Entrepreneurship and the struggle over order and coherence: a thematic reading of Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities

ABSTRACT

This paper is grounded in a thematic reading of Robert Musil's (1933/1997) novel The Man Without Qualities. Combining literary, social, and economic theory, the discipline-spanning novel engages with some of the central questions and conflicts of our age, such as the search for order and coherence, seeking to overcome the fragmentation of life. Specifically, we suggest that Musil refers to the advent of entrepreneurship and the ‘enterprising spirit’ as an example evocative of these pursuits, as well as their concomitant ambiguities and frictions. Our analysis therefore engages with the role of Austrian economic theory in consolidating entrepreneur/ship as an ideal socio-economic model and order. By discussing the complexities inscribed in seemingly unifying orders such as entrepreneurship, the paper contributes in particular to critical and process entrepreneurship studies in MOS. It responds to calls for further literary, inter-disciplinary, and historical analyses in entrepreneurship research.

KEYWORDS:

• Ambiguities and frictions
• Austrian economists
• critical entrepreneurship studies
• process studies
• Musil
• order and coherence

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Kostas Amiridis for his valuable contributions to an earlier draft of this paper. Many thanks also to Kate Lockwood Harris, the three anonymous reviewers, and to Richard Weiskopf and Gerry Hanlon for their very helpful and constructive comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 In his diaries, Musil acknowledged a shifting character lacking coherence and purpose, who resembles Ulrich (Hönig 2002).

2 The businessman Walter Rathenau is the real character behind Arnheim. Rathenau was, like Arnheim, preoccupied with the relation between economics, science, art, and mysticism (Corino 2003).