The making of the mature entrepreneur: life course perspective on entrepreneurship in older age in Germany and Poland

成熟的企业家精神正在获得动力。无论是在数字上，还是在社会政治和经济上。本研究旨在研究在以后的生活中成为一个企业家的过程与以前的职业道路，以建立如何生活过程中的经验决定转向自营职业。提案标题中使用的成熟企业家一词具有双重含义。在实际年龄（如50岁以上）的意义上成熟，在生活和工作经验以及社会，人力和（通常）经济资本方面成熟。本研究探讨了一个基本问题，即个人和制度条件如何影响成熟企业家的形成过程。这里提出的论文是，创业的动机和活动的老年人是一个动态的和互惠的关系，他们的个人和职业生活的道路，一方面，社会和结构反馈收到的机构（正式和非正式）的行为者。该项目提出了一种动态和时间的方法来研究这一过程。它的目的是纳入研究设计，既：过去的过渡和轨迹的分析，以及未来的计划和个人的预测。因此，出于理论上的原因，本项目采用生命过程分析作为解决这一问题的最适当工具，原因如下。首先，成熟企业家与年轻企业家的区别在于他们不同的生活经历以及社会、人力和经济资本的积累，这对老年创业至关重要。第二，生命历程的角度可以研究现代生命历程的变化模式（如去标准化或去机构化），以及个人行为者的职业和私人传记之间的联系。此外，该项目还着眼于专家（来自国家、非政府组织和私营部门）作为行为者的作用，他们不仅影响成熟创业领域的政策制定，而且影响有关创业的形象和叙述的构建。该项目采用的研究方法是综合定性方法，在两个国家：德国（西部和东部）和波兰，对年长的企业家和专家进行了深入访谈。由于福利制度的差异，它们代表了成熟创业和人生历程的不同方法，这使得可以进行跨国和国内比较。这项研究将在当代学术界和政治界关于老年人经济活动替代模式的辩论背景下，以创新的方式促进对老龄化社会中成熟创业精神的研究。此外，该项目旨在为研究现代生活过程的变化及其制度嵌入性提供经验证据。

Mature entrepreneurship is gaining momentum. In both, numerical as well as in socio-political and economic terms. This research intends to examine the process of becoming an entrepreneur in later life with relation to previous career paths in order to establish how life course experiences determine the shift to self employment. The expression mature entrepreneur used in the title of proposal possesses a twofold meaning. Mature in the sense of chronological age (such as 50+), and mature in terms of life and work experience, as well as social, human and (often) economic capital. This research explores a basic question about how individual and institutional conditioning impacts on the process of making of mature entrepreneurs. The thesis proposed here is that the entrepreneurial motivations and activities of older adults are outcome of a dynamic and reciprocal relationship between their personal and occupational life paths on the one hand, and societal and structural feedback received from institutional (formal and informal) actors on the other hand. The project suggests a dynamic and temporal approach to studying this process. It aims to incorporate into the research design, both: an analysis of past transitions and trajectories, as well as future plans and projections of an individual. For theoretical reasons therefore, this project adopts a life course analysis as the most appropriate tool to tackle this question due to the following reasons. Firstly, what marks out mature entrepreneurs from young ones is their diverse life experience and the accumulation of social, human and often also economic capital, which are of critical importance for setting up a business in older age. Secondly, the life course perspective allows a study of the shifting patterns of modern life courses (such as de-standardization or de-institutionalization), as well as the nexus between the occupational and private biographies of individual actors. Moreover, the project looks also at the role of experts (from state, NGOs and private sectors) as those actors, who influence not only the policy making in the area of mature entrepreneurship, but also the construction of images and narratives about them. The research methodology adopted in the project is an integrative qualitative approach, where in-depth interviews with older entrepreneurs and experts are carried out in two countries: Germany (West and East) and Poland. They represent diverse approaches to mature entrepreneurship and life courses due to differences in welfare regimes, what allows for cross- and intra-country comparisons. The research will contribute in an innovative way to the study of mature entrepreneurship in ageing societies in the context of contemporary academic and political debates about the alternative models of economic activity of older adults. Moreover, the project aims to provide empirical evidence for studying the variations in modern life courses and their institutional embeddedness.