The Identity of Entrepreneurs: Providing Conceptual Clarity and Future Directions

• Published date: 01 January 2021
• Author: Anna M. Wagenschwanz
• Date: 01 January 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12241

International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 23, 64–84 (2021)

DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12241

The Identity of Entrepreneurs: Providing

Conceptual Clarity and Future Directions

Anna M. Wagenschwanz

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, EPFL School of Management of Technology, Lausanne 1015, Switzerland

Corresponding author email: anna.wagenschwanz@gmail.com

The identity of entrepreneurs (IoE) has become a popular concept in entrepreneurship

research, forexample, to explain entrepreneurial behavior.Yet, despite growinginterest

in this topic, theoretical and terminological inconsistencies havehampered the develop-

ment of a coherent understanding of the identity of entrepreneurs. I conduct a system-

atic literature reviewto provide an overview of different theoreticalperspectives in IoE

research and suggest consistent use of terminology and operationalizations. Further, I

propose a framework to investigate the dynamic nature and multi-level inf‌luences of

the identity of entrepreneurs, and outline meaningful avenues for future research to

unravel when, how, and with what consequences identity may become relevant in new

venture creation.

Introduction

Identities are ‘people’s subjectively construed under-

standings of who they were, are and desire to be-

come’ (Brown 2015: 20). Given that the creation

of new ventures is driven by individuals, each with

their unique identity, the identity of entrepreneurs

(IoE) – def‌ined in this review as the individual-level

identity content and structure of a person who cre-

ates a new venture – has become a popular topic in

entrepreneurship research. As such, the concept of

‘who one is’ has proven to help understand why and

how individuals come to establish new ventures. For

example, scholars have discussed how entrepreneurs

def‌ine and manage their identity (e.g. Grimes 2018;

Hoang and Gimeno 2010), and revealed that their

identity helps explain entrepreneurial behavior (e.g.

Fauchart and Gruber 2011; York et al. 2016; Zuzul

and Tripsas 2020). In line with this, Gruber and

MacMillan (2017) argue that an identity perspec-

tive in entrepreneurship is particularly relevant, as

it allows us to move beyond explanations based on

economic rationality by outlining that people act in

ways that they deem appropriate for themselves de-

pending on who they are. Given a growing body of

literature and insights into the relationship between

entrepreneurs’ identities and their new ventures,

Powelland Baker (2017) have recently introduced the

concept of founder identity theory (FIT).

Despite growing interest in the identity of en-

trepreneurs, there are theoretical and terminological

inconsistencies that have hampered a coherent under-

standing of this topic. So far, little attention has been

paid to the underlying assumptions of identity theo-

ries used in IoE research – the most prominent being

role identity theory (Burke 1980) and social identity

theory (Tajfel 1978). As such, there remains ambi-

guity around (1) the role of individual agency and

institutional pressures in determining the identity of

entrepreneurs, as well as (2) what an identity really

is and how it can subsequently be operationalized.

On top of differing theoretical assumptions, schol-

ars have drawn on terminology in an inconsistent

manner. Numerous terms around the identity of en-

trepreneurs have been introduced so far, including

entrepreneurial identity (Murnieks et al. 2014), en-

trepreneur identity (Farmer et al. 2011) and founder

identity (Powell and Baker 2014), sometimes includ-

ing specif‌ications such as entrepreneurial role iden-

tity (Mathias and Williams 2018) or founder social

© 2020 British Academy of Management and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published by John Wiley& Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington

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The Identity of Entrepreneurs 65

identity (Fauchart and Gruber 2011). Even though

studies on the identity of entrepreneurs make use of

such designated terms, they very rarely provide clear

def‌initions of the concepts under investigation and/or

use several terms to refer to the same concept. For

example, founder identity and entrepreneurial iden-

tity have been used interchangeably (e.g. York et al.

2016).

