Gender And Entrepreneurship: An Ethnographic Approach

Gender and Entrepreneurship As well as being an economic phenomenon, entrepreneurship can also be read as a cultural one. Entrepreneurial action can be related to gender for a cross-reading of how gender and entrepreneurship are culturally produced and reproduced in social practices. This groundbreaking new study considers both gender and entrepreneurship as symbolic forms, looking at their diverse patterns and social representation. Presenting an ethnographic study of the gender structuring of entrepreneurship, the work employs three strategies: • • • a critical survey of gender studies, which argues that entrepreneurship is a cultural model of masculinity that obstructs the expression of other models ethnographic observations conducted in five small firms describe how business cultures are ‘gendered’ and how gender is the product of situated practices an analysis of how discursive and narrative practices in business cultures constitute gender and entrepreneurship Gender and Entrepreneurship is essential reading for postgraduate students, researchers and academics with an interest in entrepreneurship, business and management, innovation economics and gender studies. Attila Bruni is Lecturer of Sociology of Organization/Organizational Ethnography at Venice University, Italy. Silvia Gherardi is Professor of Sociology of Organization at the University of Trento, Italy. Barbara Poggio is Lecturer of Sociology of Organization at the University of Siena, Italy. Management, Organization and Society Edited by Professor Barbara Czarniawska, Göteborg University, Sweden and Professor Martha Feldman, University of Michigan, USA This series presents innovative work grounded in new realities, addressing issues crucial to an understanding of the contemporary world. This is the world of organized societies, where boundaries between formal and informal, public and private, local and global organizations have been displaced or have vanished, along with other nineteenth-century dichotomies and oppositions. Management, apart from becoming a specialized profession for a growing number of people, is an everyday activity for most members of modern societies. Similarly, at the level of enquiry, culture and technology, and literature and economics can no longer be conceived as isolated intellectual fields; conventional canons and established mainstreams are contested. Management, Organization and Society will address these contemporary dynamics of transformation in a manner that transcends disciplinary boundaries, with work which will appeal to researchers, students and practitioners alike. Contrasting Involvements A study of management accounting practices in Britain and Germany Thomas Ahrens Gender, Identity and the Culture of Organizations Edited by Iiris Aaltio and Albert J. Mills Turning Words, Spinning Worlds Chapters in organizational ethnography Michael Rosen Text/Work Representing organization and organizin