Making sense of self-employment in late career : understanding the identity work of olderpreneurs

Mallett, O.; Wapshott, R.

doi:10.1177/0950017014546666

Making sense of self-employment in late career : understanding the identity work of olderpreneurs

Mallett, O.; Wapshott, R.

Authors

O. Mallett

R. Wapshott

Abstract

The enterprise culture is a pervasive socio-historical discourse. This article adopts a narrative identity work approach to explore how individuals may exert agency to make sense of and negotiate with the structuring features of such discourses. Older entrepreneurs are an interesting case through which to explore these processes because ageing is predominantly portrayed as a form of decline to be resisted or hidden and as inherently anti-enterprise. Qualitative, in-depth, semi-structured interviews with two UK-based older entrepreneurs reveal how they engaged problematically with discourses around enterprise culture and ageing in constructing their identities. Sedimentation and innovation are proposed as valuable concepts for understanding how particular discourses become embedded in the understanding and identity work of individuals and how they seek to exert agency. The findings demonstrate the difficulties in innovative identity work for older entrepreneurs and this is discussed in terms of narrative resource poverty.

Citation

Mallett, O., & Wapshott, R. (2015). Making sense of self-employment in late career : understanding the identity work of olderpreneurs. Work, Employment and Society, 29(2), 250-266. https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017014546666

Journal Article Type	Article
Publication Date	Mar 1, 2015
Deposit Date	Nov 3, 2014
Publicly Available Date	Nov 5, 2014
Journal	Work, Employment and Society
Print ISSN	0950-0170
Electronic ISSN	1469-8722
Publisher	SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	29
Issue	2
Pages	250-266
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017014546666
Keywords	Discourse, Enterprise culture, Entrepreneur, Identity, Late career, Narrative.
Public URL	https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1451340

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Copyright Statement
Mallett, O. and Wapshott, R. (2015) 'Making sense of self-employment in late career : understanding the identity work of olderpreneurs.', Work, employment and society., 29 (2). pp. 250-266. © The Author(s) 2015. Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications.