The emergence of desperate optimists: Μanaging the start-up working life in times of crisis

PDF
Published: Feb 7, 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12681/grsr.22344
Keywords:
coworking precarious labour start-up entrepreneurship
Antigoni Papageorgiou
University of Leeds
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5307-7878
Abstract

The deepening of sovereign debt crisis has resulted into the increasing visibility of coworking spaces, hubs, and start-ups which have all proliferated in the Athenian downtown area. Due to poor job prospects, an on growing number of high-skilled young employees have been engaged into entrepreneurial activities. This paper offers vivid accounts of the ways young entrepreneurs manage their start-up working life by analyzing its qualities and the ways they shape their entrepreneurial self. As this qualitative study reveals, young entrepreneurs have a demanding working pattern that directly affects their work-life balance. However, despite its precarious and uneven nature, entrepreneurial career is experienced as a highly rewarding and creative choice. At the same time, young entrepreneurs repudiate necessity being as one of their fundamental entrepreneurial motives and they consistently brand themselves as passionate and aspiring individuals. By being based at a hub and pursuing entrepreneurial activities that hold the promise of getting paid doing what they love, I argue that we currently witness the emergence of “desperate optimists”: a workforce which eagerly accepts its precarious conditions of work, cultivates a deep and profound connection with their occupation and for that reason undertakes the risk of acting entrepreneurially.

Article Details
  • Section
  • Articles
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g. post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (preferably in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
Downloads
Download data is not yet available.
Author Biography
Antigoni Papageorgiou, University of Leeds
PhD Candidate, School of Performance and Cultural Industries, University of Leeds, UK
References
Adkins, L. (2013). Professional identity and the time of individualization. In M. Banks, R. Gill and S. Taylor (eds), Theorizing cultural work (pp. 149-160). New York: Routledge.
Avdikos, V. and Kalogeresis, A. (2016). Socio-economic profile and working conditions of freelancers in co-working spaces and work collectives: Evidence from the design sector in Greece. Area, 49 (1), pp. 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12279
Avdikos, V., Kalogeresis, A., Demetriadis, C. and Penlides, K. (2015). Design in Greece: Supply, demand and working conditions. Athens: CS.
Banks, M. (2007). The politics of cultural work. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Banks, M., Gill, R. and Taylor, S. (2013). Theorizing cultural work: labour, continuity and change in the cultural and creative industries. London: Routledge.
Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Beck, U. (2000). The brave new world of work. Cambridge: Polity.
Bessant, J., Farthing, R. and Watts, R. (Eds.). (2018). The precarious generation: A political economy of young people. Routledge.
Boltanski, L. and Chiappelo, E. (2005). The new spitit of capitalism. London: Verso.
Botsman, R. and Rogers, R. (2011). What’s mine is yours: The rise of collaborative consumption. New York: Harper Collins.
Bröckling, U. (2015). The entrepreneurial self: Fabricating a new type of subject. London: Sage.
Brown, J. (2017). Curating the “Third Place”? Coworking and the mediation of creativity. Geoforum, 82, 112–126.
Capdevila, I. (2013). Knowledge dynamics in localized communities: Coworking spaces as microclusters. Retrieved from https://ssrn.com/abstract=2414121
Cappelli, P. and Keller, J. R. (2013). Classifying work in the new economy. The Academy of Management Review, 38 (4), pp. 1-22.
Cremin, C. S. (2003). Self-starters, can-doers and mobile phoneys: Situations vacant columns and the personality culture in employment. The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 2003.
Crowley, M., Tope, D., Joyce Chamberlain, L. and Hodson, R. (2010). Neo-Taylorism at work: Occupational change in the post-Fordist era. Oxford University Press, 57 (3), pp. 421-447.
de Peuter, G. (2014). Beyond the model worker: Surveying a creative precariat. Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research, 6, pp. 263-284.
de Peuter, G., Cohen S, N. and Saraco, F. (2017). The ambivalence of coworking: On the politics of an emerging work practice. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 20 (6), pp. 687-706.
Dovey, J., Pratt, A. C., Moreton, S., Virani, T., Merkel, J. and Lansdowne, J. (2016). Creative Hubs: Understanding the new economy. London: City University of London.
Drucker, P. (1999). Management challenges for the 21st century. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.
du Gay, P. (1996). Consumption and identity at work. London: Sage Publications.
Esser, J. and Hirsch, J. (1994). The crisis of fordism and the dimensions of a “postfordist” regional and urban structure.
Farrugia, D. (2019). The formation of young workers: The cultivation of the self as a subject of value to the contemporary labour. Current Sociology, 67 (1), pp. 47-63.
