Chantal Hervieux

The legitimization of social entrepreneurship

Purpose - The paper aims to answer how important institutional actors, such as academic researchers, consulting firms, and foundations, are tracing the boundaries of social entrepreneurship (SE) and how they justify SE as a legitimate form of social purpose organization. Design/methodology/approach - The paper employs a discourse analysis methodology. Findings - The paper finds traces of the legitimacy issues in the literature on non-profits and, based on this, argue that a new institutional domain is being constructed. The paper concludes that in this new domain not only is the use of market-based initiatives seen as a legitimate means of funding a social mission, but also it has now become the normative way and one that is promoted by consultants and foundations concerned with social entrepreneurs and their initiatives. Originality/value - This paper highlights the developing norms of SE.

A comment to Gobo: the next challenge – from mixed to merged methods

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to further the discussion on points made by Giampietro Gobo, provide additional information on the place of qualitative research in management, and question the space of merged methods. Design/methodology/approach Use a conversational approach as well as a review of qualitative vs quantitative research in three top tier journals for the years 2013-2016 (by a simple count). Findings Quantitative methods remain very much mainstream in management research, yet one finds that for one of the journals, space is evenly shared between qualitative and quantitative methods. Research limitations/implications This is a viewpoint and does not offer a systematic review of all top tier management journals. Originality/value It is hope that with this viewpoint debate as to the space of qualitative research, and merged methods can be stimulated.