Agency in different work organizations: Narratives of entrepreneurs and researchers Jaana Saarinen University of Jyv ä skyl ä IAEVG

Introduction The aim of this study is to explore agency of post- doctoral researchers and entrepreneurs. Former are working as a contract researchers and latter are working as private counsellors and work life developers Post-structural theoretization (agency, subjectivity, gender, power and emotions) Researcher’s/entrepreneur’s subjectivity is partly constructed and reconstructed through the social interaction in a particular socio-cultural historical and institutional context

In poststructuralist feminist approach identity is understand as a dynamic process of intersubjective discourses, experiences, and emotions: all of these change over time as discourses change, constantly providing new configurations Agency is a key mediating category through which interconnections between cultural and economic forces, identify formation and social structures can be examined (McNay 2004)

Research questions How researchers and entrepreneurs negotiate, construct and reconstruct their agency and identity? What kind of challenges do they face at their career pathways? How do their different work settings constraint and support the ways in which researchers and entrepreneurs negotiate their professional identities?

The data of the study and methods Narrative interviews researchers and entrepreneurs Interviewees are working in a different fields of Finnish universities and small private enterprise/companies Narrative and discursive approach is used in analyzing and describing how and what subjects are telling their experiences of work and discursive subject positions

Case Catherine Changing discursive subject positions promising doctoral student - researcher who is puzzling with a marginal theme competative academic publish or perish Individual – collaboration Reseacher – teacher Continuous insecurity and tightrope walking

Case: Susan Changing (discursive) subject positions nurse, teacher educator, private counsellor and working life developer, PhD student continuous studying and improving know- how employee – entrepreneur working alone – working with colleges portfolio career

Discussion Findings of the study show that researchers and entrepreneurs exist at the points of intersection of multitude discursive practices and subject positions. Researchers are constantly negotiating between their own aspirations and the institutional demands of being an appropriate researcher (for example possibilities to continue research work). Private counsellors are negotiation further education and marketing their enterprise

Both researchers and entrepreneurs share feeling that they are tightrope walking their work is significant and rewarding, although it includes continuous insecurity and competition for the further contracts or funding