McGill U. - Desautels Faculty of Management, Canada
While the myth of the entrepreneur equates financial wealth with success, the reality for many entrepreneurs is that they operate in contexts of poverty with limited opportunities for significant financial gain. How, then, can entrepreneurs in contexts of poverty create a successful entrepreneurial identity? To answer this question, we use an inductive qualitative approach based on single and repeat interviews with 45 small coffee farmers in rural southwestern Colombia and field data from a three-day workshop with an additional 37 farmers. We find that the farmers in our sample were socialized into an alternative system of worth that leveraged culturally available resources despite materially poor conditions. They shield their alternative system of worth from global market imposition and are able to craft a fulfilling entrepreneurial identity that is distinct from Western ideals and that, in some cases, has emancipatory effects. As a whole, our study identifies a territorialized approach to identity construction and points to a model for entrepreneurial organizing that eschews market hegemony while embracing pluralistic institutional influences.