Understanding enterprise culture: the ‘fashioning’ of enterprise activity within small business

Strat. Change, 9, 405–414 (2000)

Strategic Change, November 2000Copyright Þ 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Patricia Carr* UnderstandingSchool of Business and Management,Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middlesex, UK enterprise culture:

the ‘fashioning’ ofenterprise activitywithin smallbusinessž This paper represents an attempt to

make visible the impact of enterpriseculture on small business enterpriseactivity.

ž In doing this it sets out to exploreunderstandings of the enterpriseculture phenomenon, by subjectingthe conventional conceptualizationto critical scrutiny. In particular itqueries the way in which theaccepted understanding of thisphenomenon conceives of the stateas an entity involved in a direct,causal prohibitory relationship withindividual units such as smallbusinesses.

ž An alternative understanding ofenterprise culture which focuses onattempts by the state to strategicallymanage the enterprise activities ofsmall businesses withoutannihilating their existence andtheir autonomy is proposed.

ž This alternative suggests that ourunderstanding of enterprise cultureshould focus on the strategicpractices and activities required ofsmall businesses to ensurecompetitive advantage and the

* Correspondence to: Patricia Carr, School of Businessoptimal performance of the marketand Management, Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middle-

sex, UB8 3PH, UK. E-mail: [email protected] economy.

Patricia Carr

Copyright Þ 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Strategic Change, November 2000

406

ž Empirical data drawn from ž It is widely acknowledged that theinterviews with Irish small business likelihood of business failure isentrepreneurs are presented. These connected to a lack of managerialcentre on their reaction to the Irish attention to business strategy. Thisstate policy of selectivity, understood paper demonstrates how an enterpriseas the targeting of state resources at policy such as selectivity aims tosmall businesses most likely to grow ensure competitive advantage throughsuccessfully, through the the development of a strategic mindsetdevelopment of a strategic on the part of small businessorientation in their business entrepreneurs.dealings. Copyright Þ 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Introduction

‘Enterprise culture’ as many commentatorshave pointed out, is a slippery and deviousconcept that even its most staunch advocateshave great difficulty in defining. Con-ventionally enterprise culture prioritizes thenotion that wealth creation is best facilitatedand achieved by a highly individualistic formof capitalism. Special emphasis is placed on thepersonal attributes of autonomy, self-reliance,risk-taking, industry and diligence. Producersand new business entrants (entrepreneurs) areencouraged to be dogged, ambitious, com-petitive innovators who are always alert to newopportunities.

Within this view, the state and the individualare pitted against one another. However theparadox of this conceptualization of enterpriseculture is that attempts to diminish the role ofthe state have resulted in many instances in amore intrusive and extensive state power thanheretofore (Marquand, 1988), which the tra-ditional understanding of enterprise culturecannot explain. Neither is it capable of high-lighting how the state through its attempts topromote an enterprise culture, is activelyinvolved in the ‘fashioning’ of entrepreneurialbehaviour within small firms (Carr, 2000).

In order to understand such a paradox thispaper presents an alternative conceptual-ization of the nature of enterprise culture. Thisis achieved by examining the reaction of Irishentrepreneurs to the state policy of selectivity,

understood simply as the targeting of resourcesat those small firms most likely to grow suc-cessfully through the development of a stra-tegic orientation in their business dealings. It iswidely accepted that suboptimal performanceand the likelihood of business failure areclosely related to a lack of attention to businessstrategy (Beaver and Ross, 2000), allied to poor

Suboptimal performance andthe likelihood of business

failure are closely related to alack of attention to business

strategy

management practice. This paper dem-onstrates how an enterprise policy such as sel-ectivity, (which is one of the means by whichthe conduct of Irish small business entre-preneurs is shaped and regulated) givesexpression to the practices and habits requiredof Irish small businesses to ensure competitiveadvantage and the optimal performance of theIrish market economy.

