HOW DO STAFF FIND WORKING IN EARLY-STAGE STRUGGLING STARTUPS JUSTIFIED?

Abstract

This study aims to understand why staff (founders, managers, interns) working in a struggling, early-stage, innovation-focused tech startups (not yet profiting, Series A round of financing or earlier) find working in such an environment meaningful and worthwhile. Staff find this so because of the belief that technological innovation solves real world problems, and that working in a startup contributes to their growth. The thesis argues that these are not necessary or intrinsic qualities of technological innovation or working in post-bureaucratic organisation, but rather, acquire significance in social milieus of fluid modernity, risk society, and the overlapping interests of actors in the startup scene. Boltanski’s sociology of critique is used as the theoretical framework, showing how this justification is contingent on critiques of alternative work settings (specifically bureaucratic management) for their inability to assuage the anxieties and opportunities of living in the current social milieu.