Curtis, T (2012) It's a Rough Trade: a longitudinal study of changing enterprise ethics. 4th International Social Innovation Research Conference (ISIRC). 12-14 September 2012. Third Sector Research Centre, University of Birmingham

1. A longitudinal study
of a social enterprise
Tim Curtis
Senior Lecturer
The University of Northampton

2. Entrepreneurship
• Innovation
– Music styles
• Punk
• Reggae
• Indie
– Artist/Label contract
• non-binding 50/50
– Cartel regional distribution
• Network rather than ownership
– Community fanzines
– Encouraging home-made music
• Ethos
– Equal pay/equal say
– Communist/anarchist roots
– Eventually an employee trust
• In their analysis of the emergent
field of entrepreneurship,
Davidsson et al. (2001) find
developments in terms of
definitions, research problems,
methodologies and theories – but
not in terms of discussing the
underlying view of reality,
knowledge and ideology...
without questioning the views of
human beings, knowledge and
“truth” that underlie these
research practices.
• Still seeking ‘the social’ in social
entrepreneurship, and thereby
also in entrepreneurship per se....
An interesting, if noisy empirical case study, but also with theoretical challenges

3. Why longitudinal?
• entrepreneurial processes could be studied as organic processes, as
open-ended series of events in which people create/develop things
together (Pettigrew, 1997; Aldrich, 2000).
• Such processes are continuously emerging, becoming, changing, as
(inter)actors develop their understandings of their selves and their
entrepreneurial reality.
• In order to understand how development within entrepreneurship
unfolds we therefore need to study processes and follow these
continuously over time.
• Consequently, if we are interested in development, change and
critical moments we need to follow processes in a longitudinal way
and preferably in real time (Pettigrew, 1997).

4. The evidence base
• Secondary data:
– Neil Taylor (2010) Document And Eyewitness: An Intimate History of
Rough Trade: The Rough Trade Story
– Rob Young (2006) Rough Trade: Labels Unlimited
– Anon (2011) Do it Yourself: The Story of Rough Trade BBC
Documentary
• Detailed interviews with all the key actors.
• Naturalistically presented. Re-analysis of ‘raw’ data to elicit
grounded theory
• Possible primary interviews with trustees and GLC parties (if
available)
• Underlying questions of primary researchers’ editing of interviews
(are originals still available? What is missing?) i.e. ‘trustworthiness’
and authenticity (Lincoln & Guba 1985)

5. Record Shop
• Founded in 1976 by Geoff Travis as a record shop
• Operated as a co-operative (equal pay/equal say) but
privately owned and invested in by family
• Added fanzines (1977), record distribution, (the Cartel)
network (1978) and music label with Metal Urbain (1979)
• 1982, shop becomes employee buy-out
• 1991 overtrading and cashflow problems bankrupt Label
and Distribution
• Relaunched as artiste house in 2000, owned by private
equity
• 2007 was sold to Beggars banquet- a group of labels
stemming from a similar punk/indie 1970s start-up

6. Growth in Indie
• In the three years after 1978, the number of
specialist record shops in Britain increased
from 1750 to 2370.
• The most significant for British punk music
and based in London were Beggars Banquet
(Earls Court), Small Wonder (Walthamstow)
and Rough Trade (Notting Hill)
Hesmondhalgh, 1998

7. Metal Urbain
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW-
peug4e8s&feature=player_detailpage
• Movement from record and fanzine shop to
• Music label
• Getting a record made worked out to be
relatively easy- not just RT.
• The harder thing was promoting & distributing
the record to the shops.......

