Marching to someone else’s beat or creating your own groove? Entrepreneurial agency and the transformation of the rhythms of everyday life

That entrepreneurship and context are related seems intuitive, yet this relationship requires theoretical development. This article draws on Henri Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis to suggest that focusing on the everyday provides a privileged vantage point for understanding how contextual forces permeate entrepreneurship and, conversely, how they are influenced by it. We adapt Lefebvre’s concepts to theorize that the everyday of entrepreneurship forms a rich and shifting symphony of rhythms. We further assume that entrepreneurial agency – the power to change contexts – includes the capacity to shape the rhythms of everyday life in specific ways. To illustrate and deepen our theorizing, we analyze the Brukman textile factory, an entrepreneurial squat, that was taken over by its former workers, who resumed production after the factory was abandoned by its owners. The vignette explores how entrepreneurial agency is enacted through the cultivation of moments of rupture (arrythmia) and moments of rhythmic harmony (eurhythmia). Our contribution is, first, to theorize the everyday as the ‘base’ where contextual forces are actualized through rhythmic ensembles of varying qualities and intensities, and second, that entrepreneurial agency involves the transformative capacity to shape these rhythms to produce novelty that creates value for entrepreneurs and others.