Entrepreneurial Cognition

by Dean A Shepherd

  Consider, for example, the integration of one’s founder and parental identities at a single table that at the same time represents (or frequently transitions between being) a kitchen table (parental identity) and a boardroom table (founder identity). The weakness of the boundaries improves the integration strategy’s effectiveness at managing these founder and family-related identities to balance distinctiveness and belonging . Despite Friedman’s (1991) argument that family firm interests are in most cases not in full alignment (1991), some founders’ non-entrepreneurial identities can improve their role as entrepreneur. For instance, Stewart (2003: 387) highlighted the crucial role of family kinship in improving entrepreneurial activities: “relatives provide a diffuse, long term source of social support that underwrites the capacity of entrepreneurs to take short term risks (Mattessich and Hill 1976).” It could be that the feeling of belonging resulting from a family identity could enhance one’s entrepreneurial role by increasing the distinctiveness of the identity. Research has also highlighted some examples of synergies in which the role of entrepreneur bolsters individuals’ feelings of belonging . For instance, work in a family firm could help strengthen one’s marriage (Wicker and Burley 1991).

  Thus, synergies can raise the psychological well-being curve more than would occur if the effects of the two micro-identities were simply added together. However, for this to happen, there has to be potential for realizing synergies due to a boundary between two micro-identities that is characterized by permeability and flexibility and a strategy to achieve integration. Configurations that involve psychological integration will not be able to yield the same fit and thus will not result in similar psychological well-being advantages. While compartmentalization can lead to a suitable “fit” in the case of boundaries with little permeability and the lack of synergies, this “best” configuration of compartmentalization improves well-being to a lesser extent than the “best” configuration of integration as the latter can harness potential synergies. Therefore, with high identity synergy potential, individuals who use integration to manage multiple micro-identities likely have higher psychological well-being when identity boundaries are weaker than when they are stronger (Shepherd and Haynie 2009a). Moreover, in case there are higher levels of synergies and weaker boundaries, entrepreneurs with greater identity integration have higher well-being than would result from any other blend of strategy, boundary strength, and synergy level (Shepherd and Haynie 2009a).

  Work Roles, Organizational Identification, and Disjunctive Transitions

  As discussed previously, one’s vocation is central to his or her identity . In other words, individuals’ answer to the question “Who Am I?” often centers on a work role: I am a teacher, a doctor, an architect, a marine, and so on. Scholars have tended to investigate the relationship between identity and career in terms of occupational socialization (Nicholson 1984), role transitions (Nicholson 1984), and the processes underlying the identity conflict and change that stems from such transitions (Ashforth 2001; Ashforth et al. 2000; Ashforth and Mael 1989). This stream of research has two common cases: a relatively stable identity conflicting with changing role expectations (Swann 1987, 2005) and an evolving notion of the self conflicting with fixed role expectations (Snyder and Swann 1978; Stryker 1987). Both cases begin an incremental identity-change process that unfolds over time and is usually presumed to be path dependent—that is, future work roles are generally presumed to be explicitly “related” to one’s prior career roles (Rosenbaum 1979). Additionally, although we know that vocational identity change is a path-dependent process, there is a dearth of research on identity change in response to events that almost immediately “strip” a person of his or her closely held and valued vocational identity, thus breaking his or her career path (e.g., entrepreneurial failure ). Vocational identity can be defined in terms of both work role—“a set of expectations about behavior, attitudes, and values associated with a specified position (Schlenker and Gutek 1987: 287; Stryker 1968; Cantor and Mischel 1979)—and organizational identification, “a psychological state wherein the individual perceives himself or herself to be part of a larger whole” (Rousseau 1998: 217; Dutton et al. 1994).

  One such career path-breaking event is a trauma . A trauma is a situation in which an individual is “confronted with an event or events that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others” and “the person’s response involved intense fear , helplessness, or horror” (APA 1994). Traumatic events can destroy individuals’ fundamental beliefs that life is benevolent and meaningful and that the self is worthy (Janoff-Bulman 1989). We have a strong understanding of how individuals cope with such events (Benight et al. 1999; Bonanno 2004), but we are only beginning to discover trauma’s effects on people’s vocational and entrepreneurial identities.

  Unfortunately, trauma is a relatively common experience in today’s increasingly global organizational environment, which is affected by war, terrorism, and discontinuous organizational change. Investigating the mechanisms underlying the transition to new roles and organizations for people who go through disjunctive transitions like those often necessitated by trauma will enable scholars to more fully understand the degree to which such individuals are able to contribute to their community’s and nation’s economy (Audretsch 2007).

