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On capital and habitus: social class and its role in entrepreneurship
(2024) Rönnert, Anna-Lena; Kuckertz, Andreas
Entrepreneurship is often heralded as a pathway to upward mobility, epitomizing the ideal of the "rags to riches" narrative. However, recent research on marginalized entrepreneurs suggests that social class may play a significant role in shaping entrepreneurial outcomes, challenging the notion that entrepreneurship offers equal opportunities to all. Although research explicitly linking entrepreneurship with social class theories remains limited, social class appears to influence access to various forms of capital and shape the habitus that guides entrepreneurial behavior. Consequently, understanding these dynamics is essential to addressing inequalities in entrepreneurship. This dissertation explores how social class affects an individual’s entrepreneurial journey, with three studies included in this dissertation approaching the topic from different conceptual perspectives. Study 1 provides an integrative review of the literature on social class origin and entrepreneurship by seeking to understand: What is an entrepreneur’s social class origin? How does social class origin influence entrepreneurial outcomes and social class destinations? How should future entrepreneurship research address social class origin? In response, the study proposes a theoretical framework that outlines how entrepreneurs’ social class origin impacts entrepreneurial outcomes through entrepreneurial resources at hand, entrepreneurial habitus formation, and access to external resources and opportunities, and how these themes facilitate upward mobility, downward mobility, or class maintenance. In addition, this review establishes the foundations for future empirical research by developing a comprehensive future research agenda on social class in entrepreneurship. While Study 1 sets the broader theoretical context, Study 2 turns to the lived experiences of upwardly mobile entrepreneurs. Drawing on Lahire’s reconceptualization of habitus, this study seeks to explore how the internalized dispositions formed through social class origin and upward social mobility interact with the socio-cultural context of entrepreneurship and shape entrepreneurial behavior. Through life history interviews with 36 entrepreneurs, the study identifies seven entrepreneurial archetypes that reflect varying degrees of (mis)alignment tied to classed socio-cultural contexts and internal-ized dispositions and display distinct entrepreneurial behaviors in response. These findings highlight the socio-cultural barriers faced by upwardly mobile entrepreneurs, which persist despite the accumulation of capital through social mobility, and raise questions about the inclusivity of entrepreneurship as a viable pathway across different social hierarchies. In contrast to the focus on individual experiences of upward social mobility in Study 2, Study 3 examines the effects of educational attainment as a social class signal and the intersection with gender and migration backgrounds on the likelihood of obtaining different types of external financial capital. Analyzing 63,023 venture-year observations from Germany, this study shows that entrepreneurs without academic qualifications are less likely to secure equity capital but more likely to obtain debt financing. Additionally, the study underscores how intersectional factors, such as gender and migration background, interact with social class to influence financial capital acquisition. These results reveal the complex ways in which social class signals shape entrepreneurial access to resources, offering a broader perspective on structural inequalities in entrepreneurship. Overall, this dissertation provides a comprehensive examination of the role of social class in entrepreneurship, highlighting the intricate connections between class-based capital and habitus. By combining the broad theoretical perspectives of Study 1 with the personal life histories in Study 2 and the large-scale quantitative analysis in Study 3, this work offers a multidimensional understanding of how social class affects an individual’s entrepreneurial journey. The findings contribute to the emerging field of research on social class and entrepreneurship by shedding light on the structural barriers faced by entrepreneurs from different social backgrounds, as well as the unique strengths they bring to the entrepreneurial process. While this thesis makes significant strides in advancing our understanding of the interplay between social class and entrepreneurship, there remains much to uncover. Consequently, it lays the groundwork for future research by outlining a comprehensive agenda that addresses the complex dynamics of social class along the Bourdieusian concepts of capital and habitus, ultimately aiming to promote a more inclusive understanding of entrepreneurship.