Title: the Blockinmoral Blockinspace Blockinin Blockinentrepreneurship: Ethical Blockinimperatives Blockinand Blockinmoral Blockinlegitimacy Author: Alistair Blockinr

This paper explores the morality associated with entrepreneurship. It has been argued that there is no moral space in entrepreneurship, but such instrumental views may the miss out much of the nature of enterprise and how it is understood. Consequently we propose that a social constructed perspective, based upon the meanings of entrepreneurship, may help to understand the morality of entrepreneurship. By applying such a lens, we find that the narratives and discourses of the meanings of entrepreneurship are ideological and clearly present a moral space. This space lies between the individual and society and is normatively articulated in entrepreneurial discourses. We develop a framework which links values and outcomes that shows how “authentic” entrepreneurship is legitimised by comparisons with the socially constructed view. The empirical part of the paper is two theoretical cases. The first is a local garage owner who has a reputation as a decent man; the second is a notorious, but entrepreneurial London gangster. Our analysis shows that to be judged “entrepreneurial”, it is not enough to act entrepreneurially; the social constructs of public perceptions entail examining both moral means and moral ends. We conclude that there is a moral imperative in entrepreneurship.