Modern career and identity building in between employed work and entrepreneurship - narratives of interim managers

New ways of working in between employed work and entrepreneurship are emerging. One of these is interim management, where a self-employed entrepreneur performs interim manager assignments for their client companies in a manner similar to that of an employed director. New ways of working, such as freelancing and other gig-work have profoundly impacted the labour market systematics and created a need to better understand these new ways of working. Although research on self-employment exists, the perspective on the careers of self-employed entrepreneurs has received less focus, and we know relatively little about it. A deep understanding of how individuals experience and make sense of their careers within the context of atypical work arrangements is still rather limited. Understanding entrepreneurship as part of a career from the individual´s perspective requires examining how they make sense of their identities within the liminal setting of working in between employed work and entrepreneurship. Liminality refers to a state of ambiguity and uncertainty, to a transitional position between different states. When individuals lack strong attachments to organizations, sustaining a stable work identity becomes problematic and requires more from the individual´s agency. This becomes especially demanding for the self-employed who often work outside of stable organizations, established professions, and codified roles. For non-traditional work arrangements, such as entrepreneur interim managers, the stability, established roles and coherent narratives are often lacking, and individuals must find them elsewhere to build a coherent professional identity. This study examines the sense-making of individuals´ identity building within a career that involves non-typical work arrangements, such as self-employment as entrepreneur. This study adopts a social constructionist and narrative approach asking how the entrepreneur interim managers construct their careers and make sense of their identity in the liminal work-life between entrepreneurship and employed work. The perspective of this study is that of individual interim managers and the stories they share their work and careers. The research data consists of repeated in-depth interviews of entrepreneur interim managers during their interim assignments from start to finish. The analysis focuses on the stories the interim managers tell about their way of working, assignments and overall careers. From these stories, three narratives are built that draw understanding of careers, liminality, identity and entrepreneurship within this type of under-institutionalized ways of working. The three narratives of The Liminars, The Professional Interim Managers, and The Purpose-Driven Shuttlers build understanding of how identity can be constructed in under-institutionalized roles, such as that of an interim manager. These under-institutionalized roles lack role models and narratives of what it means to be one, such as an interim manager, which makes identity building more difficult. In under-institutionalized roles individuals experience a liminal phase during which they play with different potential identities before committing to any of them. Liminality is a crucial phase in identity building. Identity building requires separation from the old identity; however, there also needs to be something else to build a sense of belonging to. This study provides understanding of how this sense of belonging is achievable when no clear role narratives exist to which to attach to. A solid identity can be achieved, even in this under-institutionalized setting. Eventually, if more individuals adopt a similar approach, the new way of working can become institutionalized. This enables a narrative about the way of working to be developed, allowing individuals to relate to and build their identity upon this way of working. An entrepreneurial identity is not a prerequisite for acting entrepreneurially, and entrepreneurial activities can be directed towards and for the benefit of targets other than one’s own company, such as client companies. Entrepreneurship or self-employment as a status of work can mainly serve an instrumental role, helping one do the type of work one wants to do. The grand narratives of the employed employee and the entrepreneur are the prevailing narratives of work life. When the narratives of the new ways of working in between the two are developed, this enables the institutionalization, and normalization of careers between employed work and entrepreneurship. This study provides a new understanding of this process and reveals that it is not necessary to identify as entrepreneur to act entrepreneurially.