‘See You Next Week’?

Abstract

This article explores the relevance of the notion of entrapment in explaining the decline of small businesses. Entrapment refers to situations where individuals become bound to a suboptimal course of action through the passage of time. The vehicle for this exploration is a dilapidated hairdresser’s shop. By analysing the artefacts of the shop and interview data, analysis seeks to understand how and why a once successful business can reach a point of ‘no return’. What emerges suggests that whilst entrapment partly results from mixing economic and extraneous interests (‘side-bets’), the reasons may be more complex. Specifically, entrapment is distinctly risk averse and may reflect social pressures and ego-defensiveness, sustained not so much by illusion as delusion.

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