Fraser, J. A. (2001). White-collar Sweatshop: The deterioration of work and its rewards in corporate America. New York: W.W. Norton.
Furlong, A. and Cartmel, F. (2007). Young People and social change: New perspectives. Open University Press.
Gandini, A. (2015). The rise of coworking spaces: A literature review. Ephemera, 15 (1), pp. 193-205.
Gandini, A. (2016a). Digital work: Self—Branding and social capital in the freelance knowledge economy. Marketing Theory, 16 (1), pp. 123-141.
Gandini, A. (2016b). The reputation economy: Understanding knowledge work in digital society. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Garcia-Lorenzo, L., Sell, L. and Donnelly, P. (2014). “I just want a job: The untold stories of entrepreunship.” In M. Izak, L. Hitchen and Anderson (eds.), Untold stories in Organisations (pp. 143-167). Taylor and Francis.
Gialis, S. and Tsampra, M. (2015). The diverse regional patterns of atypical employment in Greece: Production restructuring, re/deregulation and flexicurity under crisis. Geoforum, (62), pp. 175-187.
Gialis, S., and Tsampra, M. (n.d.). The changing geography of a typical labour in Greece under flexicurity and recession. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/33358155/THE_CHANGING_GEOGRAPHY_OF_ATYPICAL_LABOUR_IN_GREECE
Giddens, A. (1991). Tribulations of the self. In Modernity and self-identity (pp. 181-208). Cambridge: Polity.
Gill, R. (2002). Cool, creative and egalitarian? Exploring gender in project-based New Media Work in Europe. Information, Communication, and Society, 5 (1), pp. 70-89.
Gill, R., and Pratt, A. C. (2008). ’In the social factory? Immaterial Labour, precariousness and cultural work. Theory, Culture and Society, 25 (7–8), pp. 1-30.
Gill, R. (2007). Technobohemians or the new Cybertariat? New media work in Amsterdam a decade after the Web [Report prepared by Rosalind Gill for the Institute of Network Cultures]. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures.
Gill, R. (2011). Life is a pitch: Managing the self in new media work. In M. Deuze (ed.), Managing Media Work (pp. 249-262). London: Sage.
Giotopoulos, I., Kontolaimou, A., and Tsakanikas, A. (2017). Drives of high—Quality entrepreneurship: What changes did the crisis bring about? Small Business Economics, 48 (4), pp. 913-930.
Gregg, M. (2009). Learning to (love) labour: Production culutres and the affective turn. Communication and Critical/ Cultural Studies, 6 (2), pp. 209-214.
Grey, C. (1994). Career as a project of the self and labour process discipline. Sociology, 28 (2), pp. 479-497.
Harvey, D. (1989). The condition of postmodernity: An enquiry into the origins of cultural change. Blackwell Publishers.
Hearn, A. (2010). Structuring Feeling: Web 2.0, Online Ranking and Rating, and the Digital ‘‘Reputation Economy’’. Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization, 10 (3/4), pp. 421-438.
Heery, E., and Noon, M. (2017). Decent Work. In a dictionary of human resource management (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press.
Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports - Executive Unit-Partnership Agreement for the Development Framework 2014 - 2020. (2016). Mapping the cultural and creative industries in Greece [Co - financed by Greece and the European Union]. Athens.
Hesmondhalgh, D. (2017). Capitalism and the media: Moral economy, well-being and capabilities. Media, Culture and Society, 39 (2), pp. 202-218.
Hesmondhalgh, D., and Baker, S. (2011). Creative labour: Media work in three cultural industries. Abingdon: Routledge.
Hesmondhalgh, D., and Zoellner, A. (2013). Is Media work good work? a case study of television documentary. In A. Valdivia (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies. Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
Hochschild, A. R. (1979). Emotion work, feeling rules, and social structure. American Journal of Sociology, 85 (3), pp. 551-575.
Huws, U. (2012). Technical Annex to Memorandum of Understanding for EU COST Action on the Dynamics of Virtual Work. Brussels: EU Co-operation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research.
Illouz, E. (2007). Cold intimacies: The making of emotional capitalism. Polity Press.
Kane, P. (2000). The play ethic. Observer Magazine, 22, pp. 20-30.
Katz, L., and Krueger, A. (2017). The role of unemployment in the rise in alternative work arrangements. American Economic Review, 107 (5), pp. 388-392.
Kelly, P. (2013). The self as enterprise: Foucault and the spirit of 21st centure capitalism. Ashgate/Gower: Farnham.
Kiessling, T. (2004). Entrepreneurship and innovation: Austrian School of Economics to Schumpeter to Drucker to now. Journal of Applied Management and Entrepreneurship, 9 (1), pp. 80-91.
