identify a number of what they denote ‘discursive silences’ that can shed additional light on the motivations of government-sponsored entrepreneurial policies, in spite of very mixed research results on the matter. There is silence about the negative sides of entrepreneurship; failures are only mentioned when its overcoming leads ultimately to success; and ‘the implications of the (re)production of entrepreneurial ideals towards contemporary labour relations are not questioned’ (de Sá Mello da Costa & Silva Saraiva, 2012, p. 606), reflecting the new labour market employment norm of temporary work. Critical perspectives maintain that power relations are not openly discussed, though examinations on discourse clearly highlight that power stakes are high (Perren & Jennings, 2005). Adding to this, although Acs et al. (2016) do not answer the question as to why governments promote entrepreneurship, they investigate government policies critically, asking whether there is a strong motivation for public policies to push people into self-employment and entrepreneurship. They posit that for policies to be viable ‘there should be evidence of the need for more entrepreneurs, evidence of harm to society from the undersupply of entrepreneurs and the evidence that policy interventions can correct the problem’ (Acs et al., 2016, p. 49). However, their argumentation maintains that these three evidences do not exist or are not well articulated in academic research, and nor are they being investigated by governments prior to policy initiation. Equally meaningful would be to ask the question as to why this is the case.

Leading from Perren and Jennings (2005) and de Sá Mello da Costa and Silva Saraiva (2012), a clear line has been traced that links governments’ promotion of entrepreneurship research to self-legitimization. Founded on certain popularized notions that developed in the Reagan-Thatcher era of Western political economies about the benefits of laisser faire, neoliberalism holds a pervasive ‘common-sense understanding’ (Harvey, 2005, p. 41 quoted in Bal & Dóci, 2018, p. 3), laced with the allure of the promise of limitless economic freedom. Yet, megamergers are taking place, oligopolies are thriving and a minority business elite still rules across core country market economies. Nevertheless, there is a normative demand for entrepreneurship by both the public and its leaders that reflects and reinforces political ideologies. The self-determined entrepreneurial actor, hero, has become the aspiring self and governments are encouraging core and periphery country constituents to take on the entrepreneurial challenge. Voters seek policies that are entrepreneurially friendly and much like aid and its questionable positive impact in periphery nations (Naudé, 2016), policymakers enact entrepreneurial policies that align with popular notions, rather than evidence, in their need for continuous self-legitimization.

Conclusion

In this article, we have endeavoured towards a more critical perspective upon the widely adopted and promoted ‘common sense fact’ that entrepreneurship is an everlastingly positive economic activity, directly contributing to growth and social benefits that must thus be embraced by all. By first acknowledging neoliberalism as the dominant ideology of our times, we then proceeded to ask how it might have affected both our academic research and socioeconomic policies, globally, and how in concert, this has led to our taken-for-granted impression that entrepreneurship is a panacea.

Reflecting upon the critiques undertaken by the various researchers cited, data upon which public policies for entrepreneurship are based can be considered questionable and even troublesome. More recent studies highlight that although entrepreneurship and economic growth can coexist and parallel one another, causation is still tricky. There is a growing number of researchers, however, who are resolute on forging a new path in critical entrepreneurship studies (CES) (Verduyn et al., 2017), examining the motivations and outcomes beyond monetization and economics. Nevertheless, today’s neoliberal model has come to synonymously denote markets and societies. With increasing socioeconomic inequalities, heightened by early-twenty-first century market crashes and persistent divides between core and periphery countries, we must take pause as to our future ideological approaches.

Neoliberalism emerged following difficult historical periods of the twentieth century, characterized by interventionist governance, economic strife and war. Propelled by the Reagan-Thatcher era of the 1980s and 1990s and some years of prosperity in core countries, pressure mandated research that could establish a link between growth and SME activities. At the same time, popular culture came to glorify the entrepreneur as an iconic hero that anyone could personify—hued by the nuances of democracy and freedom from government control. With perseverance and stamina, a creative business design could come to market and potentially make its creator very, very wealthy in all aspects of her/his life. As a concept, entrepreneurship cares not for barriers. Popular rhetoric tells us that one can transcend any obstacle through entrepreneurialism; hence, it has become desirable to the masses, who further garner support from governments. Numerous policies that tout nations as ‘start-up communities’ have emerged, including funding schemes, taxation benefits, subsidies and other incentives for new business owners. Yet, results remain mixed.

