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IJEBR
14,1

Constructing narratives of
enterprise: cliches and
entrepreneurial self-identity

4
Received March 2006
Revised September 2006
Accepted April 2007

Simon Down
University of Newcastle Business School, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

Lorraine Warren
School of Management, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to extend the repertoire of narrative resources relevant in the
creation and maintenance of entrepreneurial identity, and to explore the implications for
understanding entrepreneurial behaviour.
Design/methodology/approach The empirical research is based on a two and a half year
ethnographic study of a small UK industrial firm.
Findings The study describes how cliches used by aspirant entrepreneurs are significant elements
in creating entrepreneurial self-identity. In contrast to entrepreneurial metaphors, the study of which
has highlighted and revealed the extraordinary components of an entrepreneurial narrative identity,
examination of the cliches provide us with a means by which to understand the everyday and ordinary
elements of identity construction in entrepreneurs.
Research limitations/implications Further qualitative research in other entrepreneurial
settings will be required, exploring the generality of cliche use amongst entrepreneurs.
Practical implications Applying the implications of our findings for pedagogic and business
support uses is not explored and will need further development; we do however suggest that narrative
approaches that make sense of entrepreneurship as an achievable aim may have some practical use.
Originality/value The application of cliche as a distinctive linguistic feature of entrepreneurial
self-identity construction is highly original and reflects analogous work on entrepreneurial metaphors.
Because of its ethnographic data, the paper develops empirically and conceptually rich insights into
entrepreneurship.
Keywords Entrepreneurialism, Narratives, Metaphors, Ethnography, Small enterprises,
United Kingdom
Paper type Case study

International Journal of
Entrepreneurial Behaviour &
Research
Vol. 14 No. 1, 2008
pp. 4-23
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1355-2554
DOI 10.1108/13552550810852802

Introduction
The paper explores the narrative practices associated with the creation and
maintenance of entrepreneurial identity. Based on an illustrative ethnographic account
which supports a theoretical approach to identity construction, the paper shows how
entrepreneurs use cliches to secure a robust, useful, and achievable sense of
entrepreneurial self-identity. In contrast to entrepreneurial metaphors, the study of
which has highlighted and revealed the extraordinary components of an
entrepreneurial narrative identity, examination of the cliches used by entrepreneurs
provide us with a means by which to understand how the extraordinary coexists with
everyday and ordinary identity constructions. Specifically, our analysis demonstrates
how the use of entrepreneurial cliches facilitates a weak attachment to building an

entrepreneurial identity, one that can be jettisoned easily, should it become

inappropriate. As such, the paper develops the notion of narrative resource as a new
conceptual tool in understanding entrepreneurship.
Our paper is underpinned by the argument that entrepreneurial narratives play a
role in the formulation of an entrepreneurial identity. A section on the relevance of the
linguistic resources of cliche and metaphor in such narratives follows, and the
relationship between the two tropes is elaborated, demonstrating how and why cliche
has a potential role in identity construction. The paper then illustrates our theoretical
argument by offering an account of how entrepreneurs go about narratively
constituting and maintaining themselves as entrepreneurs. This is achieved via
sections which address three features of cliched narratives in the talk of the
entrepreneurs in the study: risk and bravery, ambition and growth, and self-sufficiency
and autonomy. Our research shows, via its exploration of entrepreneurial cliches how
the everyday and ordinary is incorporated into entrepreneurial narratives.
Entrepreneurial identity and entrepreneurial narratives
In this section we argue that it is possible to formulate an entrepreneurial identity and
that entrepreneurial narratives are a central element in this process. Undoubtedly,
identity is a contested concept in the academic literature (Jenkins, 1996) and there is
only space to summarise the debate here. However, debates in philosophy (Foucault,
1982; Taylor, 1989; Dennett, 1993), sociology (Giddens, 1991; Jenkins, 1996), and social
psychology (Lewis, 2003; Harre and Gillett, 1994), have resulted in an emerging
consensus that identity is not located in the personality of the individual, but instead is
constituted through interaction between the individual, society and culture. Significant
in this view is the notion of identity as a process of becoming (Giddens, 1991), where
individual identity is negotiated through and within the sense-making systems of the
surrounding cultural milieu (Jenkins, 1996). From this perspective, it can be argued that
identity is related to social and cultural forms, but is not predetermined by them
(Goffman, 1959; Holland et al., 1998; Lash, 1999; Creed et al., 2002). Thus, self-identity
can be crafted and re-crafted as an ongoing project of the self (Giddens, 1991),
establishing a framework for social negotiation through delineating sameness and
difference (Jenkins, 1996). Goffman (1959) was influential in developing this line of
thought, placing an emphasis on roles in shaping identity. He argues that roles become
institutionalised sets of social expectations, with stereotypes emerging as a more fixed
form of meaning and stability in other words an ideal type that may constrain
experience as well as inspire the crafting of new meanings.
One such stereotypical script in the cultural milieu is the entrepreneur. The received
wisdom of the enterprise culture is an appeal to the free market system, where upward
mobility is available to everyone through entrepreneurship (Ogbor, 2000; Lewis and
Llewellyn, 2004; Nicholson and Anderson, 2005). Media stories and representations
emphasise the entrepreneur as a mythical or heroic figure valorised to effect economic
betterment for all (Nicholson and Anderson, 2005). As such, the entrepreneur might be
considered an example of an ideal type, based on commonly accepted definitions
(Blumer, 1962, pp. 187-188) or public and cultural narratives (Somers, 1994). As such it
is legitimated through the discourse of the enterprise culture and possesses a set of
characteristics, such as bravery, ambition, success, autonomy and self sufficiency that

