[MGT&SOC Research Seminar] ‘Race, Status, and Entrepreneurial Intentions’
January 23th, 2025
2:30pm – 4pm in Paris PR13 & Lille building B252 & on Zoom
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Speakers:
Ambra MAZZELLI – SKEMA BUSINESS SCHOOL
ABSTRACT
In the context of racial stratification, some evidence has been offered that racial minorities negotiate status among themselves and external audiences by reclassifying themselves in ways that are perceived as advantageous over time.
Here, we argue that the decision to become an entrepreneur provides a more immediate and relatively accessible opportunity for racial minorities to alter the composition of their social identity, and, in turn, enhance their social status We further argue that the perceived status-enhancing affordance that entrepreneurship can provide depends on ingroup participation in entrepreneurship as well as the saliency of structural boundaries across racial groups.
Using online experiments and field data, we find that the likelihood to consider entrepreneurial entry differs between US Black and Latinx individuals as the portrayal of the racial composition of entrepreneurship is manipulated (i.e.exclusively White vs. involving in-group race members).
Latinx participants’ entrepreneurial intentions are stronger when entrepreneurship is portrayed as associated with White individuals.
In contrast, we find that Black participants’ entrepreneurial intentions are stronger when entrepreneurship is associated with ingroup peers, especially in high-socioeconomic-status businesses, and when the structural barriers between racial groups are less salient.
When structural barriers become more visible, Blacks tend to disassociate from their peers and become more likely to consider and engage in forms of entrepreneurship that are traditionally outgroup-dominated.
Overall, our theory draws attention to the importance of racial stratification to explain the varying appeal of entrepreneurship.