Navigating the 'Enterprise' Discourses: Women's Journeys in Learning and Work

Navigating the 'enterprise' discourses: women's journeys in learning and work

Tara J. Fenwick, University of Alberta, Canada Paper presented at SCUTREA, 31st Annual Conference, 3-5 July 2001, University of East London

TWO concerns have received significant attention in critical writing about work and learning in late modernity: the subjugation of workers' learning to the selfinterest of capitalist corporations; and the cultural hegemony of the 'enterprise ethos'. In an era when so-called knowledge capital is presumed key to corporate competitiveness, worker learning becomes an oft-contested site for developing this capital. Workers' subjectivity, their on-going formation of identity, is a particularly desirable area for corporate control. As Usher and Solomon (1998) point out, workers' experience is treated as 'manageable and in need of management' - involving struggles over how the meaning and significance of experience is interpreted and by whom. Forrester (1999) argues that work-related learning is enmeshed in workers' struggles for subjectivity, as they resist or consent to corporate attempts to capture their commitments, aspirations, emotional engagements and formation of selves. Meanwhile in late economic modernity, as du Gay (1996) has shown, workers are expected to be active, self-responsible, self-reflexive constructors of their own work capacities, biographies and success. In this project of 'the enterprising self', individuals are expected to construct and self-regulate their own human capital in all spheres of life, subordinating their desires for development, meaning, fulfilment, relationships, even spirituality to their work activity and work capacity. Thus empowered, individuals are supposed to innovate and adapt continuously, take risks, and assume autonomous responsibility for the self and livelihood they design through their own choices. Garrick and Usher (2000) show how worker subjectivities are being shaped by current post- Fordist workplace structures and practices to become these 'active learners and self- regulating subjects', through a governmentality that 'works through infiltrating regulation into the very interior of the experience of subjects'.

While important, these arguments focus on the worker as employee. This paper presents a different context in which to examine workers 'learning and struggles for subjectivity in the ethos of enterprise. There has been a surge, in Canada at least, of workers leaving organizational employment to start their own businesses. In particular, women's business start-ups have doubled the rate of men's in the past decade, and often outlast men's businesses (Business Development Bank, 1999; Industry Canada, 1999). The paper draws from a qualitative study which set out to understand the learning and development processes described by women business owners entering different sectors in different socio-cultural contexts across Canada. The study focused on women who had left jobs in organizations to start their own enterprise, often with little business experience or education. They reported both 'push' and 'pull' factors in their reasons for start-up: to escape stifling, demeaning or abusive work organizations where they felt undervalued or repressed; to live out a creative dream; create their own work environments; contribute meaningfully to their communities; and gain more personal flexibility and control over their work and lives. Now they are the new owners, catapulted from their former status as workers struggling for identity within organizational environments actively preventing their self- determination along lines of gender, age, valued knowledge and valued performance outcomes, to take up positions as active enterprising participants in global capitalism.

I became interested in the constitutional processes of these subjectivities, often situated resistantly within gendered and economic discourses in the high-stakes contexts of self-employment in a harshly competitive marketplace. I wondered, how were these women's 'learnings' entwined with a changing consciousness of their subjectivity, in their negotiations among the discursive meanings and practices swirling around and through them? And, how do these women and the discourses within which they work inform and shape each other?

Discursive terrains of entrepreneurial subjectivity Recently an explosion of cultural attention has been lavished upon women entrepreneurs. Media stories, research with different agendas and varying perspectives, education and government programs have burgeoned since 1995. When feminist analyses of women in business became prominent, concerns about gender discrimination and women being enslaved in entrepreneurial 'glass boxes' (Canadian Advisory Council, 1992) galvanized government and banks to help out the ladies. Now government proclaims women entrepreneurs to be Canada's new untapped economic force (Industry Canada, 1999). Neo-liberal assumptions of 'self'- made business celebrate the new freedom of individual women, portraying entrepreneurship as the ultimate act of self-determination. Women's business success stories in the media project a variety of meanings: 'me too' analyses comparing women's performance to men's, 'go girl' maverick images, cautionary messages speaking from a wellness discourse, and advice-giving discourses that have traditionally domesticated women as agents of beauty and housekeeping.

It became apparent in our study that women business owners were partially constructed by these representations, in some ways unconsciously, and in other ways deliberately taking up images or positions in various relations to different texts. Part of their struggle is to recognize these contradictory discourses, discerning and actively resisting those which reproduce the corporate enterprise cultures that they fled.

