Agenda

Prof. Ambra Mazzelli

Abstract: 

In the context of racial stratification, some evidence has been offered that racial minorities negotiate status among themselves and external audiences by reclassifying themselves in ways that are perceived as advantageous over time. Here, we argue that the decision to become an entrepreneur provides a relatively immediate and accessible opportunity for racial minorities to alter the composition of their social identity, and, in turn, enhance their social status. We further argue that the perceived status-enhancing affordance that entrepreneurship can provide depends on ingroup participation in entrepreneurship as well as the saliency of structural boundaries across racial groups. Using online experiments and field data, we find that the likelihood of considering entrepreneurial entry differs between US Black and Latinx individuals as the portrayal of the racial composition of entrepreneurship is manipulated (i.e. exclusively White vs. involving in-group race members). Latinx participants’ entrepreneurial intentions are stronger when entrepreneurship is portrayed as associated with White individuals. In contrast, Black participants’ entrepreneurial intentions are stronger when entrepreneurship is associated with ingroup peers, especially in high-socioeconomic-status businesses, and when the structural barriers between racial groups are less salient. When structural barriers become more visible, Blacks tend to disassociate from their peers and become more likely to consider and engage in forms of entrepreneurship that are traditionally outgroup-dominated. Overall, our theory draws attention to the importance of racial stratification to explain the varying appeal of entrepreneurship.