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might be emulated and acquired through processes of identity work (Alvesson and
Willmott, 2002).
The extent to which individuals can challenge and rework scripted positions in the
enactment of entrepreneurial identity has been extensively debated. Ritchie (1991), du
Gay (1996) and Cohen and Musson (2000) suggest that individuals are, to different
extents, reflexively inscribed as entrepreneurs, an identity on offer within the
discursive medium of the enterprise culture. Along with others we argue for a more
empowered vision of identity (Lounsbury and Glynn, 2001; Down and Reveley, 2004;
Reveley et al., 2004; Downing, 2005; Warren and Anderson, 2005). These authors
acknowledge entrepreneurs as skilled cultural operators manipulating perceptions of
the entrepreneurial self to achieve desired outcomes for their new ventures. For
example, Lounsbury and Glynn note (Lounsbury and Glynn, 2001, p. 554) that a key
challenge for entrepreneurs is to establish a unique identity that is neither ambiguous
nor unfamiliar, but legitimate, arguing for the importance of formulating an
entrepreneurial identity for self and firm in acquiring legitimacy in the early stages of
venturing. Our analysis suggests that whilst some form of entrepreneurial identity is
important, different degrees of authentic engagement with entrepreneurial discourses
are possible. Cliches facilitate a relatively weak but functional attachment, one that
may be important during the tentative, early stages of entrepreneurial activity, but
may also be jettisoned easily if circumstances change.
Believing in the possibility and/or importance of formulating an entrepreneurial
self-identity raises the issue of how this is achieved. Part of the new cultural orthodoxy
surrounding the interplay of the personal and the social identity is the positioning of
narrative as a central element in the formulation of the self (Giddens, 1991). Such
narratives are not to be seen as final manuscripts, but are crafted and re-crafted over
time as an ongoing project of the self. Somers too (Somers, 1994, p. 614), highlights the
fluidity of narratives in this process, as people construct over time identities through a
repertoire of interlinked, but partial, fragmentary and sometimes contradictory
narratives. It is not surprising then that entrepreneurship researchers have begun to
study narratives, following the epistemological foundations laid by Steyaert and
Bouwen (1997). Thus, entrepreneurial narratives have been used as a rich resource
base, analysed qualitatively to deepen understandings of entrepreneurial processes
and practices (Perren and Atkin, 1997; Pitt, 1998; Mitchell, 1997; Rae, 2000). In other
work, narrative resources have been used specifically to illuminate the processes of
entrepreneurial self-identity formation. Cohen and Musson (2000), Mallon and Cohen
(2001) and Warren (2004) have utilised the discourse of enterprise to examine the
relation of entrepreneurial identity to the wider environment. Lounsbury and Glynn
(2001) and Downing (2005) link self-identity and organizational identity formulation as
ventures are established and grow.
In summary, we have argued above that purposeful construction of an
entrepreneurial self is possible and indeed desirable; there is some evidence that
entrepreneurial narratives have a role to play in this construction. It is our intent to
extend this research initiative by presenting an illustrative ethnographic account
which shows how entrepreneurs use certain linguistic constructs cliches to
establish, maintain and convey the sense of an entrepreneurial self in everyday
settings.

Cliche and metaphor: their function in forming entrepreneurial identity

In this section, we discuss two linguistic resources that have significance in identity
building: metaphor and cliche. Underlying our interpretation is a view that sees
language as menus of discursive resources which various actors draw on in different
ways at different times to achieve particular purposes whether these be specific
interest-based purposes, or broader ones, like that of making sense of what is
happening in the organization or what it is to be a manager (Watson, 1995,
pp. 816-817, emphasis in the original). Or indeed what it is to be an entrepreneur. We do
not seek to set up a linguistic dualism around metaphor and cliche in language, taking
an either/or analytical stance towards categorising entrepreneurial talk. Linguistic
analysis of these constructs reveals that they are complex in form and usage and their
identification and categorisation is by no means unambiguous (Lakoff and Johnson,
1980; Ortony, 1993). Rather, we note that some researchers have used metaphor as a
lens to shed light on one aspect of identity construction, namely the heroic stereotype of
popular culture. In our study, we show how a different lens, cliche, is used to provide
insight into the everyday world of tentative entrepreneurial identity formulation.
Metaphor is a common trope in organizational studies (Morgan, 1997; Tsoukas,
1991; Oswick et al., 2002; Cornelissen, 2005). To quote Lakoff and Johnson (1980, p. 5)
The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in
terms of another. As such, they have been used in organizational settings not only to
aid understanding through effecting comparisons, but also in the creative
constructions of new understandings and meanings (Cornelissen, 2005).
Unsurprisingly then, metaphor has received significant attention in studies which
attempt to deepen our understanding of entrepreneurship through study of what
entrepreneurs say, or is said about them (Koiranen, 1995; Hyrsky, 1998; Pitt, 1998; De
Koning and Drakopoulou-Dodd, 2002; Drakopoulou-Dodd, 2002; Cardon et al., 2005;
Nicholson and Anderson, 2005). These authors have thus far tended to seek out or
identify terms or phrases which suggest an imaginative type, a stereotypical identity
that is like an entrepreneur in the popular imagination. Metaphorical constructs
identified in this way have tended toward hyperbole. Entrepreneurs either fit within a
heroic mould (warrior, superman, explorer, battler), or a mythical, magical and
supernatural imagery is evoked: wolfish charmers, wizards and supernatural gurus;
both categories are predominantly masculine (Nicholson and Anderson, 2005). In terms
of narrative resources for identification purposes, this research has tended to
emphasise the vivid, unusual, the superhuman. In this way, use of metaphor as a
linguistic resource suggests the construction of extraordinary entrepreneurial
identities. Yet this would be an oversimplified picture of the discursive resources
used in creating entrepreneurial selves. If the metaphors that pervade entrepreneurial
discourse reveal the extraordinary in particular ways, how might we gain more
understanding of the ordinary? How do entrepreneurs construct the ordinary and the
extraordinary together in their narratives? Our paper proposes that cliche can do this.
The literature on metaphors suggests that other tropes such as cliche should be
investigated further. As Gibbs (1993) and Oswick et al. (2002) note, while metaphor is a
powerful means of expressing and constituting the continuous flow of experience
(Ortony, 1993) there are other tropes that are constitutive of our experience, with
examples such as irony, anomaly, paradox, metonymy, hyperbole, idioms and
oxymorons being identified. The linguistic canon classifying, categorising and

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developing understanding of such resources is huge and cannot be addressed in detail

here. What is apparent in the literature however is the distinction between figurative
and literal language, which underpins many of the debates. Many authors (Tsoukas,
1991; Fraser, 1993; Newmark, 1988) note the transition over time from figurative live
metaphors, where context and creativity are still required for understanding, such as,
the heart is a lonely hunter, to dead metaphors, such as the mouth of a river, where
usage has become habitual and literal, with little, if any evocation of the initial
imagery. In this view, other tropes have been suggested as staging points on the road
to the dead metaphor such as cliche (Le Sage, 1941; Booth, 1978; Amossy, 1981) and the
cliche metaphor (Newmark, 1988). Gibbs (1993, p. 273) argues that while dead
metaphors may be classed as idioms, nonetheless there is an unconscious mental
mapping during speech that evokes the initial visual domain, as linkages are made to
more vivid imagery that is now seen at a distance. Cliche may be used in speech to
evoke vivid imagery, but from a safe distance, as we shall now argue.
Oswick et al. (2002) and Gibbs (1993, p. 275) argue that the elevation of metaphor to
the master trope misses the potential for gaining interpretative insight through a
fuller understanding of richness and subtlety of language. Oswick et al. (2002) suggest
that tropes privileging similarity such as metaphor, metonym and synecdoche, operate
from the cognitive comfort zone and are valuable conduits for communicating
pre-existing understanding in new ways. However tropes that privilege dissimilarity,
such as irony, anomaly and paradox, are much more challenging, operating from the
cognitive discomfort zone and may produce more ground-breaking change and
decentring of conventional understandings and identities. Yet metaphor itself may be
very challenging, depending on the context: the master metaphors of the entrepreneur,
the all conquering hero armed with the rhetoric of change, while easily recognizable,
well understood and aspirational, may at the same time be somewhat daunting, or
worse, irrelevant or unachievable when viewed from the cognitive comfort zone of the
more tentative aspirant entrepreneur. We now suggest that cliche is a narrative
resource that sits in the safe comfort zone, because it allows a weak identity attachment
with entrepreneurship; the more powerful entrepreneurial metaphors, do not afford
such tentative attachment for everyone. Having positioned cliche in relation to
metaphor, we now examine what is meant by cliche in more detail to provide more
support for our claim.
Cliche is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as A stereotyped expression, a
commonplace phrase: also, a stereotyped character, style, etc. (Weiner and Simpson,
1989, p. 318). It further relates the word to its adjectival attributes as cliched,
hackneyed; characterized by cliches (Weiner and Simpson, 1989). Thus, though
originally restricted to specific words or phrases, the meaning has evolved to
encompass adjectival usage applicable to describing any phenomena (McArthur, 1992,
p. 222). This use is also supported sociologically: Zijderveld (1979) recognises that acts
and even thoughts can be described as cliched, and argues that the use of cliche is an
inherent communicative phenomenon that functions to obviate the necessity of dealing
with the full meaning of interactional utterances (Zijderveld, 1979, p. 10). Cliches
enable us to interact mechanically [. . .], without reflection. By means of cliches we are
able to interact and communicate smoothly, routinely and in a facile manner
(Zijderveld, 1979, p. 58). It is also usually a pejorative term used to describe something
as having lost its freshness and vigour through overuse (and therefore suggesting

insincerity, lack of thought, or laziness on the part of the user) (McArthur, 1992, p.
222). Moreover, it is often used in conjunction with the qualifiers tired and empty,
such that it functions as talk without communication: people use cliches as a way of
filling a space in conversation, and fail or do not intend to be informative or persuasive
in the interaction[1].
More contemporary analysis emphasises how cliches are implicated in the control of
employees (Anderson-Gough et al., 1998), in that they serve to suppress, smooth-over
and simplify the contradictions of managerial authority. Our emphasis on the
constitutive nature of self-identity construction suggests a second, more positive
function. Cliche may facilitate a weak, but safe, attachment to related vivid
metaphorical imagery. Thus cliche use both smoothes over to effect control and exert
influence over the self and others, but also serves to smooth over the rugged and
inconsistent terrain of individual experience into a consistent and secure narrative; a
comfortable place to be. As Shapin has suggested, common sense linguistic items such
as proverbs and cliches serve a variety of purposes including aids to action [. . .] where
absolute certainty is neither available nor rationally to be expected (Shapin, 2001, p.
740). Thus cliches can also function to facilitate and enable action in complex and
uncertain situations, such as entrepreneurship, yet from a slightly safer standpoint.
We suggest that cliche with its positioning in the literal, mundane and accepted is a
narrative resource that privileges similarity in the manner that Oswick et al. (2002)
suggest. However, while it offers a comfortable standpoint, it can still evoke powerful
visual images from the figurative, and metaphoric, the heroic and unusual
entrepreneur. Thus cliche offers the possibility of a weak identity attachment to the
notion, entrepreneur. The excitement of the vivid imagery of entrepreneurship is
evoked, but at a rather safer distance.
Cliche is therefore a linguistic resource that has complexity, power and subtlety
in social interaction, while being rooted in the ordinary and everyday domain of
narrative expression. In the following analysis we argue that a cliched way of
talking can be a prop at times of risk, without the challenge of superhuman
aspiration to live up to. The cliche can manage easily the contradiction between the
extraordinary and the ordinary.
Cliche can do this for the entrepreneurs in our case because of the manner in which
they deploy cliched narrative. In the subsequent analysis they indicate and emphasise
what they are not by holding themselves apart as extraordinary or in opposition to
the things they imagine they are separate from the ordinary. In Karreman and
Alvessons terms they exhibit a negative identity (Karreman and Alvesson, 2001, p.
84), a sense of themselves defined by what they oppose. The purpose of this
oppositional differentiation is to create a sense of knowing where things and others are
supposed to be in their narratives. In turn, this knowledge makes action and decision
making easier. This is because focused and committed action calls for simplified and
unreflective decision making, the denial of ambiguity and recognition of the drawbacks
of a preferred route (Karreman and Alvesson, 2001, p. 83, see Zijderveld, 1979, above).
Entrepreneurial cliche helps in this activity, and is one of the narrative expressions that
the entrepreneurs use to define who they are, and make their famously uncertain
entrepreneurial activity easier to manage and less of a heroic aspiration.