While their business viability depended upon their positioning in a society governed by market logic, women seemed to open spaces for resistance to conventional profit centred business values.

Obviously entrepreneurism is not unitary and women cannot be essentialized: considerable difference marks these women's workings-through of subjectivity. However, an important finding of the study was the dramatic personal change and empowerment experienced by many participants and attributed to their entrepreneurial experiences. Women frequently emphasized the confidence they perceived in themselves since moving to self employment.

They talked about learning to trust their own judgement and skill, of learning to take responsibility for both their mistakes and their achievements. Their stories portrayed themselves enacting an exciting self determination and joy in their work. Fun and passion were mentioned by many, along with comments such as 'I am a different person today than I was in that job' and 'I would never go back to working for someone else - never' (Fenwick and Hutton, 2000). At the same time many seemed to struggle to construct identities and agency as women enterprise-creators among multiple and contradictory positions. What subject positions do women take up or resist amongst these discourses, and what are the(potentially repressive or productive) effects of these subjectivities? I have turned to post structural analysis to approach these questions. In particular I am assisted by Foucault's (1980) concept of pastoral discipline regulating subjectivity through discursive practices, and Grossberg's (1992) approach to understanding individuals' participation in particular cultural texts and activities. Foucault (1980) taught us to ask: What discursive mechanisms render an individual subject to regulation? And how do individuals internalize the very disciplines that construct and regulate their own identities, thus complying in subverting the possibility of their own resistance to subjection? However, if we are to hope that resistance and transformation are possible, we must accept that individuals exercise some degree of agency in their own authorship. As Lather (1991) explains it, in our subjugation to regimes of meaning we may not be authors of the way we understand our lives, but we certainly take part in 'discursive self- production where we attempt to produce some coherence and continuity' (p. 118). Thus through discursive struggle for subjectivities people are active, if not sovereign. And in this struggle, they occupy conflicting subject positions, both received and created, investing in a complexity of contradictory meanings and pleasures.

Grossberg suggests that this participation can only be glimpsed through its effects, and analysis should work towards articulation: mapping the continuous enmeshment of practices, effects, and 'vectors' or forces creating connections across the cultural field. The paper will work from women's stories indicating glimpses of their own participation in various discourses affecting their practice as entrepreneurs. The purpose of this analysis is to identify those cultural sites where women entrepreneurs struggle to win a space for themselves and those sites where they don't struggle, where perhaps they are manipulated into taking up positions they wouldn't choose deliberately.

What follows are descriptions of this work, divided into five sections delineated by discourses that seem significant sites of struggle among women's narratives of their entrepreneurial lives, learning and subjectivity: (I)Business plans make a business, (II) Business is profit and growth, (III) Business is a tough frontier, (IV) Business is women's self-determining adventure, and (V) Women's (Other)work.

The first theme will be developed more fully and the remaining four outlined only briefly, to accommodate space limitations of this short paper. 1. Business plans make a business or, There's a right way to do this, you know

A business plan formulates the business purpose, resources and expenses in terms of profit generation, specifies target market and competitors, proposes market share and anticipates profit growth to obtain start-up capital from financial institutions. Writing a business plan is a conventional starting point for conceiving the terms and constraints of one's practice in running a business according to pre- determined categories and constructs. A good business plan guarantees a degree of credibility for the new business-owner, signifying proper preparation, organization, and goal-setting according to logics of prediction and control which bodes success. Thus a business planning discourse disciplines and regulates enterprise creators through their own desires to be taken seriously and granted venture capital (Oake, Townley, and Cooper, 1998).

As might be expected, women had different investments and engagements with the business planning discourse.

Some situated themselves within profit-and-loss logic, declaring the importance of business plans for prediction and control of the venture's survival. Others found the systematic process helpful as a starting point, but mainly a paper exercise to obtain financing. A majority of women acknowledged they did not have a business plan. Some felt they should. Others consciously resisted the discourse and struggled to articulate alternate spaces for conceiving and guiding their business. From these spaces emerged tentative descriptions of more emergent or 'rear-view mirror planning' ('I figure out what my goals are after I see them happen'), and some discomfort about putting ambitious goals down on paper.

The business planning discourse implicates competition, predetermination, and autonomy in ways shaping a controlling conception of knowledge ('There's a whole lot of fallacies of going into business, that you have to know everything and be everything'). North American women have been targeted for training in business planning as one outcome of many 1980s studies concluding that women had less formal business education and experience than men, and needed to improve their competitive potential (Brush, 1992). Embedded in this logic is a shared and unproblematic acceptance of a 'right way' to do business, an efficiency ethic (discovering strategies takes longer and costs more than being trained in them), and a will to suppress alternate approaches in sustaining the dominant.

