On Wednesday 3rd June 2009 I will be presenting a paper summarising my research on e-commerce entrepreneurship at the Quadrangular Conference at the University of Cambridge. The paper is entitled “The Qualification of E-Commerce Services: A Case Study of Entrepreneurial Learning in the Technological Economy.” As I’m approaching the end of the field work phase, this is an attempt at articulating some emerging findings and situating them in relation to relevant debates.
My object of study can be described as the innovation called online retailing and which can be understood as part of the large-scale societal, political, economic and technological transformation referred to as the “information economy,” “knowledge-based economy,” or “service economy” in the United Kingdom of the first decade of the 21st century. At the same time, e-commerce technology adoption or e-commerce entrepreneurship, in each and every case, is also a very singular affair of a particular firm. The questions “How does e-commerce innovation take place in the knowledge-based economy?” and “How do e-commerce entrepreneurs acquire the technologies and the competence to build their online retail organisations?” are therefore two sides of the same coin.
I approach these research questions by way of a qualitative case study of an e-commerce community in the South of England between 2007 and 2009, and in particular by focusing on the entrepreneurial learning practices of three focal companies. “Entrepreneurial learning” is a concept that emerges out of both the literature on entrepreneurship and the actors’ own descriptions of what they understand to be engaged in. However, in contrast to the literatures on organisational learning, knowledge, competences and capabilities, which tend to focus on the cognitive activities of individuals or groups of individuals, I pursue an object-orientated description of these learning practices. Drawing on actor-network theory and in particular the work of Michel Callon and his colleagues in economic sociology (Callon, Méadel et al. 2002; Callon & Muniesa 2005; Callon & Millo et al. 2007), I trace the processes by which these e-commerce enterprises emerge as heterogeneous assemblages.
This pursuit of the assembling practices of e-commerce entrepreneurs had identified the acquisition of e-commerce services (services required to sustain an e-commerce firm as such) as a central matter of concern for these entrepreneurs. I argue that the various entrepreneurial learning groups and conferences that emerged locally to deal with this matter of concern can be understood as marketplaces for the qualification (Callon, Méadel et al. 2002) of e-commerce services. Qualification is the process by which products or services acquire their qualities and values as economic goods. My main claim is that the qualification of e-commerce services is simultaneously an “internal” firm process and an “external” market process, which connects not only the site of the firm and the site of the market, but also the micro-enterprises with the macro-actors that take part in the construction of these technological economy marketplaces. Entrepreneurial learning and qualification of services are thus one and the same thing in the technological economy (Barry & Slater 2005).
References
Barry, A. and D. Slater (2005). The Technological Economy. Abingdon; New York, Routledge.
Callon, M., C. Méadel, et al. (2002). “The Economy of Qualities.” Economy & Society 31(2): 194.
Callon, M., Y. Millo, et al. (2007). Market Devices. Oxford, Blackwell.
Callon, M. and F. Muniesa (2005). “Economic Markets as Calculative Collective Devices.” Organization Studies (after Jan 1, 2003) 26(8): 1229-50.
Tags: Andrew Barry, Cécile Méadel, Don Slater, entrepreneurial learning, Fabian Muniesa, Michel Callon, Quadrangular Conference, qualification, technological economy, University of Cambridge, Vololona Rabeharisoa, Yuval Millo
