Entrepreneurship as a matter of place? A multiple case study investigation in East Anglia

Entrepreneurial activities are strongly influenced by the context in which they occur. It is therefore important to understand the differentiated ways in which entrepreneurs engage with context to better understand the mechanisms behind both intended and unintended entrepreneurial outcomes. Whilst there have long been calls to increase research regarding the influence of context in micro-level entrepreneurial processes, to date research has seen few significant advances. This research attempts to address the gap through answering the research question – what is the nature of entrepreneurial engagement with place? In doing so, the thesis develops context-sensitive theorising from the findings of a qualitative multiple case study approach comprising of Cambridge, Great Yarmouth, Ipswich and Norwich within East Anglia, England. Analysing entrepreneurial engagement with place in-depth in this manner has revealed that the core contribution of this study is threefold: 1) it has developed and theorised seven novel mechanisms of attachment to place and conceptually advanced three existing others; 2) the development of a temporally sensitive context-mechanism-outcome theoretical model of when and where entrepreneurship occurs demonstrates the differentiated nature of entrepreneurial engagement with place through entrepreneurs variously immersing themselves within social conditions and relationships to support varying temporal orientations and agentic dimensions; 3) such orientations and dimensions can serve to influence spatial outcomes, reconceptualising place through entrepreneurial agency captured within a tripartite contestation. These core contributions provide unique insights into specifically how the dynamic interplay of enterprise, place and temporality works within the four case studies in the East of England. Such insights subsequently enable a more integrated and nuanced context-mechanism- outcome framework for researching everyday entrepreneurship in different contexts facilitating a newfound appreciation for the relationship between entrepreneurship and place; viewing it as an ongoing trajectory between the temporal and the spatial constituted through a series of iterative feedback loops