To Share or Not to Share: Exploring the depths of digital identity through an entrepreneurial lens
Date
2022-09-07
Authors
Crowder, Lillian
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Abstract
As founders build and grow their ventures, most establish an entrepreneur identity (Burke, 2016). Today, most founders create and make extensive use of a venture-specific website to support their firms. In advance of this study, we observed that some founders present a well-developed digital identity on their websites, while other founders do not. Existing identity research both online and offline offers little guidance to help explain this observed difference. Moreover, current research on online identity construction is highly fragmented (Huang et al., 2021). This study’s focus is on answering the research question: What accounts for the observed differences in founders’ digital identities online? We undertake to answer this question adopting a qualitative method, conducting 34 depth interviews with founders across Canada. This study’s findings will inform identity control theory (Marcia, 1993), and will help entrepreneur support organizations to better prepare entrepreneurs in managing their digital identities.
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Entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, online identity, online self, digital identity, Valerie Kuehne Undergraduate Research Awards (VKURA)