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

成熟创业方兴未艾。无论是在数字方面，还是在社会政治和经济方面。本研究旨在探讨在晚年成为企业家的过程与先前的职业道路的关系，以确定生命历程经历如何决定转向自雇。提案标题中使用的“成熟企业家”一词具有双重含义。在实际年龄上（如50岁以上），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，即个人条件和制度条件如何影响成熟企业家的形成过程。本文认为，老年人的创业动机和活动一方面是他们个人和职业生活路径之间动态互惠关系的结果，另一方面是来自机构（正式和非正式）参与者的社会和结构反馈的结果。该项目提出了一种动态和时间的方法来研究这一过程。它的目的是在研究设计中结合：对过去的过渡和轨迹的分析，以及个人未来的计划和预测。因此，由于理论原因，本项目采用生命历程分析作为最合适的工具来解决这个问题，原因如下。首先，将成熟企业家与年轻企业家区分开来的是他们丰富的生活经历和社会、人力、往往还有经济资本的积累，这对老年创业至关重要。其次，生命历程视角允许研究现代生命历程的转变模式（如去标准化或去制度化），以及个体行动者的职业和私人传记之间的联系。此外，该项目还着眼于（来自国家、非政府组织和私营部门的）专家作为行动者的作用，他们不仅影响成熟企业家精神领域的政策制定，而且影响关于他们的形象和叙述的构建。本项目采用的研究方法是综合定性方法，在德国（西部和东部）和波兰两个国家对年长的企业家和专家进行深入访谈。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，这使得跨国和国内比较成为可能。这项研究将以一种创新的方式，在当代关于老年人经济活动替代模式的学术和政治辩论的背景下，为研究老龄化社会中的成熟企业家精神作出贡献。此外，本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实证证据。

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.