Bournemouth24 november

The entrepreneur as hero and jester: enacting the entrepreneurial discourse Dr Lorraine Warren Bournemouth, 24 November, 2010

Identity play?
Accepted for publication in ISBJ [3*]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYRHMckJPhU
Entrepreneurs have a distinctive presence in society
Rhetoric and rationality
Tension between distinctiveness <->stereotype
Amplification in the media
Used for strategic advantage

Conflicts!
Secondary airports: Charleroi case
Other airlines: Aer Lingus takeover
Unions: Dublin baggage handlers dispute
Government: second terminal at Dublin airport
Passengers! (wheelchair users, refund policy)

Growth of Ryanair: context
A low cost, no frills airline
Single Market in Air Transport
Full cabotage: the right of an EU-based airline to operate out of any country in the community
1998-2002, low cost capacity grew 5-fold
On-going shift in market behaviour

Success?
By 2002/03, Ryanair had become Europe’s 8th largest airline as measured by passenger numbers.
industry-leading net margins, improving in 2002/03 by 4% to 28%, the fifth consecutive year of improvement

Ryanair today
“World’s favourite airline”
43 bases and 1100+ low fare routes across 26 countries, connecting 155 destinations.
operates a fleet of 250 new Boeing 737-800 aircraft with firm orders for a further 64 new aircraft
a team of more than 7,000 people and expects to carry approximately 73.5 million passengers in the current fiscal year.

Michael O’Leary
Video – highly combative style
http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_8298000/8298750.stm
Joined the company in 1988 (accountant)
Fortune Magazine’s European Businessman of the Year in 2000
Skytrax Airline Personality of the Year in 2003
European Business Leaders Entrepreneur of the Year, 2005

Literature background
Growing interest in interpretive approaches to entrepreneurship [move from econ/psy]
Dodd and Anderson, 2007, Neergaard, 2005;Shaw, 2006; Jack et al, 2008;Cope et al, 2007; Fletcher, 2006
Narratives Johansson, 2004; Warren, 2004
Discourse, Ogbor, 2000
Media, Radu and Redien-Collet, 2008)

Entrepreneurial identity
Down and Reveley, 2004 “the social formation of the entrepreneurial self”
Atherton, 2004 -> stereotypes [Goffman]
Paradox of identities: sameness and otherness (Hjorth and Johannisson)
Entrepreneurial crusade -> licence to challenge
Legitimisation (Lounsbury and Glyn, 2004)
New cultural hero of the Western world (now?)

Methodology
Newspaper articles between 2001 <-> 2005

Table I Mentions of leading entrepreneurs (All UK newspapers including regionals and the Irish News tabloid) 15763 1881 2812 4213 TOTAL 1325 124 241 403 Jul-Dec 2005 1295 193 284 360 Jan-Dec 2005 1687 184 377 414 Jul-Dec 2004 1522 93 258 614 Jan-June 2004 1492 234 203 539 Jul-Dec 2003 1627 283 226 473 Jan-June 2003 1407 188 338 331 Jul-Dec 2002 1526 255 455 449 Jan-June 2002 1830 143 292 460 Jul-Dec 2001 2052 184 138 170 Jan-June 2001 Richard Branson James Dyson Stelios Haji Ioannou Michael O’Leary

Table 2 Mentions of leading entrepreneurs in all UK national newspapers 7741 707 1582 2595 TOTAL 711 61 148 249 Jul-Dec 2005 633 92 178 227 Jan-Dec 2005 819 81 189 257 Jul-Dec 2004 719 33 146 377 Jan-June 2004 732 67 131 351 Jul-Dec 2003 767 91 122 317 Jan-June 2003 683 60 174 213 Jul-Dec 2002 776 93 266 267 Jan-June 2002 874 63 155 239 Jul-Dec 2001 1027 66 73 98 Jan-June 2001 Richard Branson James Dyson Stelios Haji Ioannou Michael O’Leary

