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A global pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus created changes in how we socialise, work and consume. This auto-ethnographic research explores self-care practices and identifies self-love as a coping strategy to survive the pandemic. Prioritising one’s personal needs through hedonic and compensatory consumption counteracts the adversities of social lockdowns.

Entrepreneurship is of key importance to economies and societies around the globe, and knowledge about how to support and stimulate it is needed. The purpose of this paper is to review the concepts of experiential learning, meaning-making of the self, and self-efficacy theory to investigate and understand young entrepreneurs' career development choices and their definitions of career success. Findings draw attention to the complexity of the concept of a successful career, emerging from the shared experiences of the entrepreneurs from different parts of the world. It is clear that young entrepreneurs seek work-life balance and bring this concept into their vision of success. They are also driven by self-evolving forces that push them into domains of self-exploration and self-discovery. Given these findings, the study highlights the importance of supporting young people through the presentation of challenges, as well as inspiring role models and the opportunity to learn from them.

This paper analyses the relationship between leadership and masculinities in the context of an entrepreneurial team. It sets out a conceptual basis for understanding the links between gender and leadership in a way which transcends binaries. The term ‘masculinities’ here is formulated as a plural concept, recognising that many different versions of masculinity are available and that particular performances of masculinity are highly variable (Connell, 1995). \ud \ud Previous research into the relationships between gender and leadership and between gender and entrepreneurship has tended to rely on binary views of gender and leadership, contrasting masculinity with femininity, and leader with followers. These dichotomies have been explained on the basis of agentic and communal traits. There is an opportunity to contribute to gender and leadership research by exploring more nuanced and complex ideas of performance of gender and the relationship between performance of gender and perceptions of leadership. Two areas of literature are explored here which are not normally considered together: hegemonic and plural masculinities, and shared leadership in teams. Combining these literatures enables new understandings of the links between gender and leadership as richly textured and variable responses to particular social situations.\ud \ud An empirical research project is planned to explore these themes in the context of an all-male entrepreneurial team. An interpretive methodology combining ethnography with semi-structured interviews will be employed to gather and analyse data through thematic narratives. This methodology is based in hermeneutics and will account for performances of leadership and masculinity as embodied and situated in communities.\ud \ud The paper contributes with a conceptual basis for understanding the links between gender and leadership in an entrepreneurial team in a way which transcends binaries, by focusing on masculinities as plural and nuanced, and on leadership as shared and mutual. This allows exploration of the links between gender and leadership as richly textured and variable responses to particular social situations, in this case, in the context of an all-male entrepreneurial team.