Many statements illustrated women's self-positioning outside what they indicated to be received meanings and conventional approaches to business, even when they weren't sure what they were doing. Many women simply invented strategies as they went along: pricing according to alternate criteria than maximizing profit; choosing approaches they preferred even if these were decidedly 'inefficient'; contracting and focusing their business rather than expanding; refusing to delineate competitors, target market share, strategic plans, and other markers of 'good' business plans.

2. Business is profit and growth or, Are you a success?

Traditional signifiers of business success are profit, size and growth rate, rooted in a capitalist discourse of enterprise viability which aspires to continuing expansion to assure competitive position and thus survival. Women engage with these signifiers in various ways. Certainly the promise of capitalist wealth, often acknowledged and pursued matter of- factly ('I won't argue, I like money, there's nothing wrong with having money'), is just as often a source of deep conflict.

Women described success in their work differently but almost all emphasized the secondary importance of money and material goods in their lives. Freedom from financial worry was desirable, but acquiring more income than necessary was disparaged as irresponsible by several women.

This seemed true even for single women supporting dependents. Many described their work success in terms of finding satisfaction in their everyday work, having the freedom and control to choose daily activity, the quality of relationships comprising their work networks, the contributions they perceived themselves making to their communities, the reputations for doing good work that they built in those communities, and their overall perceived quality of life. Quality of life was more typically represented by examples of 'right relationship' - doing the right thing for others in one's network - than by material markers.

However, the micro-practices of negotiating spaces for pursuing these values in work amidst the profit discourse are complex. Some women claimed they were happy doing what they loved, but they weren't successful. Some talked of work as a more fluid set of relations that defied 'success' binaries of inside/outside, up/down, and winner/loser. For some the need to judge themselves against measures of profit and growth became urgent when the survival of their business was threatened. 3.Business is a tough frontier, or, What's a nice girl like you doing...?

Despite the sharp increase in business start-ups by women with at least 17% in 'non-traditional' sectors such as manufacturing, construction, transportation and trades (Industry Canada, 1999), several women reported struggling to legitimize their position as business-owners. These struggles developed at sites of gendered labor, such as the example above, but also along the very boundaries of the capitalist arena which in this discourse is framed as a tough (men's) frontier. Many discursive practices patrol these borders. For example, women's struggles for equitable treatment by financial institutions in their start-up phases were well-documented in the early 1990's (Canadian Women's Advisory Council, 1993). Critics have pointed out that women's failure to obtain the necessary funds to start their business often is due to their lack of a proper business plan (Buttner and Rosen, 1992), an argument which reinforces the point made earlier: the tightly circumscribed discourse of the 'right' way to do business militates against alternate approaches.

Another problem with financing is women's diminishment, that women's businesses don't count or aren't as important or serious- images that are sometimes internalized: 'We [women] have a tendency to undervalue what we do'. Some writers (i.e. Thrasher and Smid, 1998) are concerned above all about this discursive dynamic, perceiving its effects in women's tendency to undercharge for their services and ultimately to accept reduced quality of life because of their ambivalence about their worth. But in discursive gender barriers to entrepreneurship, women most frequently referred to the messages they felt they had to fend off from family and friends, that business is dirty work on a dangerous frontier - no place for a woman.

4. Business is women's self-determining adventure, or, Go girl!

In contradiction to the messages that women are misplaced in a masculine frontier of entrepreneurism is a discourse urging women to enact their own liberation through the adventure of business start-up. Canadian women's businesses are celebrated frequently in national newspapers as well as trade magazines. These 'glory-stories' and big media events such as the Canadian Women Entrepreneur awards tend to celebrate businesses marked by large profits, international growth, and economic innovation. Studies are continually released praising entrepreneurial women's profits, approaches to staff relations, and use of technology (IBM, 1999). Industry Canada(1999) hails women entrepreneurs as 'shattering the glass box' described by the Canadian Advisory Council for Women (1993).Women interviewed often volunteered skeptical comment on this emerging discourse of the exoticized self- determining woman entrepreneur. Those constructing their business on smaller scales, or who placed high priority on their families and children, didn't see themselves reflected. Women also explained that success stories erase the importance of trial and- error failure, the constant fatigue, the real struggles to balance work and family, survival and ethics, and the nuanced relational negotiations that form a 'truer' picture of running a business. Instead what tends to be publicly celebrated are conventional bootstrap tales of a woman overcoming apparently tremendous odds to 'make it', i.e. achieve legitimate position from which she maybe allowed to speak. In fact, the romanticized world of exciting capitalist adventure framing this identity construction is often rejected or considered illusory by some women entrepreneurs.

