Lighting the fires of entrepreneurialism? : Constructions of meaning in an English inner city academy

Abstract

Entrepreneurialism and entrepreneurial leadership are increasingly viewed as essential to improving the capability of organisations to innovate and improve performance. This article aims to refine the conceptual understanding of entrepreneurialism in the context of public education, drawing on data concerning constructions of meaning around entrepreneurialism in an inner city Academy in England. The authors highlight effects of power in forming the discourse and meanings around entrepreneurialism, the layers of meaning in these constructions, and the presence of both business entrepreneurialism and alternative groundings for entrepreneurialism. The article concludes by refining the typology of entrepreneurialism, placing it in the context of levels of meaning and suggesting three implications for schools and educational policy. The association the authors found of enterprise with relational motivations and with public and community-orientated aims suggests a general appetite exists to forge a more radical entrepreneurialism than that prescribed solely by a private, competitive business view of the world.