Entrepreneurial agency and regional transformation: Old Mysore state (1881 - 1956)

Guide(s)

Bhagavatula, Suresh and Kumar, K

Department

Entrepreneurship

Area

Entrepreneurship

University

Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

Place

Bangalore

Publication Date

3-31-2024

Year Awarded

March 2024

Year Completed

March 2024

Year Registered

June 2018

Abstract

Regional economic activity has been the focus of various schools of thought like industrial districts, regional clusters, and recently entrepreneurial ecosystems. Across all these schools of thought, scholarly focus has remained on structural features that enable or constrain economic activity. The community of scholars in Regional Entrepreneurship have mostly studied the causes and effects of regional agglomeration of economic activity, the effect of regional features on entrepreneurship and the effect of entrepreneurial activity on regions. Extant literature reviews in recent years have been calling to address the question of the interrelationship between agency and structure in the context of regional entrepreneurship. However, the process and micro mechanisms of how regional transformation is brought about by entrepreneurial action has not yet received adequate attention. This thesis, building on McMullen et al (2021)'s conception that entrepreneurial agency that brings about structural transformation is at the core of entrepreneurship research, attempts to shed some light on such process of regional transformation brought about by entrepreneurial agency. To this end, I reread the history of the old Mysore region in India from the lens of entrepreneurial agency. The old Mysore region had come to be hailed as Modern Mysore and Industrial Mysore by the 1950s, from being an agricultural economy in the late 1880s when it was handed over to native administration from direct colonial administration. What entrepreneurial actions brought this credential to the region, how did these actions of different actors shape the transformation of the region and how did such transformation effect further entrepreneurial action. The interest of this thesis is in exploring if there was a co-evolving dynamic between entrepreneurial agency and regional structures that made such transformation possible. Methodologically, I employ historical methods of data collection and narrative construction. Speaking to entrepreneurship scholarship, I read this history from an entrepreneurship lens and theorise, informed by existing work that addresses the regional dimensions of entrepreneurship. This approach responds to the call of entrepreneurship scholars to take a long durée perspective and helps us understand how past actions and imaginations about the future open a new set of regional entrepreneurial opportunities in the present. At the empirical level, I offer an entrepreneurial history of the Mysore region. At the theoretical level, I build on structuration theory of Anthony Giddens to explicate the dynamic between entrepreneurial agency and regional structures. While extant work on entrepreneurship and regional development has largely focused on macro factors, my work highlights how entrepreneurial agency is involved in infusing new meaning - making entrepreneurship aspirational in a region, recombining resources in novel ways, and legitimising a region through narratives and visual symbolism. To put it in Giddens terms, not merely the transformation of domination structures, but also the importance of agency in transforming signification and legitimation structures is brought to focus. I propose a process model where the entrepreneurial actions shape and are shaped by structural features and this dynamic, in turn, cumulatively shapes the structure and opportunity space of the future. I theorize this cumulative continuity as "entrepreneurial confluence" to complement the notion of "entrepreneurial stream" as theorized by Arthur Cole. For practitioners, this work highlights that entrepreneurship is not an isolated activity, but it impacts and is impacted by the regional context. It shows how place-based leadership is a vital component of entrepreneurship in practice. For policy makers, this work highlights the evolutionary nature of entrepreneurship in a region and urges that policy be involved in enabling constructive advantage for the region, while being conscious of second order effects like recursive interaction effects between structure and agency, path dependency and cultural stickiness of a region.

Pagination

xiv, 253p.

Copyright

Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

Document Type

Dissertation

DAC Chairperson

Bhagavatula, Suresh and Kumar, K

DAC Members

Raj, Prateek; Lubinski, Christina; Tumbe, Chinmay

Type of Degree

Ph.D.

Relation

DIS-IIMB-FPM-P24-10

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