Year: 2015
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Entrepreneurship is expected to serve a multitude of societal interests. It is assumed to enhance competitiveness, create jobs and services, and contribute to social and ecological development. As such, enterprise promotion has become an integral part of Finnish policymaking. In the rural context, enterprise promotion is an essential part of regional, agricultural and rural policies. Considering the governmental interests in entrepreneurship, a problem noted by both scholars and policy actors is that business owners do not make the most of public enterprise promotion. The present dissertation studies enterprise promotion in rural Finland from a relational social psychological perspective, by focusing on agency and interests. Previous studies have commonly assumed that interest conceptualised as goals, values or motives are internal and fairly stable dispositions which, at least partly, guide peoples agency. It is commonly assumed that business owners agency needs to be driven by economic interests in order to serve society. Public enterprise promotion, thus, aims at encouraging small business owners and potential business owners to adopt an entrepreneurial mind-set and work towards business growth. Recently, however, policy actors have also noted the importance of social entrepreneurs, whose agency is driven by societal common good not economic profit. Although commercial, growth entrepreneurs serve their own self-interests and social entrepreneurs serve the common good, both entrepreneur types are considered to serve society, with the former type contributing to economic development and the latter to social and ecological development. One problem recognised by scholars and policy actors is that business owners interests in doing business do not necessarily align with the interests of policy actors. For example, in the rural context, empirical studies have demonstrated that small business owners agency is driven by interests such as personal autonomy, modest upkeep and the continuation of the family farm. Furthermore, studies have suggested that small business owners internal dispositions especially an interest in personal autonomy make them withdraw from public enterprise promotion. The present dissertation takes a different approach on business owners agency and interests, and studies them from a relational social psychological perspective, drawing on Goffmanian frame analysis and social constructionism. Instead of individual dispositions, business owners agency and interests are approached as situated and embedded phenomena. Social scientific research on agency has mainly focused on the issue of how agents make things happen, while the question for whom do agents make things happen has been largely ignored. Unlike social scientists, economists have widely discussed the agency relationships between agents and their principals. This dissertation adopts a relational social psychological perspective to elaborate economists ideas of agency relationships and the concept of agency-for. The dissertation consists of four independent sub-studies that examine rural business owners agency-for with a special focus on its relation to societal interests and public enterprise promotion. Both quantitative survey data as well as qualitative interview and group discussion data are analysed. The empirical results demonstrate that rural business owners, as modern agents, are both capable and willing to adopt a multitude of principals. Besides their self-interest in personal autonomy and (modest) upkeep, rural business owners seem keen on framing their business actions as agency for various local principals, such as their employees, nature and rural vitality. However, they do not seem keen on the growth entrepreneurship framing. Regarding public enterprise promotion when viewed as an interaction process business owners principals may pose a problem. The functional interaction between policy actors and business owners requires a mutual understanding of the principal that is being served. However, public enterprise promotion is legitimate only when it serves the interests of society, be they economic, social or ecological development. Since rural business owners seem eager to frame their business actions as agency for self but not in the sense of business growth it might be difficult for policy actors to serve business owners self-interests without losing the legitimacy of public enterprise promotion. Furthermore, when adopting external principals, rural business owners seem to prefer local over national ones. Unless policy actors are authorised to serve local sustainable development, it may be difficult to negotiate over a shared principal. The dissertation suggests that rural business owners agency-for aligns better with public enterprise promotion conducted within rural policy (with an emphasis on rural vitality) and multifunctional agricultural policy (with an emphasis on environmental and rural wellbeing), than within new regional policy or neoliberal agricultural policy which both emphasise competitiveness.
Source: Työväentutkimus Vuosikirja
Author: Miira Niska
Language: English
Subfield: Management of Technology and Innovation
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1955139647