How did you get up and running? Taking a Bourdieuan perspective towards a framework for negotiating strategic fit

Abstract

This article suggests a theoretical framework for illustrating significant iterative processes that need to be strategically managed when entering a new field or changing a social position within a field. Applying a process-relational perspective, the framework theoretically underpins what propels individuals to change their behaviour conceptualized as constructing a strategic fit between personal structure and fields. Using Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, field and capitals as a lens the analysis reveals how capital transformations eventually can lead to a social construction of this temporary strategic fit. The article argues that the performance of habitus expresses temporary field specific social positioning as a social materialization of macrostructures (gender, age, class, etc.). This suggested framework is applied to conceptualizing how nascent entrepreneurs successfully negotiate entrepreneurial processes. It is concerned with a small aspect: how to physically start a business (its registration and the start of trading). In this context, the article unpacks how the transformation of capitals mediates nascent entrepreneurs’ social positioning. This article contributes to the growing ‘social turn’ research situating entrepreneurial processes within social relations and context and the emerging Entrepreneurship as Practice field. It offers practical implications for business support and research directions.

Keywords:

• Bourdieu
• capitals transformation
• nascent entrepreneurship
• social positioning
• process-relational approach
• strategic fit

Acknowledgements

I am most grateful for the constructive feedback from the editor, the two anonymous reviewers, Ian Hill and Richard Frost, who helped to develop this article as presented here.

Notes

1. Panel study of entrepreneurial dynamics number I, data collection was finished in 2008.

2. This short case summary is based on a micro-business owner interview that cannot be presented in its entirety here in this article.