Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - How does an old firm learn new tricks? a material account of entrepreneurial opportunity
AU - Roscoe, Philip
AU - Discua Cruz, Allan
AU - Howorth, Carole
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - Opportunity has become the central concept in entrepreneurship. Discovery focused accounts assume opportunity to be objective and to exist independently of the entrepreneur. Process-focused studies critique such notions. We contribute to process-based conceptions of entrepreneurship with an account of opportunity as historically specific and materially embedded. Drawing on Latour we argue that opportunities are constituted through dense material networks. We argue that opportunity and entrepreneurship are mutually constitutive, and emphasise that the entrepreneur shares agency with a heterogeneous array of ‘actants’ in the network of opportunity. We make use of this framework in a historical analysis of a large family agribusiness in Honduras, illustrating the historically dependent nature of entrepreneurial process and the role that the material plays in it.
AB - Opportunity has become the central concept in entrepreneurship. Discovery focused accounts assume opportunity to be objective and to exist independently of the entrepreneur. Process-focused studies critique such notions. We contribute to process-based conceptions of entrepreneurship with an account of opportunity as historically specific and materially embedded. Drawing on Latour we argue that opportunities are constituted through dense material networks. We argue that opportunity and entrepreneurship are mutually constitutive, and emphasise that the entrepreneur shares agency with a heterogeneous array of ‘actants’ in the network of opportunity. We make use of this framework in a historical analysis of a large family agribusiness in Honduras, illustrating the historically dependent nature of entrepreneurial process and the role that the material plays in it.
KW - entrepreneur
KW - opportunity
KW - Honduras
KW - family business
KW - Latour
KW - actor network
U2 - 10.1080/00076791.2012.687540
DO - 10.1080/00076791.2012.687540
M3 - Journal article
VL - 55
SP - 53
EP - 72
JO - Business History
JF - Business History
SN - 0007-6791
IS - 1
ER -