From Unemployment to Entrepreneurship: Constructing Different Meanings

Since the 1980s and increasingly since the 1990s entrepreneurship has become to stand for growth, prosperity, and employment. It has become one of the most publicly acclaimed and strategic areas of national and regional business policy, supported by interest towards entrepreneurship in policymaking. The high levels of unemployment have led policy makers to seek solutions, and one of the most promoted ones is the entrepreneurship solution. At the same time there is a lot of debate on the advisability of this route since it is argued that those who are ‘forced’ into entrepreneurship are less dynamic and less entrepreneurial, and consequently their failure rate is higher compared with failure rates of those individuals with more positive motives for entrepreneurship. (Storey 1991, 2002, see also Tervo – Niittykangas 1994) However, also contradictory evidence may be found: For example, a Finnish study shows a remarkable (70%) survival rate for enterprises that were set up by unemployed individuals selected as the beneficiaries of a particular initial start-up financing (Lehto – Stenholm 2001).