Within this context state personnel whooperationalize a policy of selectivity can beunderstood as enterprise advisors, who assessthe eligibility of entrepreneurs for governmentsupport through the application of selectivecriteria to business proposals. Rather than one

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of opposition, the relationship between thestate and the small business sector within Irishenterprise culture can be understood as a sys-tem which acts as a type of interface betweengovernmental activities (e.g. strengthening ofindigenous business, employment creation,wealth creation), and the set of ‘self-formation’ascetic practices (e.g. development of strategicorientation through planning, competent fin-ancial management) which Irish small busi-nesses are encouraged to adopt.

Background to the data

The paper is based on research, whichexplored aspects of the Irish entrepreneurialprocess, with the data being drawn from inter-views with small business owners. A stratifiedpurposive sample of 250 small businesses wasdrawn from the Kompass Directory with theaim of selecting between 30 and 40 businessesfor interview. From this sample, 100 firms wereformally contacted by letter and each letterwas followed up by telephone contact. Thisresulted in 33 firms agreeing to participate inthe research, with interviews being conductedat their business premises. The sectoral break-down of these firms is presented in Table 1.

Some qualification of this sample of inter-viewees needs to be made. First, it was notthe intention to have a representative smallbusiness sample in the statistical sense. Theintention always was to interview between 30to 40 small businesses out of the estimated160,000 in Ireland (Task Force on Small Busi-

Table 1. Sectoral composition of small business respon-dents

Sector Male Female Total

Computer software 3 4 7Confectionery 1 1 2Electronics 1 — 1Chemicals 3 — 3Ceramics — 1 1Knitwear 4 — 4Clothing 2 3 5Plastics 4 — 4Engineering 5 1 6Total 23 10 33

ness, 1994) and this small sample size by itsvery nature makes attempts at representationvery difficult to achieve. Second, the samplesize must be understood within the contextof the overall aim of the research which wasconcerned with cultivating new ways of think-ing about Irish enterprise which differed fromthe traditional analytical categories of mod-ernization and dependency theories. It washoped that this could be accomplishedthrough an exploration of the interactions,which occur between various economicactors. As such as interest could be defined ashypothesis generating, a representative samplewas not crucial.

Third, for the purposes of this paper, thesample of small businesses is treated as hom-ogenous. A key reason for adopting such anapproach is that policy initiatives designed tosupport and develop Irish small business tendto focus on the sector overall and not separatetypes and classifications within it. Pilot inter-views conducted with state personnel priorto the commencement of the main fieldworkindicated that ‘sector’ per se is not identified asan important criterion when selecting businessproposals to support. It is usually only impor-tant in capacity terms i.e. are there too manypeople in a particular sector, or if a sector is‘fashionable’ at a particular point in time. Ananalysis of sectoral differences (or otherinternal differences such as gender) wouldundoubtedly yield interesting results. Howeveremphasis on sectoral diversity is outside theremit of this paper.


Though the enterprise culture phenomena istraditionally located in Britain, Irish policy mak-ers have also explicitly embraced the aim ofestablishing an Irish enterprise culture. This isreflected in the production of a number ofpolicy documents including the CullitonReport (1992), Employment Through Enter-prise (1993), and Shaping our Future (1996),which suggest that past government inter-vention i.e. grant assistance and tax breakshave had a negative effect on the self-reliance

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of Irish entrepreneurs. It is argued that the Irishstate’s role in rectifying such a situation shouldbe to support industry not cosset it. Such sup-port includes reform of the taxation system,the creation of a more efficient infrastructure,the development of an enterprise educationsystem and the reduction of burdens on smallerfirms until they have reached a reasonable sizeand/or a critical competitive structure.

The state therefore should adopt a mini-mal role, confining itself to promoting anenterprise culture and facilitating theactivities of entrepreneurs.

