Text Sushi by Alf Rehn

The Hidden Enterprise Culture – Entrepreneurship in the Underground Economy
Colin C. Williams
Cheltenham, UK: Edwar Elgar, 2006
xi + 263 pp.

It is almost impossible to dislike this book. As the field of entrepreneurship studies in such a dire need of serious, critical engagements with the whole potential field, rather than the ideologically delimited part most focus on, this book serves as an important reminder of what is yet to be done, and the possibilities that remain. By taking the underground seriously, rather than just moralizing about it, Colin Williams presents a fascinating and stimulating piece of scholarship, one which hopefully will at least partially shake the field out of its intellectual complacency. The book isn’t perfect, as books rarely are, but it represents the kind of serious inquiry that could change the way in which entrepreneurship studies is usually seen outside of the field – i.e. as a politically motivated sham of either trite generalities or scholastic inanities – and re-energize the discussion therein.

The book sets out to inquire into the entrepreneurial underground economy, seeing this as an area which is legitimate to study if not necessarily to engage in. Noting that most commentators have treated it as an aberration and a pathology, and focused on different ways in which it could be combated, Williams looks to the fact that many (if not most) entrepreneurs have at least some experience of gray or off-the-books exchanges and endeavors. This is the hidden enterprise culture of the book’s title, and Williams goes on to analyze this as a field of economic and organizational behavior unto itself, with fascinating results. He does not completely escape the procedural trap, and unfortunately spends a lot of time delving into possibilities for government policy, when this could have been better spent by enriching the empirical cases, but one is prepared to forgive this as the book so clearly is doing important work.

Part I of the book details the ways in which both entrepreneurship studies and research into the underground economy has turned a blind eye to to the notion of “underground entrepreneurship”, and how this myopia has reduced and hindered intellectual development in both. Many of the arguments put forth in this part have been formulated before, but Williams has done us a great service in summarizing and collecting them, and it constitutes a great read. One comes away from these chapters amazed at how stunted the discourse has been, and the author makes a most convincing case for the necessity to inquire into the linkages between entrepreneurship and underground economies.

Part II then goes on to portray and discuss the hidden enterprise culture. This is the most important part of the book, and is simply dazzling. I cannot over-emphasize the sheer pleasure of reading an intellectually aware and analytically rigorous text on an important but almost completely ignored aspect of entrepreneurship. I want to draw a comparison to Dick Hobbs’s masterly Doing the Business, and Sudhir Venkatesh’s recent Off the Books, both amazing ethnographies, and suggest that it is through such case-studies (rather than the tired accolades to the usual IT-startups) that entrepreneurship studies can be developed as a serious social science. Williams combines surveys, cases, portraits and stringent analysis to present a compelling picture of an ignored economic culture, and this section alone is worth the price of the book.

Part III and IV discusses possible policies for dealing with the hidden enterprise culture, presenting the different options for deterring gray economies and potential initiatives for utilizing the energies contained therein. These parts are no doubt important, but they aren’t quite as fascinating and pressing as the earlier parts. I can see their importance as e.g. a report for government, but as a scholar I would have rather seen part I and II extended and these parts substantially shortened.

The book is well-written, even if it sometimes lapses into a dry and bureaucratic tone. There are parts that read like an official report rather than a piece of research, but one is (again) prepared to excuse such minor blemishes. Overall, this is important work, and it suggests that we need to radically alter the reading lists in the courses on entrepreneurship in our universities. It is a serious book, written by a serious thinker who is also a fine scholar, and I contend that the book should be required reading for every single researcher in the field – and I bloody well mean it! Succinctly put, we need more books like this, and should be thankful to Colin Williams for having written it. Kudos!