Business and Management INK

Using Ethnography to Explore Entrepreneurial Extracurricular Activities

September 6, 2024 1207

In this article, co-authors Birgitte Wraae and Nicolai Nybye reflect on the inspiration behind their research article, “Learning to Be “Me,” “the Team,” and “the Company” Through Entrepreneurial Extracurricular Activities: An Ethnographic Approach, published in Entrepreneurship Education and Pedagogy.

We seem to have some knowledge about when our students decide to pursue a career as entrepreneurs. We know of the educational processes in the curricular field, and we know of activities taking place in the extracurricular incubator environments offered at the educational institutions. However, not a lot is known about how students learn and transform in their meetings and shifts between these two different learning environments.

Being a part of current discussions on what to offer students in the extracurricular learning environment, we got curious about students’ learning needs and their identity constructions, implicitly also trying to understand what kind of decisions students are facing when starting up their own business. We, therefore, decided to follow a group of students who began their BA in innovation and entrepreneurship to see what took place when faced with the task of starting up.

While not all students ran their own company in the end of our study, one team extended what they started as part of the entrepreneurial classroom and the teaching. These students continued initiating their own entrepreneurial venture as part of the incubator environment in their educational institution. Knowing the students throughout their entrepreneurial learning journey gave us valuable insights into how their learning and personal experiences influenced their decision-making. Further, we got insights into how they viewed the transformation from the curricular to the extracurricular learning environment in the incubator as identity development. However, the identity development encompassed more than the student entrepreneurs understanding of one-self (me). It was relationally intertwined with the co-creating process of learning to be a team (us) and a company (we).  We hope that our shared insights can contribute to how to bridge curricular and extracurricular learning and, develop extracurricular activities, deliberate holistic guidance to students and to further research into the field.

The most challenging aspect of our research was our ethnographic approach that meant that every talk, every visit, every thought became a part of our data collection. Also, we knew that using a unique single case study was not something we see a lot in our research field. However, we believe that our approach is to be recommended to other researchers. We need to test our own boundaries as researchers as well to learn.

Birgitte Wraae (pictured) is a postdoc in the department of business humanities and law at Copenhagen Business School (CBS) and the Copenhagen School of Entrepreneurship (CSE). She received her PhD in entrepreneurship education from Technische Universität Berlin, Germany and has a passion for entrepreneurship education and how entrepreneurship can be used to set people free and make them able to act as change agents no matter the context. Nicolai Nybye is an assistant professor in the department of applied business research at UCL University College in Denmark. As a researcher, he has been involved with over 20 different publications primarily dealing with management and entrepreneurship education.

View all posts by Birgitte Wraae and Nicolai Nybye

Related Articles

Exploring the Psychosocial Correlation of Skin Lightening Products
Business and Management INK
February 10, 2025

Exploring the Psychosocial Correlation of Skin Lightening Products

Read Now
Exploring the Impact of COVID-19 on the European Union Emission Trading Scheme
Business and Management INK
January 10, 2025

Exploring the Impact of COVID-19 on the European Union Emission Trading Scheme

Read Now
Navigating CSR Communication in an Age of Polarization
Business and Management INK
December 18, 2024

Navigating CSR Communication in an Age of Polarization

Read Now
What European SMEs Can Teach Us About Innovation and Informal Human Resource Management
Business and Management INK
December 16, 2024

What European SMEs Can Teach Us About Innovation and Informal Human Resource Management

Read Now
When Do You Need to Trust a GenAI’s Input to Your Innovation Process?

When Do You Need to Trust a GenAI’s Input to Your Innovation Process?

In this post, co-authors Frank T. Piller, Tucker J. Marion, and Mahdi Srour reflect on the inspiration behind their research article, “Generative […]

Read Now
Using Intelligent Self-Limitation to Explore the Distinction Between Environment and Umwelt

Using Intelligent Self-Limitation to Explore the Distinction Between Environment and Umwelt

In this post, author Morten Knudsen reflects on the inspiration behind his article, “Environment and Umwelt: Grand Challenges and Intelligent Self-Limitation,” published […]

Read Now
The Authors of ‘Artificial Intelligence and Work’ on Future Risk

The Authors of ‘Artificial Intelligence and Work’ on Future Risk

During the final stages of editing the proofs for Artificial Intelligence and Work: Transforming Work, Organizations, and Society in an Age of Insecurity, […]

Read Now
0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
guest


This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

0 Comments
Newest
Oldest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments