‘Start-Up Nation’: The Making and Performativity of an Empty Signifier

Claire  Champenois; Delphine Saurier; Élise Béliard

doi:10.37725/mgmt.2024.8904

Claire Champenois Département Entrepreneuriat, Stratégie et Innovation, Audencia Business School, Nantes, France https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4225-6173
Delphine Saurier Département Communication, Culture et Langues, Audencia Business School, Nantes, France
Élise Béliard Département Communication, Culture et Langues, Audencia Business School, Nantes, France

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37725/mgmt.2024.8904

Keywords: Start-up nation, Macron (Emmanuel), Discourse, Entrepreneurship, Critical approaches, Butler (Judith)

Abstract

The article sheds light on the process of fabrication of a polysemous, ambiguous, and mocking French entrepreneurial expression – the ‘start-up nation’ – construed as an empty signifier. The fabrication of such empty signifiers in the discourses of entrepreneurship and management, what creates them and what they create, remains little explored questions. This article addresses the following question: how do repeated quotations of an empty signifier enable it to perform entrepreneurship? We trace the circulation of the expression from its first utterance in the political sphere by Emmanuel Macron, then French minister of the economy, through to the media and the scientific sphere, using a communicative analysis of Emmanuel Macron’s speeches (n = 4), press articles (n = 210) and academic productions (n = 30). We show the shifts in meaning and values that take place, in particular the way in which the ‘start-up nation’ takes on denunciatory and pejorative values, and is transformed from a political formula into a pejorative, decontextualized little phrase. Our results enrich the critical literature on management and entrepreneurship, particularly the analysis of the performativity of entrepreneurial discourse. By describing the manufacture of an empty signifier through its circulation in social space, the study reveals the counter-power potential of performativity. The results also highlight the surprising absence of an academic critical dimension.

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Author Biographies

Claire Champenois, Département Entrepreneuriat, Stratégie et Innovation, Audencia Business School, Nantes, France

Claire Champenois is professor at Audencia, in the Entrepreneurship, Strategy and Innovation Department. Her research interests pertain to socialized (“embedded”) approaches to entrepreneurship, including entrepreneurship-as-practice. She particularly seeks to deepen the way in which entrepreneurship can contribute to solving some of the social and ecological challenges of our contemporary societies. Her works have been published in both French and English language refereed journals such as Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, Revue de l’entrepreneuriat, Environment and Planning C: Government & Policy, Technovation et Journal of Small Business Management. She has co-edited several special issues (in Human Relations, International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior and Research…).

Delphine Saurier, Département Communication, Culture et Langues, Audencia Business School, Nantes, France

Delphine Saurier is professor at Audencia, in the Communication, Cultures and Language Department. Her research focuses on the mediations that enable the construction of cultural forms. She has published articles on radical figures in prison, on cultural projects in prison, on guided tours in museums, and on places dedicated to famous people. She is the author of two books: Exposer en prison. Le laboratoire d’une fantasmagorie contemporaine (La Documentation française, 2020) and La fabrique des illustres. Proust, Curie, Joliot et lieux de mémoire (Éditions Non Standard, 2013).

Élise Béliard, Département Communication, Culture et Langues, Audencia Business School, Nantes, France

Élise Béliard is a graduate of Audencia SciencesCom’s master in communication and media. She worked as a research assistant on a research project from which this article stems.

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