Ignasi Martí

Social Entrepreneurship Research: A Source of Explanation, Prediction, and Delight

Social entrepreneurship, as a practice and a field for scholarly investigation, provides a unique opportunity to challenge, question, and rethink concepts and assumptions from different fields of management and business research. This paper puts forward a view of social entrepreneurship as a process that catalyzes social change and/or addresses important social needs in a way that is not dominated by direct financial benefits for the entrepreneurs. Social entrepreneurship is seen as differing from other forms of entrepreneurship in the relatively higher priority given to promoting social value and development versus capturing economic value. To stimulate future research the authors introduce the concept of embeddedness as a nexus between theoretical perspectives for the study of social entrepreneurship. Different research methodologies and their implications are discussed.

Institutional Work: Bringing change into the lives of the poor: entrepreneurship outside traditional boundaries

The powerful imagery of entrepreneurship as a means to induce and explain institutional change is gaining momentum (Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006; Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006). In response to criticisms that institutional theory was chiefly being used to explain homogeneity and persistence, important efforts have been devoted to restoring human agency in explanations of endogenous institutional change (DiMaggio, 1988; Sewell, 1992; Emirbayer & Mische, 1998). However, the image of the entrepreneur as institutional change agent has also been a source of controversy among institutional theorists, especially when accompanied by voluntarist, un-embedded conceptions of individual action (Holm, 1995; Leca & Naccache, 2006). As a result we observe vivid scholarly discussions on how to solve the “paradox of embedded agency”– i.e. on explaining how institutional change is possible if actors are fully conditioned by the institutions that they wish to change (Holm, 1995; Seo & Creed, 2002; Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006). The current debate is important and we welcome more agent-oriented views on institutions. The purpose of this chapter is to advance institutional theory by rethinking various aspects of institutional work (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006; DiMaggio, 1988) and thereby to contribute new insights into the paradox of embedded agency. We do so by challenging and breaking dominant patterns in current empirical research. While previous research on institutional entrepreneurship has predominantly looked at elite and/or powerful actors (DiMaggio, 1988; Fligstein & Mara-Drita, 1996) who assume either peripheral (Leblebici, Salancik, Copay & King, 1991) or central (Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006) positions, we focus instead on institutional work carried out by actors with limited power and very few resources.

The Institutional Work of Oppression and Resistance: Learning from the Holocaust

In recent years there has been an outburst of studies aiming to advance our understanding of how actors do work to create, maintain and disrupt institutions. Drawing on work on the Holocaust, a largely neglected event in organization theory, we explore types of institutional work through which actors first maintain domination and grant acquiescence to oppression and, second, target oppressive systems through acts of resistance. This approach offers an opportunity to study a familiar set of processes and phenomena on fresh terms and to focus on key elements that existing studies on institutional work have neglected.

Entrepreneurship for social impact: encouraging market access in rural Bangladesh

Purpose – In many developing countries those living in poverty are unable to participate in markets due to the weakness or complete absence of supportive institutions. This study aims to examine, in microcosm, such an institutional void and to illustrate the strategy and activities employed by an entrepreneurial actor in rural Bangladesh in addressing it.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on an in‐depth case study. Data were gathered over two years from field interviews, archives, and secondary sources.Findings – The data illustrate how market access for the poorest of the poor is facilitated through the creation of platforms for participation in the economy and broader society. The authors conceptualize this process as the crafting of new institutional arrangements and as resource and institutional bricolage occurring in parallel.Practical implications – The study offers insights for development agencies, policy makers and companies on how to combat poverty, fight corruption, and stimulate ...

Organizational Entrepreneurship as Active Resistance: A Struggle Against Outsourcing

This paper aims to contribute to the emerging perspective on organizational entrepreneurship by outlining how resistance to managerial policies and decisions can give birth to alternative organizational styles. Drawing on an in–depth analysis of a personal narrative of an R&D team manager opposition to hierarchical decisions, we link studies on resistance and organizational entrepreneurship to suggest that active resistance, which we define as the capacity to live beyond managerial control to create spaces of creativity and solidarity and alternative modalities of work in an organizational context, can actually contribute to the entrepreneurial process.

When They Do It: Institutional Entrepreneurship in Two Québécois Organizations

This article analyses from an institutional perspective efforts by two entrepreneurs in governmental organizations to promote new practices and programmes and the nature of the challenges they encounter as they deviate from, and attempt to disrupt, institutionalized practices. These two case studies are used to gain knowledge on why and how individuals become institutional entrepreneurs. The article provides insights into the processes an institutional entrepreneur goes through in an institution that does not provide support. The authors finally suggest potential avenues for cross-fertilization between the corporate entrepreneurship and institutional entrepreneurship literatures.

Entrepreneurship, Togetherness, and Emotions A Look at (Postcrisis?) Spain

Studying entrepreneurship in the context of recession and (post)crisis opens up a set of important questions regarding the relationship between entrepreneuring, social relations, and social change. In drawing upon insights from a 2-year ethnographic study of the Spanish’s Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (Mortgage Victims Platform), known as the PAH, this article centers on the mobilization of rather unlikely citizens to a process in which most of them never thought they would be part of. We suggest that a renewed engagement with such insights regarding the emergence of new forms of organizing, the development of (new?) forms of relationality and being together, and the role of different forms of emotions in hindering/favoring agency, offers important avenues to enrich entrepreneurship research.

Mundane and Everyday Politics for and from the Neighborhood

Social movement scholars and activists have recognized the difficulties of mobilizing people for the long haul, moving from the exuberance of the protest to the dull and ordinary work necessary to produce sustainable change. Drawing on ethnographic work in La Juanita, in Greater Buenos Aires, we look at local actions for and from the neighborhood in order to resist political domination, taken by people who have been unemployed for long periods of time. We identified concrete and local practices and interventions—which we call mundane and everyday politics – that are embedded in a territory and go beyond the typical practices of social movements and the expected infrapolitical activity in allowing the disfranchised to engage in the political process.

Theoretical Approaches for Studying Corporations, Democracy, and the Public Good

Answering Stephen Barleys call for academic research on the role of corporations in democratic societies, the authors convened a Professional Development Workshop at the 2007 Academy of Management annual meeting in Philadelphia. The ideas presented in this workshop are summarized in the following articles. In this introduction, the authors review some key points from the presentations delivered and highlight some theoretical orientations and questions that can guide future empirical analysis in this important and exciting domain.

Attaining Legitimacy in Temporary Business: The Case of New Entrepreneurs in the Television Industry

This work seeks to identify behavioral processes that new entrepreneurs can adopt to construct legitimacy in frequently changing temporary business environments. Focusing on independent television content production in the UK, the study finds that new entrepreneurs exploit the varying roles that their projects can play and then sequence these in order to tailor the legitimacy they need to build their business. This research draws on a 5‐year inductive study of 81 projects won by entrepreneurs of five new independent television production companies.