Entrepreneuring after 50: the liminal identity transitions of older emergent entrepreneurs

Lucia Garcia-Lorenzo, Lucia Sell-Trujillo and Paul Donnelly

Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 2020, vol. 32, issue 9-10, 922-942

Abstract: Entrepreneurship has been proposed as a solution to extending working lives. However, little is known about how older (50+) entrepreneurs manage their personal transitions into entrepreneurship. In this paper, we propose to use a liminal identity work perspective to explore the identity paradoxes that older entrepreneurs experience during their transition into entrepreneurship and how they manage it. We use a qualitative study conducted over 14 months in the United Kingdom. Our analysis shows how older entrepreneurs confront identity paradoxes, interruptions and identity polarization in their attempts to shift from older identities and activity patterns into new ones. The entrepreneurs who manage to overcome the identity interruptions and polarization that the transition brings move away from an initial sense of isolation and bring creative understandings to older entrepreneuring processes. Our results expand current understanding of entrepreneurial identity work in liminal conditions, especially among older entrepreneurs, by looking at the tensions emerging between potentially new and customary identities and behaviours as an important aspect of entrepreneuring transitions rather than as negative frictions to be avoided.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/08985626.2020.1849408 (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:taf:entreg:v:32:y:2020:i:9-10:p:922-942

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/TEPN20

DOI: 10.1080/08985626.2020.1849408

Access Statistics for this article

Entrepreneurship & Regional Development is currently edited by Professor Alistair Anderson

More articles in Entrepreneurship & Regional Development from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().