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    Reconstructing retirement as an enterprising endeavour

    Whiting, Rebecca and Pritchard, K. (2020) Reconstructing retirement as an enterprising endeavour. Journal of Management Inquiry 29 (4), pp. 404-417. ISSN 1056-4926.

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    Abstract

    This article explores issues of age and enterprise in later life as manifested in tensions between retiree and entrepreneurial identities. We utilise the concept of a discursive event to examine time-bound online data, specifically media texts and reader comments associated with the online news coverage on of an insurance company report. This report introduced the label Weary to describe ‘working entrepreneurial and active retirees’. Our analysis shows how keeping healthy and active are constructed as insufficient markers of a productive and successful older age. These markers are supplanted by a neoliberal discourse which prioritises enterprise and economic productivity in retirement. However, the Weary subject position has implications within this discourse which constrain the valued contribution of older adults to productive work yet deny access to this group to entrepreneurial endeavours. This highlights the de-stabilization of retirement and critical tensions in its discursive reconceptualization as a period of entrepreneurial endeavour.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): Enterprise, retirement, successful ageing, productive ageing
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Business and Law > Birkbeck Business School
    Depositing User: Rebecca Whiting
    Date Deposited: 13 Nov 2018 09:57
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 17:46
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/25113

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