• There is nothing particularly revolutionary about the assertion that organisations today must be more entrepreneurial. However, one could rightly claim that interest was previously directed primarily at the anonymous organisation (as in Corporate Entrepreneurship) or executives at various organisational levels (as in intrapreneurship). Now, the focus is on production personnel. The question is: what happens in an organisation when one attempts to mobilise production personnel to engage in entrepreneurship? The little that has been written about this issue in established research has been relatively uncritical. For this reason and in an attempt to go beyond established concepts, I begin this dissertation with social constructionism and an ethnographic study, which consists of a number of narratives about Termos, a Swedish company with 200 employees. This study is not one that illustrates successful change. If anything, it discusses the issue of how both the production personnel and management made entrepreneurship impossible on the shop floor. A core question revolves around male and female images, and how women's self-images prevent them from taking the steps necessary to implement innovations. Another key point treats the issue of how management, in a confusion-inducing manner, mixes the vocabularies and actions of two different ideologies-managerialism and entrepreneurialism. One moment, management is talking about the importance of taking initiative; next, it is punishing personnel who do not "follow the system". Add to this the fact that both managerialism and entrepreneurialism threaten the ideology that guides the actions of production personnel. In turn, different types of resistance strategies are set in motion A critical reading of the literature on entrepreneurship reveals that it is also rendered impossible on the shop floor since these texts neglect production personnel. Only "real" entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial managers are discussed and honoured, while production personnel are just an exploitable resource. In this way, the ideologies of both entrepreneurship and management are understood as being "bad". Nevertheless, it is possible to see entrepreneurship on the shop floor at Termos. To do this, one needs to understand entrepreneurship that focuses on the organisation of resources into new patterns stemming from perceived possibilities, without the introduction of restrictions regarding type or size. It is also an understanding that rejects the idea of the entrepreneur as a subject position who prevents the production personnel from practicing entrepreneurship. Instead, it puts forth the notion that it is individuals who lend themselves to entrepreneurship. Furthermore, proximity is vital to understanding entrepreneurship in context, where we can "see" it. In conclusion, the dissertation maintains that there is every reason to demystify entrepreneurship if we wish it to happen everywhere, even on the shop floor.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Företagsekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Business Administration (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Entrepreneurship

shopfloor

organisational change

intrapreneurship

ideology

gender

ethnography

social constructionism

Business studies

Företagsekonomi

Ledarskap, entreprenörskap och organisation

Ledarskap, entreprenörskap och organisation

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

dok (ämneskategori)