TY - JOUR
T1 - Apostasy versus legitimacy
T2 - relational dynamics and routes to resource acquisition in entrepreneurial ventures
AU - Stringfellow, Lindsay
AU - Shaw, Eleanor
AU - Maclean, Mairi
PY - 2014/8
Y1 - 2014/8
N2 - This article explores the relational dynamics of legitimation within a professional service venture context, using a Bourdieusian framework to elucidate the struggles for capital and legitimacy that characterise the venture development process. Two profiles of individual business owners who renounce or adhere to established norms of the professional field are identified: apostate and traditional. Small accounting ventures may benefit from improved access to resources if they concentrate on fitting in with prevailing small firm professional logics, eschewing logics from outside the focal field associated with apostates. A model of legitimacy is developed that accounts for the efficacy of institutional and strategic modes of legitimacy relative to the maturity of the field and objectification of its social formations. We propose that entrepreneurial habitus mediates field-level conditions and capital formations that, when combined, create symbolic capital and resource acquisition possibilities.
AB - This article explores the relational dynamics of legitimation within a professional service venture context, using a Bourdieusian framework to elucidate the struggles for capital and legitimacy that characterise the venture development process. Two profiles of individual business owners who renounce or adhere to established norms of the professional field are identified: apostate and traditional. Small accounting ventures may benefit from improved access to resources if they concentrate on fitting in with prevailing small firm professional logics, eschewing logics from outside the focal field associated with apostates. A model of legitimacy is developed that accounts for the efficacy of institutional and strategic modes of legitimacy relative to the maturity of the field and objectification of its social formations. We propose that entrepreneurial habitus mediates field-level conditions and capital formations that, when combined, create symbolic capital and resource acquisition possibilities.
KW - Bourdieu
KW - legitimacy
KW - professional habitus
KW - professional service firms
KW - social capital
KW - symbolic capital
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84903168084&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0266242612471693
U2 - 10.1177/0266242612471693
DO - 10.1177/0266242612471693
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84903168084
VL - 32
SP - 571
EP - 592
JO - International Small Business Journal
JF - International Small Business Journal
SN - 0266-2426
IS - 5
ER -