  For instance, my colleague and I (Haynie and Shepherd 2011) explored the nature of vocational identity change initiated by trauma in a sample of US soldiers and marines who were disabled while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. This was an ideal context for investigation because the connection between identity and vocation is pervasive and purposefully developed by organizations to improve members’ organizational identification. Indeed, the sociology and psychology literatures are full of studies describing how the routines, symbols, and artifacts comprising military culture have a powerful and continued influence on military personnel’s identity (Budd 2007; Hale 2008; Lande 2007). However, the military essentially “forces” most individuals who are disabled from wartime injuries into career transitions, deeming them unsuitable for continued organizational membership. Individuals in the study reported that their conceptions of the self became detached from their work role and the organization they had initially identified so strongly with in a single point in time—after the gunshot or bomb blast that left them injured. One soldier described this idea: “I know that Sergeant Joshua Smith is not who I am anymore and not who my family or society needs me to be. But I’m not sure who I am now.”

  The study’s sample included ten soldiers and marines who were disabled during combat. After being discharged from the military due to their disability, each enrolled in a vocational retraining program focused on entrepreneurship. The theory developed sheds light on the thoughts, emotions , and behaviors characterizing individuals who have adjusted well after a trauma —namely, those who have relatively high subjective well-being and have made progress toward achieving new vocational milestones. The study compared these individuals with others who adjusted less well after trauma . Based on the similarities and differences among our cases, there emerged a model explaining how vocational identity change occurs after a traumatic experience .

  The First Step: Identity Foundation

  Scholars have centered on investigating why—as a response to an identity threat—some people are better at creating and subsequently internalizing a new conception of the self compared to others who find completing this task difficult and/or are slow in doing so. Evidence has shown that these differences are directly related to the process of negotiating and overcoming identity conflict (e.g., Burke 1991, 2003; Ibarra 1999). As discussed earlier, because individuals generally have multiple identities (Ashforth et al. 2000; Pratt and Forman 2000), identity conflict can occur when one identity’s (e.g., parent) behavioral expectations go against another identity’s (e.g., business owner) behavioral expectations. Researchers have explored instances when a stable identity conflicts with
changing role expectations, for example, career change (Swann 1987, 2005), marriage (Burke 2006), and divorce (Rahav and Baum 2002). Results from these studies point to an incremental identity-change process whereby new behavioral expectations are developed in response to an evolving conception of self . According to Ibarra (1999: 764), “people adapt to new roles by experimenting with provisional selves that serve as trials” for a future identity. Overall, this research stream proposes people who experience identity conflict can alter their focused attention , beliefs, and behaviors to trigger the identity-change process (Snyder and Swann 1978; Stryker 1987) or can alter others’ expectations to overcome identity conflict (Swann 1987, 2005). For both approaches, the underlying assumption is that identity conflict automatically and immediately initiates identity negotiation (Burke 1991, 2003). That is, because identity is so important to psychological well-being, resolving identity conflict or ambiguity receives an individual’s immediate attention (Burke 1991, 2003; Brewer 1991; Tajfel and Turner 1979a, b).

  When identity change is necessitated by trauma , however, the study mentioned above (Haynie and Shepherd 2011) provides some counterevidence to the above assumptions. More specifically, the study found that although some participants in the sample eventually employed identity-building activities to create a new vocational identity during the entrepreneurship training program, the process for doing so was neither automatic nor instantaneous. Individuals who go through traumatic experiences are confronted with challenges that are more urgent than identity conflict as trauma introduces threats that are more detrimental to human existence than threats to identity. Along these lines, the study found that there are generally two stages in the trauma-recovery process. In Stage 1, individuals concentrate on reconstructing their fundamental assumptions about the world and humanity. In Stage 2, they focus on rebuilding a new conception of self based on a socially situated vocational identity standard.

  One of the study participants, Aaron, is a good example of this process. Aaron was a marine, and his identity was strongly tied to his work role and organization. Aaron almost died in combat when an explosive went off and pinned him under a vehicle for several hours before he was rescued. Remembering his thoughts not long after his injury, Aaron recounted the following:I was a 23 year old cocky Marine. I was fit, tops in the Marine Corps, and then it happened. I was completely helpless, hopeless. I couldn’t do anything for myself. As soon as my first injury happened my confidence was gone, and I was shattered, I doubted myself. I didn’t care about life anymore. I saw the evil side of humanity, and I didn’t need it—I didn’t want to live anymore. It was a night and day difference. It’s like I was fed up with everything and honestly came to the point where I was suicidal. I came to the point in my life where I didn’t care if I lived or died.

