Entrepreneurship is frequently recognised as a crucial element in economic growth. This has led policy makers to introduce a plethora of policies and strategies in the hope of harnessing higher levels of entrepreneurship. In the UK, rates of entrepreneurial activity, measured as business start-ups, are moderate by international standards. Furthermore, there are significant gaps in enterprise between the best and worst performing UK regions and localities. Deprived urban neighbourhoods exhibit stubbornly low levels of entrepreneurship, together with high levels of unemployment and worklessness. In response, the UK government has introduced policies aimed at harnessing entrepreneurship in deprived areas. The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the role that policy can play in harnessing entrepreneurship and enterprise culture in deprived urban neighbourhoods through an understanding of the perceptions, attitudes and barriers to engagement in entrepreneurship and enterprise culture in these areas. To achieve this, it analyses: 1. the policies employed to promote entrepreneurship at national and subnational levels, particularly in deprived urban neighbourhoods (DUNs); 2. the extent of entrepreneurship in DUNs compared with other areas; 3. attitudes towards entrepreneurship in DUNS, in major part through an examination of perceptions of entrepreneurship among the population of DUNs; and 4. the barriers faced by entrepreneurs and potential entrepreneurs in DUNs. Analysing the perceptions, attitudes and barriers to entrepreneurship in deprived urban neighbourhoods in Leeds, and the current deficits in start-up rates between deprived areas and the English average, the thesis finds that it is not just the traditional policy intervention of encouraging start-ups that is required but also that attention needs to paid to the 'quality' of the start-ups being assisted, especially since the majority of businesses started in DUNs are likely to have little impact on the economic performance of their local area. The study also finds that traditional emphases on opportunity versus necessity, and for-profit versus social, entrepreneurial motivations, are over-simplistic when describing the motivations of entrepreneurs. The resultant argument is that a holistic approach to fostering economic development in DUNs is required, of which harnessing entrepreneurship should be an element rather than a key aim of intervention.

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This thesis explores the phenomenon of individuals leaving management careers in large corporations and establishing their own new ventures. Although the "corporate leaver" entrepreneur story enjoys frequent coverage in the popular press, there is little extant academic research on these individuals and their entrepreneurial process. Particularly lacking is an understanding of how the entrepreneurs make use of their past experiences. This study explores how entrepreneurs leverage human capital and social capital from previous work experiences when starting their own ventures. This dissertation is based on the results of an exploratory study and a main study, both of which were classified using Nvivo software. The exploratory study consists of interviews with six male/female entrepreneur pairs matched by management level and industry sector of previous employment. The exploratory study identifies the entrepreneurs' human capital and bridging and bonding social capital as well as feelings about previous work experience, motivations to start a new venture and family commitments. The main study is based on interviews with 24 entrepreneurs (twelve male, twelve female) who recently left management positions in financial services firms to establish their own businesses. The main study extends the exploratory study by unpacking the transfer of human capital in the form of knowledge creation and the transfer of bonding and bridging social capital. The research offers a number of theoretical, empirical, methodological and practical contributions to the field. At a theoretical level, this research confirms the usefulness of human capital and social capital for examining entrepreneurs' transfer from corporate. An analysis of the main study interviews reveals that the transfer of tacit and explicit knowledge from past work experience to the new venture can be mapped to Nonaka's knowledge creation framework. Third, the research highlights the application of structural, relational and cognitive dimensions of social capital to the former corporate entrepreneurs' social networks. A typology of the degree of transferability of human capital and social capital from previous work experiences is suggested, and eight case studies illustrate the four types: applicators, exploiters, networkers and re-inventors. The thesis offers empirical evidence in the form of entrepreneurs' self-reported human capital and social capital. Entrepreneurs' human capital is classified in terms of education, family background, and industry, management, business development and start-up experience. Entrepreneurs' social capital is organised by bonding (e. g. partners, mentors) and bridging relationships. The results indicate some differences between male and female entrepreneurs in terms of gender homophily of social networks. A framework for analysing the transfer of human capital and social capital from past experience is developed. There is empirical evidence both of knowledge and networks which the entrepreneurs report as transferring to the new venture, and those which do not. Entrepreneurs' creation of new knowledge from past work experience and transfer to the new venture can be classified by Nonaka's socialisation, externalisation, combination and internalisation types. In terms of social capital, entrepreneurs report transferring relationships from past work experiences which have structural, relational and cognitive embeddedness. At the methodological level, the rich, qualitative nature of this research enables new insights into the transition from corporate to own ventures. Entrepreneurs' language is used to measure relational, structural and cognitive embeddedness. The thesis offers knowledge of practice. The phenomenon of individuals leaving corporate management careers to start own ventures, particularly in the financial services industry, is examined and explored. Implications for managers interested in leaving corporate to start their own ventures are offered, as are suggestions for corporations interested in retaining these employees. A typology of former corporate entrepreneurs by human capital and social capital transfer is developed. Authenticity- seeking motives are uncovered in the rhetoric of individuals who start new ventures in new industries.

