Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Achieving selves

Achieving selves Arguably, how psychohistorians treat entrepreneur life-writing interiorizes the autobiographer’s self, thereby limiting the extent to which self can be accessed by researchers. By advocating a different approach, based on socio-narratology, this paper provides insight into how entrepreneurs in both the distant and recent past construct narrative identities – the textual corollary of “storied selves” – within their autobiographies.Design/methodology/approachThe object of analysis is the failed entrepreneur autobiography, straddling two sub-genres – “projective” and “confessional” – which both serve to rehabilitate the author.FindingsNarratological analysis of Nick Leeson’s Rogue Trader autobiography reveals how the author deftly draws upon the culturally recognizable trope of the “rogue as trickster” and “rogue as critic” to contextualize his deceptive and illegal activities, before signaling his desire for rehabilitation by exiting banking and futures trading – thereby enacting the “rogue as family man”.Practical implicationsThe application of a narratological methodology opens up new avenues for understanding the interplay between Western cultural institutions, entrepreneur selves, and autobiographical writing.Originality/valueThis paper shows that narratology provides a new methodological window through which management historians can view entrepreneur autobiographies. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Management History Emerald Publishing

Achieving selves

Todres, Mathew; Reveley, James
Journal of Management History , Volume 25 (3): 18 – Oct 7, 2019
Download PDF
18 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/emerald-publishing/achieving-selves-ecPu0KKuRv
Publisher
Emerald Publishing
Copyright
© Emerald Publishing Limited
ISSN
1751-1348
DOI
10.1108/jmh-01-2019-0005
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Arguably, how psychohistorians treat entrepreneur life-writing interiorizes the autobiographer’s self, thereby limiting the extent to which self can be accessed by researchers. By advocating a different approach, based on socio-narratology, this paper provides insight into how entrepreneurs in both the distant and recent past construct narrative identities – the textual corollary of “storied selves” – within their autobiographies.Design/methodology/approachThe object of analysis is the failed entrepreneur autobiography, straddling two sub-genres – “projective” and “confessional” – which both serve to rehabilitate the author.FindingsNarratological analysis of Nick Leeson’s Rogue Trader autobiography reveals how the author deftly draws upon the culturally recognizable trope of the “rogue as trickster” and “rogue as critic” to contextualize his deceptive and illegal activities, before signaling his desire for rehabilitation by exiting banking and futures trading – thereby enacting the “rogue as family man”.Practical implicationsThe application of a narratological methodology opens up new avenues for understanding the interplay between Western cultural institutions, entrepreneur selves, and autobiographical writing.Originality/valueThis paper shows that narratology provides a new methodological window through which management historians can view entrepreneur autobiographies.

Journal

Journal of Management History – Emerald Publishing

Published: Oct 7, 2019

Keywords: Narrative identity; Entrepreneurs; Autobiography; Psychohistory; Socio-narratology

References

  • Kundera’s immortality: the interview society and the invention of the self
    Atkinson, P.; Silverman, D.
  • Autobiography as unconventional history: constructing the author
    Aurell, J.
  • Home squared’: Barack Obama’s transnational self-reliance
    Banita, G.
  • Identity regulation, identity work and phronesis
    Bardon, T.; Brown, A.; Pezé, S.
  • Autobiography in the American Renaissance
    Buell, L.; Eakin, P.J.
  • The adventurer and/or hero: Paul Zweig’s The Adventurer
    Burne, G.S.
  • The dilemma of the text: how to ‘belong’ to a genre
    Gerhart, M.
  • Risk and responsibility
    Giddens, A.
  • Nick Leeson and the collapse of Barings Bank: socio-technical networks and the ‘rogue trader
    Greener, I.
  • Identity projects
    Harré, R.; Breakwell, G.M.
  • The discursive production of selves
    Harré, R.
  • Positioning and autobiography
    Harré, R.; Van Langenhove, L.; Coupland, N.; Nussbaum, J.
  • A psycho-historical source: the memoirs of Abbot Guibert of Nogent
    Kantor, J.
  • The language of self
    Kerby, A.P.; Hinchman, L.P.; Hinchman, S.K.
  • Rogue logics: organization in the grey zone
    Land, C.; Loren, S.; Metelmann, J.
  • Introduction
    Lofaro, M.A.; Shackford, J.A.
  • The real Macheath: social satire, appropriation, and eighteenth-century criminal biography
    McKenzie, A.
  • Autobiography and psycho-analysis: between truth and self-deception
    Mazlish, B.
  • Challenging the Cartesian self: autobiography as an intertextual/interrelational discourse in the works of Aritha Van Herk and Kristjana Gunnars
    O’Flynn, S.
  • From Picaro to Pirate: afterlives of the Picaresque in early eighteenth-century fiction
    Orr, L.; Cook, D.; Seager, N.
  • Self-deception
    Polonoff, D.
  • Using autobiographies in business history: a narratological analysis of Jules Joubert’s Shavings and Scrapes
    Reveley, J.
  • Narration in the psychoanalytic dialogue
    Schafer, R.
  • The creative response in economic history
    Schumpeter, J.A.
  • Reading biography
    Shapiro, M.J.
  • Intratextuality, extratextuality, intertextuality: unreliability in autobiography versus fiction
    Shen, D.; Xu, D.
  • The new model autobiographer
    Sturrock, J.
  • Managing managerial identities: organizational fragmentation, discourse and identity struggle
    Sveningsson, S.; Alvesson, M.
  • Culture in action: symbols and strategies
    Swidler, A.
  • Self-narration as rehearsal: a discursive approach to the narrative formation of identity
    Taylor, S.
  • Three cases of corporate fraud: an audit perspective
    Van Peursem, K.; Zhou, M.; Floody, T.; Buttimore, J.
  • The poisoned madeleine: the autobiographical turn in historical writing
    Vinen, R.