Silent entrepreneuring: Complying with and refusing entrepreneurial norms through practices of tactical subordination and shielding space
通过疫情期间医院药师的民族志研究，提出“沉默创业”概念，揭示边缘化专业群体如何通过既遵守又拒绝创业规范的实践进行创新，对组织创业研究有启发。
Entrepreneurship is often understood as acting boldly on the market, broadcasting one’s endeavours in persuasive success stories. We, in contrast, seek to understand less flamboyant entrepreneurial practices by examining the creativity and innovations pursued by a gendered and marginalized professional group in the public sector. Through an ethnographic study of hospital pharmacists during the COVID-19 pandemic, we seek to understand how pharmacists ‘do’ entrepreneuring at work, what practices they engage in, and how they act creatively, sometimes breaking with role expectations, and seldom receiving recognition for what they are doing. In the article, we refer to this as silent entrepreneuring – a form of entrepreneuring that simultaneously complies with and refuses entrepreneurial ideals. By adopting two contrasting but complementary analytical positions, we examine the often unspoken activities of pharmacists and how they form practices that both support and contradict each other. We conclude by suggesting that the concept of silent entrepreneuring enables a broadened understanding of organizational entrepreneurship that calls for greater sensitivity towards the different forms that entrepreneuring may take.