Exploring the development of entrepreneurial identity in a learning-by-doing entrepreneurial project environment

Purpose Understanding the construction of individual entrepreneurial identity for entrepreneurship education is an important but understudied issue. Prior studies indicate that entrepreneurship learning is associated with not only learning critical entrepreneurial skills and knowledge but also facilitating the construction of a personal entrepreneurial identity. However, educators are constantly challenged by the task of facilitating such an identity within students via learning-by-doing processes in the context of entrepreneurial teams. Additionally, while effective conflict management is essential to productive entrepreneurial learning in entrepreneurial teams, studies that investigate the relationships between interpersonal conflicts of entrepreneurial teams and the students' entrepreneurial identity are absent. Design/methodology/approach The approach of an in-depth case study was adopted to achieve our research purpose. Findings A conceptual model that describes the construction of the entrepreneurial identity of students of entrepreneurial teams in a learning-by-doing environment from the perspectives of conflicts and task characteristics are developed. Research limitations/implications The research findings highlight the preliminary relationships between task characteristics (i.e. task interdependence, task uncertainty, resource competition and tension regarding responsibility allocation) and interpersonal conflicts of entrepreneurial teams, and their impacts on the entrepreneurial identity of team members. Originality/value This study is among the first group of studies that especially explores the relationships among task characteristics of entrepreneurship projects, interpersonal conflicts and the development of students' entrepreneurial identity.