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10

Research approach
Methodologically, the paper is located in long-established understandings of
entrepreneurial behaviour as processual and multifaceted, where insight may be
gained through interpretive and qualitative methods (Curran and Burrows, 1987, p. 8;
Burrows and Curran, 1989, pp. 28, 31; Ogbor, 2000). As part of this movement, recent
years have seen the publication of a number of ethnographic studies into smaller
organizations and the people that work in them (Hobbs, 1988; Kondo, 1990; Ram, 1994;
Holliday, 1995). This project continues this line of enquiry, through a two and a half
year long ethnographic project that explored a variety of narrative contexts of
self-identity in an entrepreneurial setting (Down and Reveley, 2004; Reveley et al., 2004;
Down, 2002; Down, 2006). In the ethnographic tradition, the researcher seeks to provide
a personal account or interpretation of the participants world. Relationships in the
data are sought through observation and other qualitative methods, and an
interpretive scheme is developed to describe the knowledge, beliefs, values, and
behaviours of the group under study. Regularities or patterns of observed behaviours
and events that emerge from this analysis are used to clarify, extend, and interpret the
meanings and functions of human actions (Atkinson and Hammersley, 1994). In this
approach, frequency analysis of the coded sub-themes is not required, centrality and
importance instead ascertained with reference to the broader context of the
respondents narratives, as determined via successive iterations of data coding and
thematic development.
Thus, this project consisted of an array of methods including interviewing and
observation in a variety of organizational and social settings, during which the focus
on cliches occurred as one dimension of language that seemed to have particular
resonance in expressing the lived experience in the small firm. The data presented and
interpreted below are derived from taped and transcribed unstructured conversations
and other noted conversations with the respondents. The research was conducted
intermittently during 1997-1999, with the first named author carrying out the fieldwork
in a small firm in middle England. Paul and John manage Fenderco, which designs,
manufactures, markets and sells fendering equipment for docks and harbours, and
operates as part of an international joint venture. Fenders are rubber and steel
installations which provide a protective barrier between ships and docksides. When
the research commenced Fenderco had been trading for about four years and was an
established company with four employees.
The data used in this paper are drawn from observed constitutive aspects of
behaviour, and the respondents self-perceptions of that behaviour, as discussed by the
respondents in conversation. Provisional analytic categories were formulated at the
initial data analysis stage, which included a bundle of coding categories
entrepreneurial metaphors, cliches and truisms - which highlighted data referring to
occasions where the respondents seemed to be drawing from entrepreneurial public
and cultural narratives (Somers, 1994). After successive rounds of data coding and
sub-thematic linking using alternative thematic hierarchies (which prompted
alternative analytical and interpretive scenarios), this bundle eventually focused on
the concept of entrepreneurial cliche. The related sub-themes discussed in this paper
risk and bravery, ambition and growth, and autonomy and self-sufficiency draw
on data specifically referring to typically entrepreneurial talk about personal qualities
and attributes. Originally (Down, 2002; 2006), this was accompanied by another

sub-theme looking at attitudes to others (bureaucracy and corporations), but for space
reasons this is not discussed here.
The broader theme of this research entrepreneurial identity was not addressed
in a direct manner in the conversations reported here. This reflects not only an early
emphasis on the original objective and design of the study (owner-manager learning,
see Down, 1999) and the late emergence of identity as an analytical theme structuring
the research (see Hammersley and Atkinson, 1995, p. 206 who suggest that this is not
uncommon), but also an ethnographic sensibility which shied away from overt
engagement with analytical discussion with respondents). Thus, neither identity nor
entrepreneurialism as such was the foci of explicit and programmatic questioning. It
remains a possibility therefore that the researchers mutual experience of running a
business and his disciplinary interest in enterprise somehow created the respondents
weak and cliched attachment to entrepreneurialism. Notwithstanding the unavoidable
and mutual constructive nature of interviews (Alvesson and Karreman, 2000; Atkinson
and Silverman, 1997), the lack of specific engagement with entrepreneurialism
suggests that the respondents cliched talk is more their narrative construction, than
the researchers.
Thus, whilst in the field the researcher was struck by the familiarity of much of
what the two entrepreneurs said. When talking about their entrepreneurial behaviour
and both defined themselves and their venture in entrepreneurial terms the
managers seemed to be drawing on cliched terms, concepts and narrative formulations.
They seemed to be talking in the same hackneyed way - as if they were saying lines
from a script learned at some fictitious entrepreneurial school - as the owner-managers
depicted in other studies (e.g. Scase and Goffee, 1980). Initially this observation was
simply happily discounted as a confirmation of Paul and Johns entrepreneurial
orientation. As the project continued the authenticity and experiential provenance of
their entrepreneurial talk was continually brought into question by its superficial and
cliched nature, especially when compared to the experientially rich and authentic talk
about design, engineering, sales and marketing. Unsurprisingly they did not seem to be
aware of this aspect of their entrepreneurial talk. And, though the analytical theme of
cliches emerged whilst in the field, it was felt inappropriate to broach the subject with
them, or with Fendercos employees.
This ascription of cliche to respondents needs further elaboration. Almost anything
can be described as cliched. The Oxford Companion notes, the term is widely used to
refer to any social, artistic, literary, dramatic, cinematic, or other formula that through
overexposure has, in the view of a commentator, become trite and common place
(McArthur, 1992, p. 222, emphasis added). We have already suggested that the
entrepreneur is an ideal type, something that relies on commonly accepted definitions
(Blumer, 1962, pp. 187-188) or public and cultural narratives (Somers, 1994) about
entrepreneurship. However, whilst it is reasonable to accept that public entrepreneurial
narratives exist and that these might be used in cliched ways, ascribing the collection
of individual attitudes and descriptions of behaviour represented by the data in this
study under the umbrella of entrepreneurial cliche is fraught with difficulty. This is
because it is a subjective determination, largely dependent upon the view of the
commentator (in this case the researcher): the sophisticates cliche may be a startling
innovation for others.

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Our ascription in this case places us at the divergence between ethnography and the
grounded theory approach whose adherents tend towards objectivist qualitative
orientations and generally hold that theoretical constructs should reflect the key issue
or problem as perceived by case actors (Douglas, 2005, p. 426). Indeed, we argue that
cliche use represents a latent or hidden aspect of entrepreneurial identity
construction, and that it would be unrealistic to expect that researchers and
respondents might mutually recognise and co-validate the construct. Our aim
therefore, is not to prove objectively that Paul and John talked in cliches about their
entrepreneurial behaviour. Instead, our intent is to establish that the everyday talk of
entrepreneurs makes use of everyday entrepreneurial business language, terms such
as risk, bravery and control in a manner which evokes the vivid imagery of the heroic
entrepreneur but from a safe distance. In other words, the terms they use are linguistic
staging posts that allow a weak attachment to an entrepreneurial identity.
Arguably the plausibility of determining their talk as cliched is perhaps more
dependent on the broader context of Paul and Johns weak attachment to, and
experience of, entrepreneurialism, the comparatively rich narratives on matters of
business process and the lack of self-reflection implied by their use of cliche. We argue
that the owner-managers latch onto or substitute cliches in the absence other
entrepreneurially rich narratives in order to fill the space left in trying to describe
what they are doing and thinking whilst constructing their self-identity. They do not
know or commonly deal with many other entrepreneurs as entrepreneurs. Their
occupational identity narratives also reflect non-entrepreneurial experiences. Thus we
argue that rather than drawing upon previous experience, their use of the
entrepreneurial cliche sees them drawing from wider public and cultural narratives
(Somers, 1994, p. 620) that are available off-the-shelf. The categorisations are used
below to organize their talk.
Features of an entreprenurial cliched narrative
The paper now turns to a detailed interpretation and analysis of the meanings and
functions of Paul and Johns cliched talk. The section is divided into three parts and
focuses on entrepreneurial talk about personal qualities and attributes categorised
above. The quotes drawn upon include figures of speech that we suggest are examples
of cliched talk (highlighted in italic to aid identification and analysis). The very
ordinariness of the cliches identified might initially suggest the talk is banal. However,
we argue that the cliches here are used in a positive manner to facilitate security of self
through the construction of a narrative of entrepreneurial identity, thereby making
entrepreneurial activity easier to manage. Thus, the emphasis is on the positive
function cliches plays in making the crafting of entrepreneurial selves possible and
successful, and indeed achievable in a very ordinary way, not extraordinary,
superhuman, heroic and certainly not supernatural: cliche serves to bring together the
ordinary and the extraordinary in the production of a coherent entrepreneurial self.
The features we describe also suggest that cliches are used because Paul and John
have an essentially detached and weak relationship to entrepreneurship, in that
should they eventually become employees again they needed to avoid too heavy, too
challenging or too authentic an identity investment. A year after the research ended,
this is what in fact occurred. Fenderco was bought out by their previous employers,
and Paul and John were retained as employees with expanded and more senior roles.

Risk and bravery

Paul and John often talked about the risks they had taken in forming Fenderco. One
evening for instance, conversation with Paul turned to the topic of running businesses
and being entrepreneurs. He described how:

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There are very few people that I have worked with or for that are prepared to take that risk to
run their own business. And thats what sets entrepreneurs above employees (most of them),
for most . . . . For many people their personal objective is the security of having a job and not
wanting to put anything on the line.

13

He perceives the notion of taking risks as setting the entrepreneur above or apart
from employees in some way: employees will settle for the easier and less riskier
personal objective of seeking security through institutional others, but the
entrepreneur will not. The implication is that for Paul entrepreneurs choose to create
their own security and do not have to rely on institutional others. Implicit is a rejection
of, or the creation of distance from, those ordinary others; they are themselves
extraordinary. The juxtaposition against employees is also an indication that Paul
sees himself as separate from that social category and together with other
entrepreneurs, because of his willingness inter alia to sacrifice security: in other words
he distances himself from others in order to reify his identity as entrepreneur. The
quote which reflects a central and regular aspect of his and Johns talk about
themselves also suggests that putting something on the line, of taking risks with
being and feeling secure in life, is a positive personal attribute.
Other possible narrative interpretations of self-identity are nevertheless present in
Pauls talk and can be seen in certain incongruent statements that lay juxtaposed to the
cliched talk. For instance, in another taped conversation he talked about an aborted
attempt to start his own company with John in the early 1990s. He said that:
Ten years ago in our late twenties we were planning behind the scenes to form our own
company. [. . .]. The problem ten years ago was we were not brave enough. [. . .]. We were in the
right place and the right time; we just didnt have the balls to do anything.

Paul says that to be successful in business one has to take risks and be brave. There is
a contradiction between him saying that if they had been braver they may have started
their firm, and the realisation that they were not knowledgeable, learned or mature
enough at that time anyway. His entrepreneurial cliche of being brave and willing to
take risks seems incongruent when put against more rational considerations:
We didnt understand enough about life and business and the whole financial mechanisms of
running companies. This is something we learnt after that period and as our careers
developed with the new company, and they taught us how it works.

The cliched talk of risk provides a way of consolidating the non-entrepreneurial

narrative of not starting their firm earlier with a sense of himself now as an
entrepreneur. The non-entrepreneurial past is explained by, and joined to the
entrepreneurial present. Paul uses the cliche of entrepreneurial bravery here as a
protective mechanism: maintaining an entrepreneurial sense of himself, and smoothing
over the potentially uncomfortable and identity threatening the reality of his ordinary
behaviour.
Thus, the entrepreneurial cliche of risk sits happily alongside other contradictory
narratives. Despite the incongruous juxtaposition, self-identity is not undermined or

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challenged. Hence, whilst bravery and risk are part of the dominant identity-defining
cliched narrative, Pauls narrative does not in this case suppress other rationally based
narratives as Karreman and Alvesson suggest (they write that self-regulation of
identity may suppress consideration of aspects and modes of thinking, acting and
feeling that run against dominant processes of identity construction, (Karreman and
Alvesson, 2001, p. 59)). Rather, the narrative incongruities that may serve to undermine
the coherence of self are relegated included, but de-emphasised by the
consolidating and smoothing use of cliche: The extraordinary and the ordinary co-exist
with the help of cliche.
The cliche supports, and aids the narrative expression of self-identity and protects
an essentially weak attachment to being an entrepreneur. As Zijderveld has noted,
cliches are not the real answers to precarious situations, but they do function, in
particular they enable us to continue to communicate, as it were, on the safe surface
(Zijderveld, 1979, p. 62). They are available off-the-shelf. They are a public narrative,
not an exclusively ontological one. The entrepreneurial cliched narrative of risk and
bravery thus provides a safe surface with which Paul and John can deal with or not
worry about the occasional precariousness of their entrepreneurial situation. The
cliche as a safe interpretation of experience provides, in Giddens terms, coherence
to the ongoing narrative of the self (Giddens, 1991, p. 54). There is no need to be a
superhero or a wolfish charmer; they evoke images of derring-do, but it is located in the
mundane, the everyday.
Ambition and growth
Another prominent aspect of their talk and an entrepreneurial commonplace relates to
personal ambition and the desire for the growth of the firm. During the time the
researcher visited Fenderco, the company was settled and prospering, but Paul and
John were keen to expand the company and various new ventures were started. This
cliched talk of expansion comes predominantly from Paul. This partly reflects the
different areas of business that they covered, with Paul more concerned with strategy
and creative design and John looking after sales and operations, but it might also be
suggestive of a weak attachment to an entrepreneurial identity, where entrepreneurial
cliches about ambition and growth, at least for Paul, bolster this sense of himself.
His desire for expansion can be seen in comments about how he felt that he had:
A bigger ambition for this company. We are going to grow.

One of the underlying reasons, Paul said, for this desire for growth was the increasing
boredom in relation to core Fenderco activities. Paul explained one evening in his
living room that:
I do find the work with Fenderco a little bit boring. [. . .] I have been doing it [working with
fendering systems] for a rather long time, you know. John and I have big egos, and Id like us
to be involved with more than just fenders. Both John and I were talking the other night
considering possibilities for the future and we both have difficulties in working with other
companies you know, and [with] big firms but the one formula we know that works is John
and I, working together. I mean, what if we sold out? You know, looked in the Financial
Times and found another company. Turn it around, you know: build up our own little empire.
Who knows!

Building an empire evokes a weak identity attachment to the image of Paul as

imperial Caesar, if we take it to its figurative extreme. This desire to build a little
empire, in his imagination of an extraordinary entrepreneurial future at least, was not
necessarily dependent on the existence of Fenderco, or continuing to work with fenders
even. Pauls boredom with fendering, the company diversification, and his success as a
business owner suggest that he felt that fenders were somehow too ordinary and
beneath their ability and aspirations. He also explained that:
If somebody came along tomorrow with exactly the right [. . .], you know, the money was
right, then perhaps Id sell it and go off and do something else.
Researcher: Yeah, for what reason? Why, and whats the motivation in that. Has it become
mundane?
No, no, its just a new challenge. [We are] constantly trying to reinvent ourselves.

In Pauls talk of his ambitions and the possibilities of the future are not bounded by the
company he has set up. He is identifying himself through the entrepreneurial cliche of
ambition as someone who rejects and opposes the mundanity and boredom of running
a small business. These thoughts for the future are bounded merely by the sense of
himself as someone who can go off and do something else, someone who can buy a
new company and turn it around and build up a little empire. The narrative being
employed here is again an entrepreneurial cliche: routine is eschewed, freedom of
choice is boundless; and business is but a vehicle for creativity and success, not
something that one is attached too.
Yet Paul also talked about a deep-rooted desire to own a factory. In one of the more
colourful moments of the research while Paul and the researcher were driving to a
meeting at a port complex, he joked that seeing the steel works aroused him, gave
him a hard-on. He explained:
I really want a factory one day.
Researcher: Is that the toy that you want?
I have got the products to put in it. I just need the production now.

The desire to own a factory seems incongruous when set against the entrepreneurial
cliche: the talk of the entrepreneur as detached creator continually reinventing himself
against the ordinary constraint of routine. Other talk about the commitment and effort
he puts into his work and building up Fenderco similarly seems incongruent to the
cliched talk. Thus, once a factory had been purchased and the responsibility for
keeping it and its workers in work lay with them, they would talk more realistically.
This incongruent interplay between the mundane and engaged (ordinary) reality of
managing Fenderco, and the cliched talk of grand entrepreneurial futures
(extraordinary) seems not to threaten or disturb Pauls sense of himself as an
entrepreneur. Despite the rejection of stultification that the cliched talk of growth and
ambition provides it also seems to act as a narrative support to the more mundane and
occasionally anxiety-inducing reality of life in Fenderco, and is suggestive of the
underlying weakness of their entrepreneurial identity. Cliche achieves this by
consolidating the talk about the hopes for the planned future with the constraints and
limitations of the present.

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Self-sufficiency and autonomy

The final entrepreneurial cliche discussed here relates to the ambition to build a little
empire, and the idea that risk is something that sets entrepreneurs above employees:
both these co-relate to the entrepreneurial desire to be self-sufficient and autonomous.
Entrepreneurs are often perceived to pride themselves on their self-sufficiency and
both their ability and desire to be autonomous: to build an empire, sovereign and apart
from others. In this Paul and John are no exception. John, for example, in one recorded
conversation was talking about the early, financially difficult days of Fenderco:
Well, it was a nerve-racking time. We only had each other to rely on. There was nobody else to
say, you are doing a great job, there was nobody to bail us out totally, and we got ourselves
into this thing and you know if it was going to work it was down to us and nobody else.

John then went on to talk about how he had, initially encouraged by his parents,
always been self-sufficient as a teenager and a university student:
I have always liked to be self-sufficient, I do not like to be reliant on other people [. . .] from an
early age I just knew I wanted to be independent of other people and I did not like being told
what to do, never have done, it doesnt go down well.

Similarly, in a conversation with Paul about what he likes about running a business he
said:
I enjoy the freedom of running my own company, and we can apply our knowledge in a totally
free way, and em, create a product for the customer, YOU KNOW I DO ENJOY THAT [his
emphasis in capitals].

Thus, autonomy is important to both of them: they use entrepreneurial cliche to reject
authority and oppose constraints on their choice. In reality however, the firm is far
from being on its own and there is a heavy use of entrepreneurial cliche in this talk. The
bonds that bind them to their joint venture partners, banks and so forth are relegated to
the level of the taken-for-granted in this talk. An example of this can be seen by looking
at the way in which the desires for expansion and diversification were not without
detractors or involvement from other parties in the joint venture, including the parent
firm. In one conversation, for instance, Paul described how they both faced a reprimand
for their alleged use of collective funds to support Fendercos diversification.
They dont understand our aggression. [. . .] you know. They dont like it. We dont kowtow to
them. Fuck that! You know! [. . .]. We represent eighty per cent of the total sales. We are very,
very big. The parent company thats a joke. [. . .]. These old men [in the parent firm] want
to retire. They want to take their investments, their royalties. They want control over it [the
joint venture], but they dont have that because of the entrepreneurial nature of the joint
venture [meaning Fenderco and the other European based partner]. [. . .]. There has been a lot
of trade between us. But we advised [the Managing Director of the European partner] of this
right from the outset. His advice was not to say anything to the bosses.
Researcher: The bosses being the Australians?
The Australians, yeah.

The interjection in this conversation reflects the researchers surprise in hearing the
term bosses. This was the first time that anything but the entrepreneurial talk of
autonomy in relation to the joint venture had been articulated. The talk of autonomy
and freedom and the autonomy implied in the talk of ambition and growth seems
incongruous when set against the constraints and obligations inherent in the joint

venture relationship, and the subordinate aspects of the relationship between the
parent/boss and Fenderco. However, if the reality of their being totally free,
independent of other people and apart can be doubted, the importance of the feeling
or desire to be apart from others is nonetheless a narrative device for maintaining their
sense of themselves as entrepreneurs. Why do they want or need to have this feeling?
How do the cliched narratives contribute to meeting the need?
One way of answering these questions is to say that Paul and John are talking like
this to avoid confronting the banal reality of their lives. Scase and Goffee (1980) have
discussed how many owner-managers talk-up the more mundane realities of their
work. They suggest that for many owner-managers this rhetoric was simply to make
them feel better about their sometimes financially precarious, difficult and
anxiety-inducing work. In Paul and Johns case the gap between the mundane,
hard-working and poor reality and the entrepreneurial rhetoric is not so great. In other
words Paul and John are successful, and they are entrepreneurs: the talk is not simply a
case of self-affirming rhetoric. Rather than the cliched talk serving to obliterate or
suppress reality, it serves to consolidate the different elements of their self-identity
through delineating what they reject and oppose. In Paul and Johns case a cliched way
of talking consolidates an array of disparate activities and relegates those incongruent
elements that might give rise to feelings of being ordinary.
Concluding discussion
The previous section shows that cliches, as public narratives (Somers, 1994) are used
by Paul and John to bolster their ontological narratives, which lack the stories about
their business activity derived from interaction with, previous historical experience of,
or schooling in, entrepreneurial activity. Cliches are a discursive means by which to
explore the possibilities of incorporating new or otherwise unfamiliar experiences into
the individuals ontological narrative. There is something about these types of
discursive practices which means that their use does not necessarily put the individual
at too great a risk should the story that is created via use of cliche prove surplus to
requirements and the ontological narrative shift in some way (as it did for Paul and
John who, though their company roles changed little, would soon become willing
employees, as their entrepreneurial venture merged with a larger company).
In using the discursive resource of enterprise the owner-managers highlight the
extraordinary aspects of their activity. In so doing they necessarily bring into sharp
relief the ordinary and mundane realities. But by using the discourse in a cliched way,
their use also serves to smooth this jarring juxtaposition: to fix a coherent and
achievable identity narrative. This is because cliche affords its user a fairly superficial
and therefore less risky engagement and attachment with the in this case
discursive notion of the entrepreneur as extraordinary atomised hero.
We have argued previously that entrepreneurs purposefully construct
entrepreneurial selves in establishing and growing new ventures (Mallon and Cohen,
2001; Lounsbury and Glynn, 2001; Downing, 2005; Down, 2006). Entrepreneurial
narratives have a role to play in this construction, with accounts being crafted and
re-crafted over time as an ongoing project of self-identity (Giddens, 1991; Somers, 1994)
in line with current needs and expectations, not as final manuscripts. Previous
research on the language that entrepreneurs use has focussed on the use of metaphor to
deepen our understanding of the process and practice of entrepreneurship (De Koning

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and Drakopoulou-Dodd, 2002; Drakopoulou-Dodd, 2002; Cardon et al., 2005), reflecting

both the prevalence of this trope in organizational studies generally (Oswick et al.,
2002) and also the heroic hyperbole surrounding the cult of the entrepreneur in popular
culture (Nicholson and Anderson, 2005). Yet as Gibbs (1993) and Oswick et al. (2002)
note, while metaphor is powerful and vivid a range of other linguistic tropes such as
cliche are likely to have value in constituting the flow of experience. Thus, in
considering the relationship between metaphor and cliche, Mitchell (1997, p. 122) notes
that the ordinary is rarely news, while the extraordinary and the idealised assume
an unwarranted pre-eminence, resulting in exceptions such as Richard Branson, for
example, being portrayed as the entrepreneurial rule.
For Anderson (2005, p. 592) of all the entrepreneurial discourses, metaphor is most
vivid. It is arguably therefore more likely to support robust and authentic identity
attachments to the extraordinary aspects of the enterprise discourse. The current
emphasis and outcomes of research on metaphor as the dominant figurative trope, we
argue, exacerbates this tendency. Thus for our respondents, their use of
entrepreneurial metaphor was limited, perhaps because it may be too vivid, and
indicative of too strong an attachment. Thus, entrepreneurial cliches afforded them a
means by which to be entrepreneurs without the potentially compromising authentic
commitment in their self-identity narratives: they have constructed a weak
entrepreneurial identity. This reasoning resonates with Mitchell (1997, p. 122) who
suggests that the mythical status of the entrepreneur may not be constructive as it
segregates the practising entrepreneur from the prospective venturer. The prospective
venturer may see a chasm between themselves and the superhuman, the heroic, the
extraordinary entrepreneurial identity and feel daunted in aspiring to construct such
an identity. The cliched language that we have identified, however, may evoke vivid
imagery more safely, from a more comfortable psychological space. Risk, ambition,
growth and control are all elements that may be used to construct an entrepreneurial
identity. They lift Paul and John away from the ordinary, and allow them to construct
attractive self-identities but not so far away as to separate them entirely from what
has gone on before in their working lives.
The contribution of this paper has therefore been to extend the repertoire of
narrative resources that entrepreneurial actors use in the creation of an entrepreneurial
self-identity. Specifically, our focus on the role of cliche in constructing narratives of
entrepreneurial selves reveals how ordinariness and extraordinariness coexist in
achieving the entrepreneurial self. In using cliche to illuminate ordinariness, we do not
seek to detract from the value of the metaphorical trope in inspiration, excitement and
motivation to venture. Rather we hope that the extended understanding of available
linguistic resources our research has described shows the variety of potential narrative
strategies available to people who claim entrepreneurial status.
Our ethnographic interpretation has shown that Paul and John use cliche in their
everyday understanding of who they are and what they do. Thus, we have provided
further evidence that entrepreneurs are purposeful in generating a sense of
entrepreneurial self. To some extent their narratives aspire to an ideal type
possessing a set of attractive characteristics, such as bravery, ambition, success,
autonomy and self-sufficiency. In considering linguistic resources as part of our
interpretation, we have shown that in constructing their narratives, they juxtapose the
extraordinary and ordinary public narratives or discourses associated with enterprise,

via the use of a set of off-the-shelf cliches. Cliche works in the narratives we have
described by smoothing and creating a consolidated and coherent self-narrative, but at
the same time, when incongruous events and experiences might belie the
entrepreneurial identity the actors wish to create, they can be employed to relegate
and incorporate these potential threats. Our version of the entrepreneur relies not on
the superhuman and the extraordinary individuals evoked by the vividness of
metaphorical allusion, but on a version that shows how all might draw on discursive
resources to explain entrepreneurial identity work in a more everyday and less
challenging way. We have therefore provided deeper insight into the enactment of
entrepreneurship, and in doing so have illustrated the value of Oswick et al.s support
for consideration of a broader range of linguistic tropes in organization studies. In so
doing we have further extended the repertoire of narrative resources available to the
enterprise scholar in understanding the individual and the more processual/contextual
aspects of entrepreneurial activity. Future research into the explanations given by
business managers into their entrepreneurial orientations and behaviour will need to
ensure that a differentiated and nuanced approach to language tropes is considered or
adopted.
In terms of how this knowledge might be used, there is a range of potential benefits,
chief of which is the theoretical understanding of how entrepreneurs go about creating
a viable sense of self that draws on explanatory advances in contemporary social
science. It is not however stretching credibility too far to envisage educators and policy
makers interested in encouraging enterprise using the notion of entrepreneurial cliche
to examine and assess the strength and stability of the entrepreneurial self, and also to
devise means to encourage the self-reflection of aspirant entrepreneurs. As enterprise
becomes a normal part of ever more aspects of education and training activity, the
limits of prescriptive and technically oriented pedagogic approaches, and in particular
an individually bounded personality traits conception of the entrepreneur, will
increasingly restrict understanding, especially at the tertiary level. Alternative and
more sophisticated models of entrepreneurship need to be incorporated into the canon,
if we are to develop entrepreneurial capacity as a society, and avoid instilling
unreasonable and extraordinary expectations in students (and future practitioners) of
enterprise. This suggests that continued research into the narrative and discursive
components of entrepreneurial identity is required, but also applications of such theory
developed in the class room and the business incubator; to create (self-)assessment and
(self-)reflection tools which reflect contemporary and not arcane notions of self and
identity.
Note
1. The authors are thankful to an anonymous reviewer for this observation.
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About the authors
Simon Down is a Lecturer in Management at the University of Newcastle, UK. Beginning his
working life as an entrepreneur in the independent music sector, he has subsequently published
articles on the topics of small firm policy and entrepreneurial self-identity in both enterprise and
organisation studies journals. He is the author of Narratives of Enterprise: Crafting
Entrepreneurial Self-identity in a Small Firm published by Edward Elgar, and is currently
writing a textbook for Sage on entrepreneurship and small business. Simon Down is the
corresponding author and can be contacted at: simon.down@ncl.ac.uk
Lorraine Warren is a Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the School of
Management, University of Southampton. She is interested in theoretical development in
innovation, in particular, studies of entrepreneurship and identity, knowledge networks and
complex systems. Current themes include knowledge-based ventures and engineering
businesses.

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Constructing
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