8. (mainstream) Entrepreneurship Theory
personal characteristics of entrepreneurs, suggests they need to
evidence:
• Risk tolerance
• Uncertainty tolerance
• Vision
• Capacity to inspire
• Creativity & Innovation
• High internal locus of
control
• Emotional stability
• Commitment to others
• Resilience & Tenacity
• Self awareness
• Self confidence
• High energy
• Achievement orientation
• Proactive
• Desire for autonomy
• Flexibility
• Initiative
• Assertiveness
Knight (1942) (Timmons, 1978).
Deakins (1999)
‘entrepreneurial orientation’ is linked to environment to create ‘opportunity recognition’

9. Opportunity Recognition
Lumpkin, G.; Hills, G.: Shrader, R. (2004). “Opportunity recognition” in Welsh,
H.P. (Ed), Entrepreneurship: The Way Ahead, Routledge, New York, pp. 73-
90.
Entrepreneurial
orientation
Some relationship with external environment
But no theory as to ‘how’ this happens

10. Communal Vibe
• “no where to go” – main labels were not
publishing punk, “obscure and challenging music”
• “play music all day”, “more then buying records”,
“naive, innocent, we could change the world”
• “ A kibbutz is a utopia isn’t it” affirms Goldman,
so he [Travis] was trying to create a utopia here in
the ghetto of Ladbroke Grove” p19
• Contrast Curtis, 2012 on ‘danwei’

11. The environment
• Ladbroke Grove
• In Kensington &
Chelsea, but Rachman’s
exploitation of Afro-
Carribean immigrants in
Notting Hill area led to
slum like conditions in
the 1970s
• Highly racially mixed
• Full of squats and
reggae, rock steady &
ska ‘sound systems’

12. Geoff himself
• Son of a ‘loss adjuster’ borrowing £4,000 from his
father to help cover the costs of stock and
premises- financial capital
• Philosophy & English at Cambridge-social capital
• Could afford to travel extensively in US and
Canada- 400 LPs shipped back- cultural capital
• Travis senior, ‘invested a lot of time and energy
ad was extremely supportive’ (p29) doing
accounts

13. DIY design ethic
http://collectornotcompletist.blogspot.co.uk/2010_04_01
_archive.html
http://www.cdandlp.com/item/2/0-1108-0-1-
0/1047588327/scritti-politti-2nd-peel-session-:-messthetics-
hegemony-scritlocks-door-opec-immac.html

14. Democratising music-making
• scritti politti
• 2nd peel session
• Notes on how to
make an album
• Transparent
costing
• “mere mortals
couldn’t do that
kind of thing”
http://www.cdandlp.com/item/2/0-1108-0-1-0/1047588327/scritti-politti-
2nd-peel-session-:-messthetics-hegemony-scritlocks-door-opec-immac.html

15. Community & communication
• Fanzine
• Xerox technology
• Open editorial
• aesthetic of anti-
professionalism.
– Letraset was one-use only
and expensive, they'd cut
letters out of newspapers,
blackmail-style.
– photo-size reduction was too
pricey (it required a process
camera, which cost £1 per
shot), they'd just run their
pictures giant-size.
– Strips of typewritten and
typo-riddled text would be
glued at skewiff angles, with
pencil-scribbled addenda in
the margins
• Sniffin Glue, the first
punk fanzine, was
produced by Mark Perry
in July 1976 a few days
after seeing US punk
band The Ramones for
the first time at the
Roundhouse in London.
• He took the title from a
Ramones song 'Now I
Wanna Sniff Some Glue'.
• It reported the moment
immediately as it
happened, reporting it
from an insider's point
of view.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/feb/02/
fanzine-simon-reynolds-blog
http://www.bl.uk/learning/images/21cc/counte
rculture/large8676.html

16. Reconfiguring the contract
• Usually an artist receives an advanced payment
that is considered to be a loan against money
which the musician's recording will generate.
• The level of royalty is set by the contract and
depends on sales.
• However, in most contracts, the artists have to
pay for their own recordings and promotions.
• Moreover, a company retains copyright.
• Most contracts are long-term, which makes
artists dependent on a company.
Hesmondhalgh, 1998

