Achieving Productive Contradiction: How Entrepreneurs Manage Role Identity Tension

Abstract

Entrepreneurs often play different roles that can cause identity tension. Prior research suggests that identity tensions have negative consequences, which can be reconciled through managerial intervention. However, we know only little about how entrepreneurs manage identity tensions through self-mandated identity work. Through a qualitative study of 43 designer-founders, we find that entrepreneurs may attenuate role identity tensions through either/or approaches or may leverage these tensions through both/and approaches. Our study highlights that individuals’ construction of roles as competing or complementary and framing of identity tensions as a problem or an opportunity informs their identity work. We extend theory by creating a grounded model of self-mandated identity work; identifying triggers of identity tensions; uncovering individual-level conditions scaffolding entrepreneurs’ pathways of identity work, and delineating practices for structural and behavioral identity work.