Though the specificity of the Irish state andIrish economy should not be under emphas-ized, there are significant similarities betweenthe Irish and British contexts, influenced bytheir close historical ties. These have createdstrong affinities between the Irish and Britishenterprise culture projects in a number ofways.

First, the sense of enterprise emphas-ized in both the British and Irish enter-prise culture projects is believed to belocated in the small firm. Small businessowners are presented as ‘cultural heroes’ atthe heart of enterprise culture. Located in small

Small business owners arepresented as ‘cultural heroes’

at the heart of enterpriseculture

firms it is argued, are decent and industriousentrepreneurs who are going to create jobsthrough entrepreneurial ventures and newforms of competition and economic regen-eration. The creation of an enterprise culturein both contexts explicitly envisages the devel-opment of the economy emerging from theestablishment of new innovative, commercialenterprises (Gray, 1998).

Second, in both contexts there is astrong emphasis on deregulation and hav-ing a government which is essentiallynon-interventionist and laissez-faire innature. Within Ireland this latter commitment

has manifested itself throughout the history ofIrish industrial policy. For example multi-national companies (MNCs) which were set upin Ireland from the 1960s onwards operatewithin a context of radical free trade i.e. littleor no restriction or direction is placed on MNCactivity (O’Hearn, 1989). Nevertheless despiteits overall non-interventionist stance, the Irishstate involves itself in ‘. . . extreme state subsidyof private capital’ (Allen, 1990: 35). In 1994nearly £100 million in grants was paid out toMNCs and Irish firms. In 1996 grant figures haddoubled to £160 million (Carey, 1997).

Third, it is often argued that a sig-nificant area in which Ireland differs fromBritish is that of industrial relations. Theadoption of a quasi-corporatist stance on thepart of the Irish state, through the devel-opment of wage agreements with various‘social partners’, means that Irish state activityhas been characterized as collectivist in con-trast to the individualism of the British state.However the supposed ‘collectivism’ of Irishindustrial relations can be questioned. The1990s have witnessed a significant decline intrade union recognition and collective bar-gaining in many new growth industries (Gun-nigle, 1998). In addition though manycommentators highlight the significant pres-ence of MNCs in the Irish economy, par-ticularly American subsidiaries, the impact thatthese have on industrial relations practice issometimes underestimated. Research is cur-rently emerging which suggests that newlyestablished MNC subsidiaries in Ireland, par-ticularly American ones are adopting a stronglyindividualist industrial relations style.

In the conventional conceptualization ofenterprise culture in Britain and Ireland, therelationship between state and individual isunderstood as a ‘zero-sum one’ i.e. individualswho are self-reliant and responsible allowgovernment to withdraw from economic man-agement. Paradoxically however, the culturalrevolution called for to produce autonomous,dynamic individuals, can only be achievedthrough a strong state. Such a paradox signalsthat we should treat with caution, the apparentderegulation that is said to characterize enter-prise culture. Attempts to limit the scope of



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government while promoting autonomy andindividual freedom require a complex array ofgovernment policies, initiatives and strategiesfor success in this endeavour (Miller and Rose,1990).

According to Gray (1998) enterprise culturepolicies are unique for their reliance on per-sonal motivation, attitude shifts and behav-ioural change. This characteristic reinforcesMarquand’s (1988: 168) claim that enterpriseculture ‘. . . will not produce the best resultsfor society as a whole unless one has the sortof men (sic) who can in fact be trusted tobehave in a way that the market orderrequires’. It is therefore crucial that our under-standing of enterprise culture should highlighthow policies such as selectivity aim ‘. . . todevelop those elements constitutive of indi-viduals’ lives in such a way that their devel-opment also fosters that of the strength of thestate’ (Foucault, quoted in McNay, 1994: 121).