17. Reconfiguring the contract
• Rough Trade, Mute and Factory challenged the relation between
artists and companies.
• Deals were often on a 50:50 basis.
• The companies did not introduce long-term contacts and relied on
personal trust.
• Rough Trade created a situation for where artists could easily
change recording company if they desired.
• Factory was liberal with its policy on copyright. The company did
not own a lot of copyrights.
• On the other hand, the companies could not offer significant ‘loans'
for musicians, but musicians stated that they felt as if they shared
their cultural and creative industry with the companies.
• Some musicians worked in Rough Trade in order to subsidise their
activities.
Hesmondhalgh, 1998

18. The contract
1. We... agree to make records
and sell them until either or
both of the parties
reasonably disagree with the
arrangement.
2.We agree that once agreed
recording, manufacturing
and promotional costs have
been deducted we will share
the ensuing profit equally.
Signed
ROUGH TRADE

19. Shifting Ethics 1980’s
• "We had gone from being a collective to this huge
company," he recalls. "At that point all these
management people appeared. They talked crap,
mostly, and dug a big wedge between distribution and
the record company. There was this huge clash of
cultures and I was completely marginalised on the
board.” Geoff Travis
• Over time there is a “tug of war” for the destination of
profit. “Like the discovery of the profit niches
themselves, the discussion over and eventual
destination of these profits is culturally embedded”
(Lindh de Montoya, 2000, p. 349).

20. Theory: structure/agency debate
• Did RT create their own
entrepreneurship, or did the
socio-economic climate create
the opportunities?
• Is ‘opportunity’ (cf Lumpkin) out
there to be discovered, or is it
created, constructed, performed?
• Does the bricoleur find objects to
use, or lend meaning to objects
• knowledge about
entrepreneurship is knowledge
on how individuals and collectives
perceive, define, produce and re-
produce entrepreneurial action in
society.
• multi-level research that tries to
combine individual and context
(Aldrich and Martinez, 2002);
• Giddensian structuration theory
Does Actor/Network Theory (Latour) just add ‘technology’ into the structuration
of social relations?
Narrative (Berger & Luckman) and performativity (Butler) flesh out Giddens

21. Defining ‘the social’ in social
entrepreneurship
• If ‘the social’ is concerned with how social
relations, identities and inequalities are created.
• Then ‘the social’ in entrepreneurship is concerned with
how social relations, identities and inequalities are
transformed through entrepreneurial processes
• Sociologies of entrepreneurship?
• After Susan Smith (2010): Scholarship self-consciously
labelled ‘social entrepreneurship’ may be radical or
conservative, life changing or mundane, engagingly
relevant, comprehensively bland or uniquely quirky.

22. Conclusions
• Standard entrepreneurship theory fails to explain the
sociality of the innovation- just the fact of the new
venture
• As personal & organisational ethics mature and
change, so does the social mission (cf Mondragon)
• Market-making social enterprises get out competed
Nevertheless,
• It is a scaled social enterprise because it changed some
fundamental social relations
– Music industry- adoption of indie label
– Garage, computer, laptop, now ipad album creating
Am I mistakenly searching for a meta-narrative for ‘the social’?

23. • Deakins, D. (1999), Entrepreneurship and small firms, (2nd edition), McGraw Hill
• Knight, F.H. (1942) Profit and entrepreneurial fuinctions, The tasks of common
history: supplement to Journal of Economic History, 2, pp. 126-32
• Timmons, J.A., (1978) Characteristics and role demands of
entrepreneurship, American Journal of Small Business, Vol 3. pp. 5-17
• Monica Lindgren, Johann Packendorff, (2009) "Social constructionism and
entrepreneurship: Basic assumptions and consequences for theory and
research", International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour & Research, Vol. 15
Iss: 1, pp.25 – 47
• Lindh de Montoya, M. (2000). Entrepreneurship and culture: The case of
Freddy, the strawberry man.
• In R. Swedberg (Ed.), Entrepreneurship: The social science view pp. 332–355.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Susan Smith (2010) Introduction: Situating Social Geographies in The Sage
Handbook of Social Geographies (co-edited with Sallie A. Marston, Susan J.
Smith, and Rachel Pain, John Paul Jones III). Los Angeles: Sage.