Table 3 Mentions of leading entrepreneurs in the Irish Times 70 9 13 425 TOTAL 7 0 1 50 Jul-Dec 2005 8 3 0 76 Jan-Dec 2005 10 3 2 58 Jul-Dec 2004 3 0 1 73 Jan-June 2004 7 0 2 50 Jul-Dec 2003 6 0 1 52 Jan-June 2003 4 1 2 26 Jul-Dec 2002 1 0 2 40 Jan-June 2002 13 0 2 0 Jul-Dec 2001 11 2 0 0 Jan-June 2001 Richard Branson James Dyson Stelios Haji Ioannou Michael O’Leary

Themes?
We had found a multifaceted, contradictory bricolage of style, content and processes including:
Entrepreneurial business pronouncements typical of a high profile CEO of a fast-growing innovative company;
Incisive analyses of complex legal and financial situations;
High profile media ‘stunts’ often aimed at competitors, such as turning up in a military tank at Luton airport to jest with low-cost competitor Easyjet; but also-
Vituperative, highly personalised, long running feuds with powerful figures such as Bertie Ahern; but oddly, also an enthusiasm for aggressively confronting Ryanair’s customers.
A willingness to actively engage the public in his jests.
A verbal style peppered not only with humour, sometimes backed up by scathing (yet comical) cartoon attacks on individuals, but often couched in profane and uncouth language.

Diverse, contradictory and distinctively individual playful elements.
As Barbara Cassani, the founder of low-cost airline Go, (Calder, 2003, p. 96) had noted:
“ It’s interesting that Michael O’Leary has this image as a rough-and-tumble profane Irish farm boy. He’s a trained accountant who went to one of the finest universities in Ireland”.

153 243 TOTAL Letter from member of public General business analysis (3) Piece penned by O’Leary News report (2) 7 16 Jul-Dec 2005 Business analysis (26) News report (27) Private letter from O’Leary (3 appearances) 56 63 Jan-June 2005 Business analysis (6) News reports (4) 10 25 Jul-Dec 2004 Business analysis (11) News reports (6) Self penned piece by O’Leary (1) Quote of the week/year compilations (2) 20 30 Jan-June 2004 Business analysis (16) News reports (10) Quote of the week (1) Company report/meeting (1) 28 41 Jul-Dec 2003 News reports (7) Business analysis (4) 11 17 Jan-June 2003 Business analysis (2) 2 9 Jul-Dec 2002 Business analysis (3) News (3) 6 12 Jan-June 2002 Business analysis (1) News reports (12) 13 29 Jul-Dec 2001 0 0 1 Jan-June 2001 Type of articles about the airport issues Aer Rianta & Terminal 2 issues Ahern/O’Leary Interchanges

Use of rhetoric
Ahearne always the bureaucrat, “ Bertie’s Blunderland , queuing to get in and out”
“ Passengers would have a choice of airlines, terminal facilities and car parks. Competition would have delivered these facilities by 2006, reduced costs to passengers, and improved services. Competition works. Ryanair works. Ahern's transport policy clearly doesn't. From the M50, where the cars don't fit, to the port tunnel, where trucks don't fit, to Dublin airport, where sadly nothing fits, this government has repeatedly failed the Irish people. We have a first-rate workforce suffering a Third World transport system. Unless we get rid of these clowns and end the protected civil-service monopolies in the transport sector, then we will be doomed to long queues and higher costs for many years to come ” Sunday Times, September 25, 2005

Jesting and Bullying
Subversive tactic of humour
Inversion
Emotional contagion and enlistment

Purposeful use of identity
we see O’Leary’s transformation from a privately educated accountant to an entrepreneurial hero ostentatiously championing air travellers’ rights as deliberate. Charlie Clifton, an executive at Ryanair is cited in Ruddock (2007, p. 194), “…..who’s gonna run it? Are you trying to say, we’re really like Southwest, but we’ve got a dull accountant running the company?” It wouldn’t have washed. Michael knew he had to lead from the front”. Boru (2006) also picks up on the influence of Southwest’s CEO Herb Kelleher, though O’Leary claims to have modelled himself on Richard Branson (The Observer, June 15, 2003) : “As Branson demonstrated, the way to punch above your weight is to shoot your mouth off”.

Entrepreneurial identity as a licence?
A strategic tool, not just read off the discourse
Mobilisation
Emotional contagion
Creative destruction

Bournemouth24 november

by Lorraine Warren on Nov 24, 2010

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