SMEs, Growth and Entrepreneurship: The Steady Rise and Precipitous Fall of Seaking

Abstract

The article uses a case study of marketing entrepreneurialism to focus on issues concerning the role and reality of the entrepreneur in society in order to seek insights into the way market entrepreneurialism as a contemporary experience might be conceptualised through various epistemological narratives. These concerns are brought into relief through a compelling story of an entrepreneurial rise and fall in the Grimsby (UK) fish industry in the 1980s. The article highlights issues such as the conflict between moral individualism which gives market entrepreneurship its cultural and ethical basis and the need for social responsibility by, and towards, entrepreneurial businesses, and considers how we can better understand the market entrepreneur operating within these paradoxical cultural forces.