Selectivity: managingentrepreneurial chaos

During the 1980s and 1990s in Britain andIreland, efforts have been made to re-directstate support for business away from automaticnon-discriminatory grants to a system of dis-criminatory and non-automatic support.Characteristics of the small business sectorsuch as an inordinately high failure rate, alliedto research which strongly suggests that onlysome 4% of all small businesses account for50% of growth and employment in the sectorsupport this move (Storey, 1985; Storey andJohnson, 1987; Beaver and Jennings, 1995; Kin-sella et al., 1994). The general view is that stateresources should be targeted where they cangenerate the highest return, rather than besquandered (through non-discriminatory sup-port) where the return is at most marginal andat worst detrimental to the long-term interestof the economy.

Blanket support for new firms and existingbusinesses is viewed as non-strategic and inef-ficient, with selectivity being seen as moreappropriate, giving the best value for

money in terms of state resources andcreating a stronger likelihood of develop-ing strategically managed small busi-nesses. In this only a few chosen firms areeligible for state support which will make asignificant contribution to the strategic growthand development of the business as well asmaking a meaningful contribution to thenational economy. The introduction and devel-opment of selectivity signals a switch awayfrom enticing large numbers of people intoself-employment to a tighter focus (Gray,1998), with businesses applying for state sup-port coming under much greater scrutiny. Thisinvolves assessing the viability of projects,determining whether the projects meetgovernment technological and employmentobjectives and follow-up studies of businessesthat receive support (Thompson, 1990; Beaverand Jennings, 1995).

The conventional analysis of the policy ofselectivity has tended to centre on an evalu-ation of its effectiveness when judged againstits own stated objective of identifying smallbusinesses with the best potential. Howeverlittle attention is directed at another significantdimension of selectivity i.e. one whichfocuses on the strategic management ofentrepreneurial activity which his-torically has been viewed as inherentlychaotic. Within the interviews conducted forthis research respondents evoked this sense ofchaos making reference to a feeling of ‘. . .being tossed around from wave to wave onthe stormy seas of commerce . . .’. Such a feel-ing of chaos was heightened by the lack ofcertainty and constant change, which thesesmall business entrepreneurs are subject, asthe following illustrates:

. . . If you take a very small business likeourselves you know we’re really beingtossed around from wave to wave on thestormy seas of commerce . . . you just reallyhave to reanalyse, basically reinvent your-self every morning. You’ve got to look atthe whole thing afresh and make freshassumptions. The assumptions you madeyesterday morning aren’t necessarilygoing to be quite as valid this morning. So

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its very confusing and its very hard to givedefinite answers but that’s the way youhave to be.

The recognition of the chaos attached to enter-prise may help explain why 70% of the samplewere in favour of the selectivity system. Theserespondents viewed the process of selectivityas a ‘. . . filter . . .’ which required small businessentrepreneurs to strategically assess their busi-ness activities against a range of ‘. . . objectivecriteria . . .’ provided by the selectivity pro-cedures. As one respondent commented:

Now they (state agency) do that, a bit likethe banks, they provide a filter which prob-ably stops complete loopers from gettinggoing because they do look at your plan,they do kind of get the calculator out andlook at it and say ‘well you know this per-son is totally off the wall’ or they say ‘wellmaybe there’s something in it’. And to thatextent I think its beneficial because at leastthey force you to analyse your businesswith some kind of objective criteria and Isuppose that was beneficial because it for-ced me to try and crystallise the vaguenotions I had in my head.

Reference is made here to ‘objective criteria’which can be understood as the means bywhich a policy such as selectivity is oper-ationalized by organizations such as Forbairt,the Irish state development agency. Selectivityrequires that before Irish businesses canreceive state support they must subscribe to arange of criteria, which are outlined in theIndustrial Development Act 1986. This sets outstrict rules for grants setting limits for financialassistance; focusing assistance on inter-nationally trading companies and the devel-opment of export markets and requesting firmsto generate new employment, increase localvalue added and improve research and devel-opment (Drudy, 1995). In addition Forbairt hasdeveloped its own criteria with regard to cer-tain sectors and academic research in the area(e.g. Kinsella et al., 1994) has attempted toprovide an ‘identikit’ of the fast growth firm,

the type of small business which selectivityaims to identify.

