Enterprise policy, which seeks to stimulate start-ups and support small businesses, attracts significant investment from government and shapes the context for entrepreneurs. Researchers have begun to study the processes underlying the formulation of enterprise policy. However, accounts of how competing interests seek to influence enterprise policymaking processes remain rare. Utilising a distinctive approach to narrative entrepreneurship, developed through a narrative policy analysis, we examine archival records of submissions from a range of stakeholders to a UK government inquiry. We develop a narrative entrepreneurship approach that allows us to analyse the stories and broader narratives told by entrepreneurs and others. Our analysis identifies different types of narrative strategy used to develop stories by two competing interest groups: a narrative from small businesses and their representatives and, contesting this, a counternarrative from other stakeholders, including the finance industry, consumer groups and large firms. We analyse how the inquiry engaged with these competing narratives and sought to make them amenable to policymaking through the creation of a simplifying, overarching metanarrative. We demonstrate that, while this metanarrative simplified the uncertain, complex and polarised issue of enterprise policy, it masked and did not resolve the underlying tensions between competing interests.

旨在刺激初创企业和支持小企业的企业政策吸引了政府的大量投资并为企业家塑造了环境。研究人员已经开始研究企业政策制定的基本流程。然而，关于竞争利益如何寻求影响企业决策过程的报道仍然很少。利用通过叙事政策分析开发的独特的叙事创业方法，我们检查了一系列利益相关者向英国政府调查提交的档案记录。我们开发了一种叙事创业方法，使我们能够分析企业家和其他人讲述的故事和更广泛的叙事。我们的分析确定了两个相互竞争的利益集团用于发展故事的不同类型的叙事策略：来自小企业及其代表的叙事，以及来自其他利益相关者（包括金融业、消费者团体和大公司）的反叙事。我们分析了调查如何处理这些相互竞争的叙述，并试图通过创建一个简化的、包罗万象的元叙述来使它们适应政策制定。我们证明，虽然这种元叙事简化了企业政策中不确定、复杂和两极分化的问题，但它掩盖了并且没有解决竞争利益之间的潜在紧张关系。