Lange, B. (2011). Re-scaling governance in Berlin’s creative economy. Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research, 3, pp. 187-208.
Lazzarato, M. (2007). Immaterial Labour. In M. Hardt and P. Virno (Eds.), Radical Thought in Italy: A potential politics (pp. 133-147). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Lazzarato, M. (2009). Neoliberalism in Action: Inequality, Insecurity and the reconstitution of the social. Theory, Culture and Society, 26 (106). https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409350283
Leadbeater, C., and Oakley, K. (1999). The Independents Britain’s new cultural entrepreneurs. London: Demos.
Leighton, P. (2015). Future Working: The Rise of Europe’s Independent Professionals (iPros) [Report for the European Forum of Independent Professionals].
McDonald, S. (2005). Studying actions in context: A qualitative shadowing method for organizational research. Qualitative Research, 5 (4), pp. 455-473.
McRobbie, A. (2015). Be Creative: Making a living in the new culture industries. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Merkel, J. (2015). Coworking in the city. Ephemera, 15 (1), pp. 121-139.
Michailidou, M., and Kostala, E. (2016). Young entrepreneurs and creative collectives: Articulations of new media work in conditions of constant crisis. In J. Webster and K. Randle (eds), Virtual workers and the global labour market. London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
Morini, C. (2007). The Feminization of labour in cognitive capitalism. Feminist Review, 87, pp. 40-59.
Nagy, G. Dr., and Johnson, B. (2016). Harnessing the Potential of Coworking (pp. 1-13). Fraunhofer-Haworth.
Neff, G. (2012). Venture Labour: Work and the burden of risk in innovative industries. United States: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Neilson, B., and Rossiter, N. (2008). Precarity as a Political Concept, or Fordism as Exception. Theory, Culture and Society, 25 (51).
Oakley, K. and Leadbeater, C. (2005). Why cultural entrepreneurs matter. In Creative Industries (pp. 299-311). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Oldenburg, R. (1989). The great good place. New York: Paragon House.
Pongratz, H. J., and Voß, G. G. (2003). From employee to “entreployee”. Towards a “self-entrepreneurial” work force?. Concepts and Transformation, 8 (3), pp. 239-254.
Qin, R., and Nembhard, D. (2015). Workforce agility in operations management. Surveys in Operations Research and Management Science, 20 (2), pp. 55-69.
Rose, N. (1989). Governing the soul: The shaping of the private self. London: Routledge.
Schmidt, S., and Brinks, V. (2017). Open creative labs: Spatial settings at the intersection of communities and organization. Creativity and Innovation Management, 26 (6), pp. 60-76.
Schneider, F. and Enste, D. H. (2013). The shadow economy: An international survey (2nd ed.). Cambridge.
Sennett, R. (1998). The corrosion of character. New York: WW Norton.
Shih, J. (2004). Project Time in Silicon Valley. Qualitative Sociology, 27 (2), pp. 223-245.
Spinuzzi, C. (2012). Working Alone Together: Coworking as Emergent Collaborative Activity. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 26 (4), pp. 399-441.
Standing, G. (2014). The Precariatat. The new dangerous class. London: Bloomsburry Academic.
The Creative Economy—An infinite opportunity for growth. (2014). Retrieved December 10, 2019, from British Council website: https://www.britishcouncil.gr/en/events/the-creative-economy-an-infinite-opportunity-for-growth
Trinca, H. and Fox, C. (2004). Better than sex: how a whole generation got hooked on work. Australia: Random House Australia.
Unemployment statistics. (2019). Retrieved October 19, 2019, from Eurostat Statics Explained website: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Unemployment_statistics
Viasasha, S. (2017). The coworking movement is all grown up and it’s actually pretty cool [Blog]. Retrieved May 15, 2018, from Spokephone website: https://blog.spokephone.com/the-coworking-movement-is-all-grown-up-and-its-actually-pretty-cool
Watson, D. (2019). Fordism: A review essay. Labor History, 60 (2), pp. 144-159.
Webb, J. (2004). Organizations, Self-identities and the New Economy. Sociology, 38 (4), pp. 719-738.
Webster, J., and Randle, K. (2016). Positioning virtual workers within space, time, and social dynamics. In J. Webster and K. Randle (eds), Virtual workers and the global labour market (pp. 3-). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Wittel, A. (2001). Toward a network sociality. Theory, Culture and Society, 18 (6), pp. 51-76.
Woodman, D. and Wyn, J. (2015). Youth and generation: Rethinking change and inequality in the lives of young people. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.