Selectivity has led to an emphasis beingplaced on the management needs of smallfirms and the development of a strategicorientation on the part of small business.Increasingly, it is argued that intervention poli-cies such as selectivity are needed to encour-age small firms to undertake more strategicplanning with the aim of improving their long-term competitive position (Peel and Bridge,1999).

This is supported by a growing body ofresearch which suggests that small busi-nesses which adopt a strategic orientationand practice strategic management out-perform those which do not (Beaver andRoss, 2000).

Thus the policy of selectivity has two stra-tegic aims embedded in it. First to identify andsupport entrepreneurial small businesseswhich Georgellis et al. (2000) define as thosewith a strategic intent to grow. Second toshape and nurture a strategic mindset withinIrish small businesses.

The policy of selectivity hastwo strategic aims. First to

identify and supportentrepreneurial small

businesses. Second to shapeand nurture a strategic

mindset

It can therefore be suggested that selectivitycan be understood as a system by which stra-tegic order is imposed on entrepreneurial‘chaos’ with firms being advised on how bestto develop their produce and market. Such‘order’ does not come about by imposing arange of constraints upon individuals, ratherit emerges from attempts at ‘. . . making upcitizens capable of bearing a kind of regu-lated freedom’ (Rose and Miller, 1992: 174).Foucault (1982: 214) argues that the modernstate should not be conceptualized as an entity



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that has developed above individuals, ignoringtheir existence and what they are. Rather itshould be thought of as a highly sophisticatedstructure ‘. . . in which individuals can be inte-grated, under one condition: that this indi-viduality would be shaped in a new form,and submitted to a set of very specificpatterns’. Adopting this position we can under-stand selectivity practices within enterpriseculture as practices of self-formation, in thattheir aim is to specify the sanctioned demean-our and conduct of those entrepreneurs whoclaim state support, as illustrated by the com-ment above that ‘. . . it forced me to try andcrystallise the vague notions that I had in myhead . . .’.

Selectivity not only aims to identify firmswhich are eligible for state support, it also seeksto regulate the desires, needs, ambitions, capa-bilities and attitudes of the entrepreneurs whocome within its ambit. Its aim is to pro-fessionalize the way in which entrepreneursapproach their business and to promote thedevelopment of a strategic orientation. In doingthis, selectivity requires the collaboration ofentrepreneurs in these practices of self-shaping,self-cultivation and self-presentation (Dean,1995), which as we can see is willingly givenby a majority of this sample. Nevertheless itmust be understood that the order which suchpractices can produce is a selection and eachselection by its very nature will arouse angerand prompt rebellion (Bauman, 1995).

Resistance to the management ofenterprise

Part of the acceptance of the ordering systemof selectivity is a recognition on the part ofsmall business owners, that the uncertaintyand chaos of the environment within whichthey are working, requires a level of pro-fessional knowledge. Such knowledge is oneof the means by which small business entre-preneurs can question and act on themselvesand their enterprising activities, and ‘. . . knowwhat (they’re) about . . .’, as the followingillustrates:

You have a certain standard of education,intelligence and the ability to comprehendwhat you’re doing and the implications ofit, and that requires a very good all roundknowledge of economics, of politics,finance, marketing, you really do now cer-tainly . . . you’ve got to know what you’reabout. I say without question you do needa formal qualification. I know there aresome people who run on a wing and aprayer and they’ve done well but I thinkthat is becoming impossible. You could doit in the past but certainly not now . . .

The high level of education among the smallbusiness sample contributed to their rec-ognition of the difficulties involved in trying toorder enterprise given its unpredictability, asthe following illustrates:

I suppose they (Forbairt) would be muchmore concerned with trying to get a pre-dictable cash flow model based on it. Inother words ‘if we give you this money,you’re going to do X with it, now predictfor us how the return is going to comeback’, and that’s a problem because theworld doesn’t run on a spread sheet, andyou know if something is a success you canget bundles on it coming in, more than youever thought possible. If its a failure itszero. It just doesn’t come in nice monthlyparcels, increasing at a cumulative rate of5% which is what you put on your spreadsheet.

The educational profile of the respondents andtheir recognition of the problems of selectivity,fuelled their challenge to the self-shaping andself-presentation demands of this system.

The entrepreneurs’ acceptance of theneed for selectivity and a more strategicapproach to business must not be under-stood in terms of docile acquiescence.Rather their active understanding of the chan-ging nature of the business environment theyare operating in acts as the catalyst for theirresistance to the selectivity system they aresubject to. Such resistance firstly manifestsitself in terms of a questioning of the knowl-

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edge and expertise of state personnel. Inimplementing the system of selectivity, statepersonnel rely heavily on financial criteria as ameans of assessing the strategic orientation ofthe business, something which entrepreneursstrongly dispute. Across the respondents therewas a unanimous questioning of the heavyemphasis which is placed on ‘. . . financialmodels . . .’, with many arguing that cash flowprojections have little ‘. . . basis in reality . . .’as the following quotation suggests:

I suppose it would give them (Forbairt)some comfort that you have some notion ofwhat a financial model would look like. Andlike you say you look at it and its like theventure capital things might say yeah that’sfantastic I see your cash flow projections, Iunderstand all that and I know for definitethat you’re going to meet your cost objec-tives . . . But then when you ask the questionwhere have the sales projections come from,I mean what are they based on, there’s a lotof hope value there I can tell you (laughs).You will find that by and large they don’thave any basis in reality . . . you know so itsa lot of hope value.

Substantial criticism is also levied at the waybusiness people are ‘forced’ to present them-selves to Forbairt when requesting finance oradvice. According to the research evidence,respondents have to present themselves (orare tacitly encouraged to present themselves)as a ‘. . . slick articulate type . . . with anaccountancy background . . .’, if they are to beclassified as entitled to state support as follows:

It favours the slick articulate type maybewith an accountancy background who canmake a plausible presentation, who cando the discounted cash flows and the salesprojections and come up with a plausibleapplication; where maybe the doer, the per-son that maybe has dirt under his fin-gernails or her fingernails because they’reout you know mucking it may not do thatwell because they’re not as articulate, theycan’t express that well what they intend.

A key finding in this research is that althoughrespondents accept the need for a professionaland strategic approach to business, they stron-gly challenge the image of professionalismthat they feel the selectivity process requiresof them.

What we see here on the part of Irishentrepreneurs is not opposition to sel-ectivity and rationality per se, rather it isopposition to the criteria around whichthe selectivity system is operationalized.

It is clear that there is an acceptance byentrepreneurs of a need for direction in situ-ations where they are faced with a field ofpossibilities and a variety of ways of behaving.Nevertheless the ‘self formation’ practices heldout to them by the system of selectivity arechallenged. This challenge is articulated hereby juxtaposing two images of the small busi-ness entrepreneur, i.e. the ‘. . . slick articulate. . .’ professional type versus ‘. . . the doer . . .’who is out ‘. . . mucking it . . .’. The paradoxhere is that though it is suggested that the eraof the latter has passed, it is this image of theheroic entrepreneur as the ‘. . . doer . . .’, run-ning a business ‘. . . on a wing and a prayer. . .’, that is presented as superior to the pro-fessional, strategic entrepreneur required ofthe selectivity process.

Though entrepreneurs are encouraged to bemore strategic and orderly in their approachthere are limitations on the efficacy of suchorder, particularly given the inherently chaotic

Though entrepreneurs areencouraged to be more

strategic in their approachthere are limitations on the

efficacy of such order

and spontaneous nature of entrepreneurialactivity. In pursuing their challenge of sel-ectivity practices, entrepreneurs tend to fallback on what might be termed ‘romantic’, ‘her-oic’ or ‘visionary’ criteria when discussing howthey make business decisions. It would appear



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that despite the existence and acceptance ofa rational, strategic and ordered approach tobusiness, very often rationality does not guidebusiness decisions:

I suppose its a form of gambling. You tendto pick your winners you know from therace card, you invest in them and you hopeat least one of them comes home a winner.

. . . they (Forbairt) look at the mechanicsof it in the same way, but I mean the thingI always come back to is that at some pointyou’ve got to have somebody whose got avision for what can be done, for where anopportunity is that is not readily visible inanything around them, including people. . . because if you put it down on paperpeople say ‘oh yeah that makes sense’, butthat’s a mechanical exercise, there’s notouch and feel in it, and its the touch andfeel thing that really sets the winners apart.

From this we can see that even where a com-mitment to being strategic in the form of sup-port for the system of selectivity exists, thelatter is challenged by the small business entre-preneurs, with an emphasis being placed ontheir ‘. . . vision . . .’, their ‘. . . mucking it . . .’and their ‘. . . touch and feel . . .’. Despite thevigorous efforts on the part of the state toshape and guide Irish entrepreneurs’ approachto business, these practices of self-governanceare continually challenged.

Conclusions

Two conceptualizations of the phenomenon ofenterprise culture have been examined here.First, a conventional understanding builtaround the dichotomy of state versus indi-vidual that understands state activities as pro-hibitory and involved in a direct causalrelationship with individuals. Second, an alter-native that focuses on the way in which thestate attempts to develop a strategic orien-tation among small business entrepreneurs.This understanding of enterprise culture high-lights how the capacities and desires of indi-

vidual small business entrepreneurs are acentral resource for the state by emphasizingthe efforts made to identify and develop entre-preneurial small businesses i.e. those busi-nesses which possess or can be made topossess, a strategic intention to grow.

Recent research has placed an emphasis onthe critical need for an enterprise culturewhich will nurture strategically managed smallbusinesses, encouraging their growth

The critical need for anenterprise culture which will

nurture strategicallymanaged small businesses

ambitions and supporting the associated risksinvolved (Georgellis et al., 2000; Beaver andRoss, 2000). Changing the way we think aboutthe relationship between small business andthe state in enterprise culture as suggestedhere can do two things. First, highlight thepolicy emphasis placed on the strategic man-agement of enterprise and the promotion ofstrategically run small firms, with the aim ofenhancing aspects of enterprise activity andstrengthening the state at one and the sametime. Second, illustrate the impact of enter-prise culture on small business activity and theresponse of small business entrepreneurs tothis. Interestingly the data presented in thispaper demonstrate how enterprise respon-dents accept the need for the strategic man-agement of their venture but also raise strongobjections to the way this is done through acomparison of the strategic, professionalentrepreneur with the heroic vision of the‘doer’ entrepreneur out ‘mucking it’.

Understanding enterprise culture as a wayin which the subjectivity and activity of smallbusiness entrepreneurs is directed and ration-alized allows us to explore the complexrelationship between the state and many partsof the small business sector—and the effortsthat are being made to promote and nurture astrategic mindset among entrepreneurs run-ning small firms.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to gratefully acknowledge theconstructive help of the Editor, Graham Beaver,and the comments from the Journal referees fortheir assistance and advice on the construction,design and improvement of this paper.

Biographical note

Dr Patricia Carr is a lecturer in the School ofBusiness and Management at Brunel University.Her particular interests include the cultural andstrategic issues affecting the small business sec-tor and to that effect she has recently com-pleted a new text on the subject whichexamines the impact of the enterprise cultureon the performance, perception and future ofthe sector.

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Understanding enterprise culture: the ‘fashioning’ of enterprise activity within small business