Co-Constructing Community and Entrepreneurial Identity: How Founders Ascribe Self-Referential Meanings to Entrepreneurship
基于对联合办公空间中首次创业者的2.5年民族志研究，发现创业者对空间的感知（社区或办公室）与其创业身份认同紧密相关，空间成为社区时创业者更认同自身身份。
Drawing on a 2.5-year ethnography of first-time founders in a coworking facility, I shed light on the process by which founders ascribe self-referential meaning to entrepreneurship—that is, how they develop an entrepreneurial identity in situ. I discovered that founders’ use of the coworking space occasioned distinct interaction patterns. Over time, varying interactions played a central role in whether the workspace became a community or remained a mere office space to these founders. Such emergent spatial meanings were coupled with whether founders themselves developed as entrepreneurs or not within their workspace. Founders’ perceptions of the workspace as a community were generally associated with their identifying more as entrepreneurs, while their perceptions of the workspace as an office were usually linked with their identifying less, and even disidentifying, as entrepreneurs. In explaining these dynamics, I contribute to research on identity and space, research on entrepreneurial identity, and broader scholarship on space and interactions in organizations. For first-time founders, the meanings associated with being an entrepreneur can be equivocal, and where they work helps to shape their answers to the questions “What is entrepreneurship to me?” and “Who am I?”