Motherhood and Entrepreneurship : Exploring the entrepreneurial identity of ‘Mompreneurs’ in the Middle East.

Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this specific study is to discover how mothers in the Middle East perceive their entrepreneurial identity based on the results and our interpretation of the mothers' narratives, to fill the gap that was discovered in mompreneurship identity research area in the Middle East. Design/methodology/approach – A Qualitative Research Design using the ‘Abductive reasoning’ method was implemented. And the philosophical approach of this study is the ‘Interpretive Epistemology’ based on the interpretation of narratives and life experience of seven interviewed samples of mothers who own businesses ‘mompreneurs’ from the Middle East. Semi-structured interviews in the form of internet-based interviewing were used. And in order to analyze the result a narrative analysis approaches, William Labov Approach and the Dialogic performance analysis approach were utilized. Findings – the findings in this study showed that the results of the majority of samples identified themselves as being totally Momprenures and they appreciate their role as a mother and a business owner. And that they have several motivations such as (Forced, Intrinsic, classic and work-family) which classified them under certain typologies of the entrepreneurial identity (Solution -seeker, Self-actualized, Informed, Bonafide and Missionary identity). However, no certain motivation was considered to be the dominant. And the results indicate that, three samples that were motivated by (Forced Factors) falls under the same typology of solution seeker Identity. And the other three samples that were motivated by (Intrinsic and Classic motivations) falls under the typology of Informed Entrepreneur, restricted to the understanding of the samples taken from the Middle East. In Addition, the results also indicated that the momprenure identity was not directly affected by gender, as reflected by theories where masculinity is related to entrepreneurship. Research limitations/contribution – This study was limited by several factors unexpected situation of the spreading of (CORONAVIRUS) which limited samples size, and canceled the in-person meetings for interviews. Therefore, the results were only Restricted to our samples and might not be taken as general outcomes. The contribution of our findings will be opening the door for further studies on a broader scale to cover a wider range of motivations, and a wider range of identity theories that would reflect the identities of mothers in the context of the Middle East