Instead they described small daily triumphs in negotiating identity, value and relationship, which several noted were not recognized in media stories.

114 SCUTREA Proceedings 2001 5. Women's 'other' work, or, Where are your children?

Perhaps the most pervasive, familiar, and potentially repressive quandary for entrepreneurial women, as for any woman balancing paid employment with child-raising, is the continual conflict between domestic and business responsibilities. There seemed to be three different modes of participation which different women took up at different times, sometimes simultaneously. The first was constant running and juggling to meet all demands, often sacrificing their own well-being in the process. Some were exhausted; others claimed to have found new flexibility to be available for their children. A second was resentment, which a tiny percentage of women volunteered to express- angry at the unfairness and lack of recognition they perceived being granted to this double-round of work. A third mode of participation was guilt: internalizing perceived criticism of one's poor mothering, in what Foucault might call pastoral subjection through self-regulation, while feeling guilty for the pleasure afforded by one's enterprise accomplishments.

Pedagogical entry points So what are some pedagogical entry points educators that do not collude with media and government to disempower women? First, amore helpful approach than 'training' might be to support women's own meanings of success: to help amplify these and make them more explicit, more available in the cultural texts and practices of the classroom where educators can exercise some degree of influence. Women themselves called for more recognition of the complex realities of their work, celebrating the small everyday relations that empower rather than focusing more narrowly on dramatic transformation.

Second, educators can do much to help deconstruct prevailing discourses constructing women in business, and amplifying images and texts that support notions of self crafted work, alternate ways of planning and developing a self-supporting livelihood. There is need to make explicit some of the life- leaching discourses and cultural practices women struggle with, the sites for struggle and their conflicting 'should' messages and standards, and the nature of their own engagements at these sites. We can speak out publicly to challenge media representations and government policies. At the very least we can help construct, in the classroom, a space of resistance to demeaning gendered subject positions.

As educators we also need to be more nuanced and thoughtful in our treatment of business. Educational writing often deplores what Smyth (1999) calls the 'enterprise culture', its values of acquisition and competition, and its intrusion into schooling in the form of curriculum that is explicitly vocationally-focused. This rather monolithic view of 'business values' does not acknowledge the complex interplay of contradictory discourses comprising sites of business and individual struggles within them illuminated in this study. Certainly the infiltration of profit-and-loss thinking into curriculum, becoming a set of benchmarks against which literature, art, and human development are measured and found wanting, deserves critique. But pedagogy should move beyond simple denunciation of marketised courses and economic globalization. As Giroux (1992) wrote, pedagogy should open spaces to discern new futures, craft new identities and seek more inclusive, generative and integrative social alternatives. Educators can help offer alternate images of small enterprise functioning as artisanship, creating spaces where livelihood can be built from relationships, meaningful work and reciprocal participation in the community. As Edwards (1998)suggests, Active, creative, reflexive, risk-taking workers with certain degrees of autonomy in how they define and achieve their work goals, engaging in practices of social entrepreneurship, would suggest a critical dimension to work which Taylorist principles deny. In some ways, a conception of reflexive enterprising workers can be used to contest the continuation of Taylorized forms of work. (p. 387-88) The various positional conflicts represented here should not obscure what seemed a strong theme reverberating among certain women's self-described joy in bold risk-taking, initiative, and invention. All conjured an enterprise, unique in product/service and structure, with little assistance and many obstacles. Several strove to deliberately construct models of entrepreneurship that opened a space for fulfilling, even exciting work: as creative expression, personal challenge, caring and compassionate relationships, and community service. To accomplish this many women envisioned, occupied and defended subject positions outside the dominant in various cultural fields. Despite the continuation of repressive images and subject positions which may inhibit them, many women appear to be discovering, in their participation in particular discourses of enterprise, sustenance of livelihood in its richest sense.

Data mentioned in this paper are drawn from a national multiyear study 'Canadian Women Entrepreneurs: a study of workplace learning and development', conducted by a team involving the University of Calgary and the University of Alberta, and funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

110 women who had left jobs to start businesses in various sectors across Canada were interviewed to explore their business history and approaches, the knowledge they most valued, and the process of its development. Various reports of study methods and findings are available at http://www.ualberta.ca/~tfenwick/ext/index.htm

References

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