Reflections on the Societal Conditions for the Pervasiveness of Entrepreneurial Behavior in Western Societies

Entrepreneurship has become an important issue in contemporary management practice and research. While there is much debate about the benefits of entrepreneurial behavior, its obvious pervasion in many areas of life remains largely unexplored. It is this persuasive power that inspired us to conceptualize entrepreneurship as a dominant institution in modern Western societies. In contrast to most institutional approaches which draw on entrepreneurial behavior for studying institutional change, our approach focuses on the societal preconditions for the dominance of entrepreneurship. We outline how entrepreneurship is manifested in ideals of modern Western societies, discourse and techniques of control and how individuals who are socialized into an entrepreneurial society, contribute to legitimize entrepreneurship and further its pervasiveness. Our analysis provides a framework for research on differences in the valuation of entrepreneurial behavior across societal settings, as well as for the study of mechanisms for the deepening of taken for-grantedness of entrepreneurship.