Taken together, theoretical and terminological in-

consistencies have led to a scattered understanding of

the identity of entrepreneurs and its role in new ven-

ture creation. Given that a lack of construct clarity

may lead to inconsistencies in manuscripts (Bono and

McNamara 2011) and hinder theory development

(Alvesson et al. 2008; Suddaby 2010), it is important

to consolidate the existing literature in order to allow

for a common understanding of underlying theory

and terminology. Even though there remain empiri-

cal intricacies around the identity of entrepreneurs –

such as potentially contradicting internal identity de-

mands (Fauchart and Gruber 2011; York et al. 2016),

or external pressures making identities prone to be-

ing continuously contested and in f‌lux (Clarke and

Holt 2017) – it is still an important task in order

to allow for a more coherent way forward. Partic-

ularly against the recognized power of the identity

of entrepreneurs in understanding new venture cre-

ation, such as opportunity recognition (e.g. Mathias

and Williams 2017; Wry and York 2017) or certi-

f‌ication decisions (e.g. Conger et al. 2018; Grimes

et al. 2018), we ought to strive toward a common un-

derstanding of how the identity of entrepreneurs can

be def‌ined and operationalized, to better understand

what role it plays in new venture creation.

Hence, the aim of this literature review is twofold:

(1) resolving theoretical and terminological inconsis-

tencies, and (2) def‌ining a relevant future research

agenda. More specif‌ically, this review is structured

in the following way. First, I outline the methodol-

ogy followed to investigate literature on the iden-

tity of entrepreneurs. Second, I give an overview

of different theoretical perspectives, how they have

been used in IoE research, and which diff‌iculties

have so far hindered a coherent understanding. Third,

I provide construct clarity around the identity of

entrepreneurs and suggest consistent use of termi-

nology and operationalizations, including examples

from existing literature. Lastly, I offer an integrative

framework to map the f‌ield and delineate relevantav-

enues for future research, pointing to the dynamic

nature and multi-level inf‌luences of the identity of

entrepreneurs. Overall, this review contributes to en-

trepreneurship and identity literature by allowing for

coherent future conceptualization and theorization of

the identity of entrepreneurs, as well as paving the

way for interesting and meaningful future research.

Methodology

I conducted a systematic review process as suggested

by Tranf‌ield et al. (2003). I used the database Web

of Knowledge to search for articles and reviews in

English published until the end of 2019 that use

one of the following strings in their title, abstract,

or keywords: (1) entrepreneur* AND identit*, OR

(2) founder* AND identit* (1304 results). Since the

primary interest of this review is to f‌ind out about

research on the individual-level identity of people

who establish a new venture (i.e. the identity of en-

trepreneurs), I further limited the search to articles

and reviews in management and business journals

(736 results remaining).

In the next step, I reviewed the 736 abstracts to

exclude the ones that did not deal with the topic of

interest. First, I excluded all articles that deal with or-

ganizational identity rather than the individual-level

identity of an entrepreneur. Further, I excluded arti-

cles that only referred to a societal discourse or narra-

tives around entrepreneurial identity, rather than the

actual identity of an individual. I also excluded arti-

cles that deal with topics merely related to identity,

such as individual characteristics (e.g. age, gender,

experience). For example, whileI did include articles

on women entrepreneurship that explicitly deal with

gender in terms of the identity of the entrepreneur, I

excluded others that do not refer to gender as identity,

but only as an individual characteristic. As the topic

of interest for this review is people who haveactually

created a new venture, studies that merely deal with

entrepreneurial intentions were also excluded (160

results remaining).

In the last step, I excluded articles that only deal

with the identity of entrepreneurs as a side topic,as

they did not reveal any signif‌icant further insights for

my analysis. This includes articles where the iden-

tity of entrepreneurs constitutes one variable or con-

cept among many to explain certain outcomes, such

as crowdfunding performance (Allison et al. 2017),

entrepreneurship in informal economies (Webb et al.

2009), or market category emergence (Navis and

Glynn 2010). After applying these relevance-based

exclusion criteria, I ended up with a total of 132 ar-

ticles on the topic of the identity of entrepreneurs, of

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