In the last twenty years, the term entrepreneurship has become of significant importance in political and cultural spheres promulgated as a source of economic growth and a solution to unemployment. While economics has been unable to model entrepreneurship mathematically, governments remain concerned with "picking winners" and consequently a variety of psychological approaches including trait, psychodynamic and cognitive understandings have been forwarded in an attempt to identify entrepreneurs. These studies are problematic as they treat entrepreneurs as isolated individuals who are disconnected from their contexts, and as a result these approaches are devoid of cultural, historical or social understandings. In an attempt to overcome these problems, a number of researchers have applied an approach known as social constructionism, which directs attention towards the meaning-making processes between individuals in context. These studies focus solely on meaning-making in linguistic dimensions and do not account for entrepreneurs as "embodied" individuals who exist in a material and visual context, which may enable or constrain the meanings they are able to create. This thesis therefore attempted to address this gap by examining entrepreneurs as "embodied rhetoricians" through a novel methodology known as visual ethnography. The findings from three ethnographic case studies suggest that entrepreneurs use a range of visual tools to "make" meaning and "give" meaning to others in their contexts, including their dress, appearance of physical settings, and physical artefacts such as high-status vehicles, which allude to wider meanings in the social and cultural domain. The findings also indicate that verbal and visual meanings must align in order to be most effective in persuading others of the legitimacy of the business venture. Finally, rather than understanding entrepreneurs as isolated individuals, the findings point to the importance of understanding entrepreneurship as a relational process where entrepreneurs attempt to develop meanings with those around them and in relation to their social contexts. The wider contributions of this thesis are outlined and discussed, including implications for policy-makers. The limitations of this study are then examined and suggestions for future research are outlined.

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This thesis aims to investigate nascent entrepreneurship. Developing a new business is a complex and uncertain process. Different types of individuals react to this uncertainty in different ways. It is argued that cognitive factors play a critical role in the venture creation process and that the cognitive milieu of the individual nascent entrepreneur will impact on the founding process and survival chances of new small businesses. In particular this study investigates how cognitive style impacts on the ability of nascent entrepreneurs to recognise opportunities and develop trading businesses. The research was conducted assuming a realist ontology and positivist epistemology. A range of validated and reliable psychometric instruments were administered to nascent entrepreneurs from research sites across the UK. A major strength of this research is that it was conducted within the nascent stage reducing the risk of hindsight bias. Following an extensive review of the literature a range of hypotheses were developed and tested. Principally located within the psychological domain the thesis also acknowledges the impact of behavioural dispositions on the founding process. The findings indicated that cognitive style was not a predictor of nascent entrepreneurship but that it was highly influential on the process of founding new businesses. Both intuitive and analytic nascent entrepreneurs started businesses. There was no difference in the survival rates of the businesses they founded. However the research identified that the process of business formation and survival developed in different ways. Cognitive factors such as self-efficacy and behavioural dispositions such as proactive personality were identified as significant moderators within this process.

This thesis explores the intellectual social and collaborative nature of the domain of entrepreneurship in two related ways. First it uses bibliometric techniques to investigate the constitution of entrepreneurship. Specifically, author co-citation analysis establishes a collective view of the structure of the entrepreneurship literature - as perceived by its research active members. The co-citation frequencies of 78 prominent entrepreneurship researchers were analyzed using multivariate techniques. Cluster Analysis and Multidimensional Scaling were used to explore the intellectual structure of entrepreneurship research by identifying groups of scholars whose work falls into similar areas. Factor Analysis was then used to identify the underlying themes that characterize the domain. Second, the scholars within these nominal groupings were approached using individualiozed questionnaires to explore what social interactions might parallel, reflect or underpin the intellectual ones. The research is original in its contribution as this is the first time the technique of author co-citation analysis has been applied in the domain of entrepreneurship. To apply author co-citation analysis ito a relatively immature, emerging domain of study is, in itself, original and tests the technique in a new and experimental way. Additionally, the use of qualitative data - based on the results of the author co-citation analytis - validates and yields further insight into the initial results thus advancing the terchnique in the bibliometrics domain. The study demonstrates that there are real and robust social and collaborative networkd underlying the generation of the intellectual work which is cited jointly, by third parties. The latter authors may be unaware of these networks. Equally, the co-cited authors, while recognizing overlapping interests, may have difficulty in categorizing this commonality in their contributions. Entrepreneurship research is shown to be very much a social activity. As a whole, the thesis offers a novel insight into the nature of entrepreneurship derived from the domain's citing population.