TY - JOUR TI - Landing gear, lettuce, bouquets, and home health aides DO - https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3NK3H1N PY - 2015 AB - Organizational scholars have traditionally argued that formalized operations to regulate the flow of business activities and employee policies to coordinate work distribution are essential for small enterprising business sustainability and growth. However, empirical findings show that small firms do not develop, implement, or provide oversight of formal organizational practices. While small businesses seem to lack the organizational structures that are assumed to be essential for “rational” business operations and sustainability, many flourish. In order to better understand how small enterprising businesses are able to create and maintain stable organizations and adapt to internal and external pressures, this cross-industry ethnographic study of four firms examines the daily work of business owners, managers, and employees. Through a cultural analysis focusing on interpersonal relationships and the way daily business activities are legitimized, challenged, and occasionally transformed, I find that entrepreneurial firms enact three different small group performances. I label these cultural performances: routine business performance, routine crisis performance, and routine growth performance. Rather than standard operating procedures, proper emergency planning, or strategic growth initiatives, the ongoing creation of group histories, meanings, and affiliations provide the needed material to generate small group cohesion that creates order in entrepreneurial firms. KW - Sociology KW - Corporate culture KW - Entrepreneurship LA - eng ER -