Investigating entrepreneurship complexity in multiple contexts, perspectives and approaches give rise to multiple perspectives of collective entrepreneurship. However, current understanding of how multiple self-employed individuals undertake collective entrepreneurship is poor. Our study investigates four collective entrepreneurial journeys taken by self-employed healthcare practitioners; these journeys lead to the creation of four rural PCCs in southwest France and southwest Germany. Our study extends understanding of the unfolding of engaging for collectiveness among self-employed individuals. Our interpretative and practice-inspired approach identifies regional embeddedness and peer co-working as being interconnected enablers of collective entrepreneurship in rural areas, and we reveal conflict between professional practitioner ethos and changing work culture. We improve how we understand the creative organizing of self-employed individuals by (i) theorizing well-being as a driver of collective entrepreneurship in the rural healthcare context; (ii) conceptualizing regional embeddedness as a process of ‘being in, ‘doing at’, and ‘understanding of’ the territory; (iii) conceptualizing peer co-working as a practice that involves sharing a workplace, developing skills, and benefitting from social interaction; and (iv) theorizing peer co-working as a catalyst of collective entrepreneurship. In summary, we theorize regional embeddedness and peer co-working as being interconnected enablers of collective entrepreneurship in the pursuit of well-being.
In this essay, I investigate entrepreneurial actions emerging from self-employed healthcare practitioners who belong to a CoP. I answer the question of “How entrepreneurial actions may emerge unwittingly from practitioners who are part of communities of practice?” by studying their day-to-day practice through two-weeks of full immersion and two-years of reflection on my experience and my interactions with study participants. Results unveil a ‘taking whatever comes’ practice as a recurrent practice in their social interactions. This practice initiates a ‘process to entrepreneuring’ with multiple open possibilities of emerging entrepreneurship. Belonging to a CoP allows self-employed practitioners to keep their entrepreneurship on track as the CoP plays a regulatory role. The contribution is three-fold: first, I introduce the concept ‘unwitting entrepreneurs’ and call entrepreneurship scholars to push the boundaries of investigation through the recognition of ‘unwitting entrepreneurship’. Second, I unveil entrepreneurs’ openness as practice by elucidating their practice of ‘taking whatever comes’. Third, I suggest further investigation of the potential of CoP as the places that empower and promote the unwitting entrepreneurship among self-employed practitioners.
