The Culturally Contingent Meaning of Entrepreneurship. A Phenomenographic Approach

Despite the expansion of entrepreneurship research to other contexts, Western theories on entrepreneurial archetypes have often been considered the universal truth, and assumed to be directly transferable to entrepreneurs in other countries. We argue that entrepreneurship is performed in practical consciousness and therefore should be understood through the lived experiences of entrepreneurs. In this study we employ phenomenography to investigate culturally-contingent aspects of entrepreneurship. We analyze the differences in perception of entrepreneurial activity between the Dutch and Wenzhou-Dutch entrepreneurs, both managing ventures in the Netherlands. We reflect upon entrepreneurs' embeddedness in the socio-economic system they participate it. By focusing on two groups operating in the same micro-economic context we show in what ways cultural upbringing impacts entrepreneurial behaviours and the perceptions of business venturing. We present six distinctive conceptions of entrepreneurial activity that emerged from our in-depth investigation. This research extends our understanding of culturally-contingent entrepreneurial action beyond the studies on international and migrant entrepreneurship by focusing on the subjective, lived experiences of successful businesspeople. We show that distinctive entrepreneurial strategies are perceived as crucial even if the entrepreneurs operate in the very same socio-economic context. Our investigation indicates that entrepreneurship research could benefit by employing more interpretative methodologies such as phenomenography.  

Betina Szkudlarek is a Lecturer in Cross-cultural Management at The University of Sydney Business School. She obtained her PhD in Management from the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (The Netherlands) where she worked as an Assistant Professor prior to joining the University of Sydney. Betina's core research interests lie at the intersection of cross-cultural management, international HRM, and management of diversity. Her work has been published in international journals such as Organization Studies, International Journal of Intercultural Relations and Journal of Business Ethics. Betina has a wide experience in training, coaching and mentoring in various areas linked to intercultural communication, cross-cultural management, human resources and management of diversity. She has worked with corporate and governmental clients including, among others, Shell, Deutsche Telekom, Daimler, MAN, Kaspersky, and the Dutch Platform for Foreigners Rijnmond.