Well-trodden highways and roads less traveled: Entrepreneurial-oriented behavior and identity construction in international entrepreneurship narratives

Las sendas más trotadas y las rutas menos exploradas: Comportamiento emprendedor y construcción de identidad en base a narraciones sobre emprendimiento internacional

Satu Korhonen () and Tanja Leppäaho ()
Additional contact information
Satu Korhonen: Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology LUT
Tanja Leppäaho: Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology LUT

Journal of International Entrepreneurship, 2019, vol. 17, issue 3, No 5, 355-388

Abstract: Abstract We investigated the sense-making and contextual identity constructions of founder-CEOs of early and rapidly internationalized new ventures, seeking to gain new insights into individual-level international entrepreneurship and international entrepreneurial behavior. Via a constructivist study of 19 founder-CEOs’ life narratives, we explored how the formation of mental constructions—the narrative scripts—of the “self” as an actor derived from the founders’ episodic autobiographical memories, and formed the basis for their international entrepreneurial behavior. We arrived at five scripts of international entrepreneurial behavior, i.e., a Pioneer, Native, Diplomat, Gambler, and an Eclectic. Our findings show (a) how meaning-loaded narratives emerge from the individual-level sense-making of temporal and contextual experiences and (b) how narratives feed into identity construction. They also show that individuals within IE have very different background scripts in the progression to where they are now.

Keywords: International entrepreneur; International entrepreneurial behavior; Life experience; Narrative identity; Script; Emprendedor internacional; Comportamiento emprendedor internacional; Experiencia de vida; Identidad narrativa; Texto (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10843-019-00246-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jinten:v:17:y:2019:i:3:d:10.1007_s10843-019-00246-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ip/journal/10843/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10843-019-00246-3

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of International Entrepreneurship is currently edited by Hamid Etemad

More articles in Journal of International Entrepreneurship from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().