Despite being the cultural zeitgeist, the entrepreneur-hero’s typical business is hidden from popular discourse, as are governmentally created opportunities for unproductive entrepreneurship (Mitra, 2012). Instead, an atypical minority of extremely successful cases have attracted interest—media, research and policy—and have attached themselves onto the zeitgeist model. However, some researchers have serious contentions with the myth. In periphery countries, entrepreneurship is still used as a means to overcome the precariousness of work, characterized by part-time or low wages and unemployment. In core countries, such as in the EU, entrepreneurship in the form of self-employment accounts for 56 per cent of all active enterprises (European Commission, 2017, p. 18). In these regions, instability in labour conditions—e.g. short-term contractual work—affects the individual’s need and desire for independent work, also as a strategy to supplement or replace current income streams. In both cases, self-employment through microenterprises does not automatically translate into macro-level growth. Such businesses will not scale, because they have not been conceived for that purpose. What the trend reveals, however, is that neoliberalism has entered entrepreneurial subjectivity on the micro-level (Scharff, 2016).

Overall, neoliberalism has been construed as supportive of unregulated market mechanisms, though it seems that unregulated market mechanisms would damage SME and small scale entrepreneurships (Naudé, 2016). The ideology itself cannot easily allow evidence that ‘independent entrepreneurial action’ is not productive, yet a closer look at hegemonic political discourse reveals a patriarchal relationship between the SME-owner and the state that needs to be preserved for self-legitimizing reasons and control (Perren & Jennings, 2005).

Maintaining that entrepreneurship is good for everyone could be counterproductive, however, because the general population is becoming more aware of the risk and failure rates, despite the romanticized view of the zeitgeist. The examples being lauded in media reports are far out of reach of ordinary people—Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Richard Branson do not reflect the prototypical entrepreneur. Rather, reflecting the true power of ideology, they epitomize the cultural stereotype that captures the current myths and obscene levels of inequality emerge not despite, but because of this.

Entrepreneurship-hopefuls are so subjugated to parable (Perren & Jennings, 2005) and thus support government incentive policies that in turn, actualize a dependency on the state for entrepreneurship; since it is made clear that entrepreneurs can only make successful contributions to national economies, by e.g. scaling, when they are helped by governments. Counterintuitive to neoliberal ideology, governments are using policy to keep entrepreneurships small while entrepreneurships, by definition, seek to liberate themselves from policy. These institutional framework strategies have eclipsed almost all national borders; from core countries to periphery. However, since the needs of market economies at varying stages of development differ, we might want to re-examine international policy so as to make it reflective of both rigorous research conclusions and contextual realities.

Simply, there is a strong argument that refutes the scale of government resources made available to new businesses, stating they cannot be adequately justified based on our available knowledge. Put differently, governments are actively creating entrepreneurs (Naudé, 2016; Perren & Jennings, 2005) but are not necessarily contributing to sustainable business, given the failure rates.

In line with the reflections presented in this article, Ogbor’s (2000) critique of entrepreneurial studies leads us to question our underpinning ideologies. He contends that our obtuseness leads us towards dysfunctional views that are based on bias and contradictions. As we do, Ogbor asks the community to be self-reflective, and draws upon Schumpeter’s (1950, p. xi) preface to Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy to implore researchers and practitioners to ‘think’ and to ‘look at familiar problems which appeared as “evident truths” with fresh eyes’ (Ogbor, 2000, p. 628). He further notes that entrepreneurship discourse is imbued with ‘values about a demarcated part of social reality which is illuminated in a selective and legitimizing way’ (Ogbor, 2000, p. 629), as evidence produced reinforces a social order—a myth—which in turn, justifies the empirics gathered, completing a closed-loop logic.

There remains a hush about the negative sides of entrepreneurship, save for our glorifications of its overcoming in tales of success. However, in its infinite forms, entrepreneurship will continue to exist and it will continue to be an integral part of personal and national employment strategies—for different reasons in different places—an intrinsic part of labour markets in developed and developing countries. Indeed, it can be both perceived as a possible way out of precariousness in developing countries and as a possible way into precariousness in developed countries. For these fundamental reasons, we suggest that a critical perspective onto entrepreneurship and its interrelationship with neoliberalist goals is crucial to unfolding its emancipating forces and its role as a political and social change agent.