Papers presented by Lauren Eaton since 2019

2024 Providence, Rhode Island

"Disruptive Discourse – The Evolution of Entrepreneurship Concepts"

Abstract:

This paper asks how the use of the word "disruption" in the business press changed over the second half of the twentieth century to examine broader transformations in the discourse of American capitalism. To gain insight into these changes, the study conducts an in-depth analysis of editorials published in The Wall Street Journal that feature the word “disruption”. To provide a comprehensive examination, it analyses a dataset of 266 editorials published between 1950 and 2019. By tracing its trajectory, this study hopes to offer valuable insights into how this concept has changed over time to deepen our understanding of entrepreneurship discourse in contemporary society. In doing so, the paper aims to contribute to the growing conversation among both historians (Waterhouse, 2024) and management scholars (Eberhart, Barley & Nelson, 2022) on entrepreneurialism as an ideology. Exploring the evolving usages and implications of the term "disruption" over time provides insights into business discourse and concepts as carriers of economic assumptions and values. This study is part of a series focused on examining scholarly entrepreneurship concepts and their reception into everyday language. To fully understand the current culture and discourse of entrepreneurship we need a deeper sense of why and how this translation of entrepreneurship from an intellectual debate to a popular discourse took place. Understanding how early intellectuals conceptualised entrepreneurship and how these ideas have been translated across generations can provide crucial insights into the factors that contributed to its broader acceptance in contemporary society.

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