  In line with the results of trauma , Aaron’s experience destroyed his basic assumptions that life is benevolent and meaningful and that he is a worthy person (Janoff-Bulman 1989). After his trauma , Aaron had to reorient himself psychologically by rebuilding those destroyed assumptions before he could engage in any form of identity negotiation or change. For theory building, we refer to this orientation as identity foundation: a set of internalized and closely held beliefs and assumptions about the world and humanity that serve as the basis for future actions that will enable the self to realize meaning and purpose. Before constructing this identity foundation, Aaron was unable to develop, form, or negotiate a new vocational identity. Aaron used several coping mechanisms to create a new identity foundation, some of which were problem focused—centered on overcoming the issue causing distress—and some of which were emotion focused, centered on alleviating the negative emotions stemming from the issue (for a distinction, see Folkman and Moskowitz 2004). For instance, he reported how he often overused alcohol and others drugs, and how he slept through large parts of the day. Aaron reported that his alcohol and drug use were a way to “numb myself. I didn’t care. I was very reckless. There was a point in my life when I came back, and after I got get out of the hospital, I was just very reckless in my life. It was foolish and stupid—I’d say it was very wrong, but that’s just what happened.” He also took minor useful steps toward building his new identity foundation. For instance, he began recognizing obstacles hindering him from creating a new basis for meaning and purpose in his life. In one example of such behavior, he described how he realized his friends enabled his dysfunctional behaviors: “Well, they held me back for sure. Just going out and drinking and hanging out and just cutting loose. But with that shit I wasn’t going anywhere in life. Just the same stupid stuff.” In addition, he started going to professional counseling. Performing these simple coping activities helped Aaron reach a foundational level of psychological subsistence, thus positioning him to begin taking steps toward negotiating a new identity. He had in no way accepted his traumatic experience , but he had adequately oriented himself to begin forming a new identity, which can be seen in the following statement:It was a very slow transition. It wasn’t like I just woke up one day, and you know I’m going to put all that stuff aside, and I’m going to turn the page and end a chapter in my life. I was unhappy with life, I was unhappy with where I was at, and I knew I was going to do the stuff that I needed to get to where I wanted to go, so I started making changes. . . . I think as humans we all need to have hope. I think that’s a purpose for living. I think without a purpose to live, that’s self-explanatory. You’ve got to have a purpose to live.

  Studies on trauma (Janoff-Buhlman 1992; Magwaza 1999; Solomon et al. 1997) have argued that recovering from traumatic events involves reconstructing shattered assumptions of the world and of the self to re-establish psychological balance (Janoff-Buhlman 1992). While my (Dean) colleague and I (Haynie and Shepherd 2011) supported this idea, the findings also showed that the onset of this reconstruction process for each assumption is sequential. More specifically, the analysis across cases showed that the process of rebuilding shattered assumptions of the world to establish an identity foundation starts before rebuilding shattered assumptions of self , thus making this process a necessary condition for vocational identity change to occur in a meaningful and positive way.

  Trauma, Identity Change, and Entrepreneurial Career Motivations

  Expanding on the career literature , past studies have concentrated on entrepreneurship as a career option for particular groups (e.g., individuals with disabilities, women, ethnic minorities, immigrants) that are “shut out” of or face barriers to advancement in “traditional” occupational roles (Kendall et al. 2006). For instance, self-employment often guarantees that individuals with disabilities have the job accommodations they need (Wiklund et al. 2016) as well as more flexibility for other elements of their lives (Arnold and Seekins 2002; Hagner and Davies 2002). Those who are disabled frequently show interest in entrepreneurial careers (Callahan et al. 2002) with higher self-employment rates among people with disabilities than among individuals without disabilities (Arnold and Seekins 2002; U.S. Census 2002). An entrepreneurial career may also help stigmatized inmates who face considerable problems finding salaried employment to earn their living after release from prison (Patzelt et al. 2014).

  Therefore, exploring motivations for entrepreneurship among people who have lost their vocational identity due to a trauma will shed light on what factors are important in forming a new vocational identity. Overall, there are two motivations in this context: an entrepreneurial career due to perceived or real barriers to other vocations (push motivation) and an entrepreneurial career due to a desire to fulfill some psychological need (pull motivation).

  Sometimes, one is pushed toward entrepreneurship due to physical limitations that he or she believes “shut the door” to certain careers. More interestingly, my (Dean) colleague and I (Haynie and Shepherd 2011) uncovered a second push motivation that manifests itself as a perceived limit to employment based on experiencing trauma, coping with trauma, and undergoing ongoing identity change. The need for autonomy is
important in the process of vocational identity change following trauma. Aaron reported that he felt “helpless and hopeless” after being injured, and he had to depend entirely on others—doctors, nurses, friends, and family —during his physical recovery . Think about how this prolonged period of reliance on others and lack of control likely affected Aaron (and other individual in similar posttrauma situations) psychologically. Aaron and those in a similar position went from being healthy with a strong well-being to being entirely dependent on others for their survival. Another veteran hurt during combat summarized this push motivation toward entrepreneurship as a career option best: “After all this, I’ve been so dependent on everybody else for everything. I need to feel like I have a say.” The career and entrepreneurship literatures have not fully explored this type of push motivation; however, it is likely to help explain why—despite substantial accessibility and accommodation improvements for individuals with disabilities in the workplace over the past decade (Batavia and Schriner 2001)—those who are disabled are more than two times as likely to be self-employed than individuals in the general public (U.S. Census 2002). The desire for autonomy and control after prolonged periods of reliance on others limits these individuals’ future vocation options, shutting the door on certain vocational opportunities just like physical limitations do.