MariaLaura Di Domenico

Social Bricolage: Theorizing Social Value Creation in Social Enterprises

Current theorizations of bricolage in entrepreneurship studies require refinement and development to be used as a theoretical framework for social entrepreneurship. Our analysis traces bricolages conceptual underpinnings from various disciplines, identifying its key constructs as making do, a refusal to be constrained by limitations, and improvisation. Although these characteristics appear to epitomize the process of creating social enterprises, our research identifies three further constructs associated with social entrepreneurship: social value creation, stakeholder participation, and persuasion. Using data from a qualitative study of eight U.K. social enterprises, we apply the bricolage concept to social entrepreneurial action and propose an extended theoretical framework of social bricolage.

The Dialectic of Social Exchange: Theorizing Corporate—Social Enterprise Collaboration:

We augment social exchange theory with dialectical theory to build a framework to examine corporate—social enterprise collaborations. These cross-sector collaborations represent a novel form of political-economic arrangement seeking to reconcile the efficient functioning of markets with the welfare of communities. We propose that corporate—social enterprise collaborations are shaped by (1) the value that each member of the collaboration attributes to their partner’s inputs, (2) competing practices and priorities intrinsic to the corporation and the social enterprise, and (3) expected benefits of the collaboration to each partner. For a synthesized state of collaboration to emerge and the partnership to be sustained, we posit that the antithetical forces inherent within the relationship must be resolved.

Host/guest encounters in the commercial home

Abstract Commercial homes, which provide hospitality where the private home dimension is significant, blur traditional boundaries between home and work and social constructions of hospitableness versus hospitality. Drawing on interviews with owner‐managers of these micro businesses and a guest‐researcher’s experiences and observations, this paper explores the home space as a dual‐purpose site of both commercial work and domestic retreat. First, use and meanings of domestic symbols in performances on the home as stage are examined. Second, there is an exploration of social control and spatial management strategies employed by hosts and guests. The findings reveal that domestic symbols add to the construction and interpretation of negotiated normative practices within these home‐based enterprises. They may adopt the role of identity markers and communication tools. Hosts employ an array of mechanisms to achieve physical or emotional distance between the domains of home and work. Social constructs may be subtle as well as explicit, including spatial as well as temporal mechanisms of social control and boundary setting, framed by unspoken protocols.

‘Mental mobility’ in the digital age: entrepreneurs and the online home-based business

Home-based online business ventures are an increasingly pervasive yet under-researched phenomenon. The experiences and mindset of entrepreneurs setting up and running such enterprises require better understanding. Using data from a qualitative study of 23 online home-based business entrepreneurs, we propose the augmented concept of ‘mental mobility’ to encapsulate how they approach their business activities. Drawing on Howard P. Beckers early theorising of mobility, together with Victor Turners later notion of liminality, we conceptualise mental mobility as the process through which individuals navigate the liminal spaces between the physical and digital spheres of work and the overlapping home/workplace, enabling them to manipulate and partially reconcile the spatial, temporal and emotional tensions that are present in such work environments. Our research also holds important applications for alternative employment contexts and broader social orderings because of the increasingly pervasive and disruptive influence of technology on experiences of remunerated work.

Effectuation and home-based online business entrepreneurs

This article explores effectual processes within home-based, online businesses. Our empirical evidence provides a number of refinements to the concept of effectuation in this specific domain. First, the ubiquity of non-proprietary online trading platforms encourages the adoption of effectual approaches and removes the importance of forming proprietary strategic alliances and pre-commitments. Second, the notion of affordable loss – a central tenet of effectuation – should be extended beyond the notion of economic to social affordable loss, including loss of status and reputation, and finally, home-based online businesses allow effectuation to be associated with low levels of entrepreneurial self-efficacy and experience.

Sustaining the Ivory Tower: Oxbridge Formal Dining as Organizational Ritual

In this ethnographic study of formal hall ritual in Oxbridge Colleges, the authors show how this special form of dining plays a key role in organizational cohesion, demarcation, and continuity. Formal hall serves as a central organizing principle of the colleges, having social, political, and pedagogic facets. Drawing upon participant observation of 22 formal dinners, this article explores its significance on different levels. It examines how formal hall creates social stability, provides historical continuity, reaffirms hierarchy and bureaucratic order, perpetuates exclusivity and reverence, and provides college level space for organizational politicking, relationship-building, and information exchange. It also cements important stakeholder relations at broader societal levels. Furthermore, these outcomes feed into its overriding purpose of solidifying shared elite identity through selective membership and participation. Transgressions against this elitist formal dining ritual are also addressed, being conceptualized on a continuum from “higher order” to “lower order” according to degree of potential threat to the ritual. The authors conclude with a discussion of their findings’ implications for research on organizational ritual, whereby inclusion, exclusion, and identity issues lie at the heart of the ritual’s power over organizational processes, and the social control of actors not solely within but also beyond immediate organizational boundaries.

Social action research and small hospitality firms

Develops a conceptual framework for qualitative research directed at small hospitality firms, ensuring an appropriate “fit” between theory, research and analysis, and aiding subsequent practical applications for hospitality research practitioners. Proposes that certain key theoretical and qualitative research issues are often absent from hospitality research. This is to the detriment of the development of the subject area. Investigates justification, implications for choice, and application of methodologies. This serves to explore the relevance of one central school of social scientific thought, the action/interaction approach, to the multidisciplinary hospitality field of study. Shows how this model fits in with a research approach which takes the point of view of the subject or respondent. The overall aim is to debate the utility of this orientation for small hospitality firm research in contrast to the more commonly taken structural or organisational analysis. Examples are drawn from a specific empirical research enquiry to illustrate how conceptual and practical challenges of concern to critics of this approach are resolved in the field.

A hotel inspector calls: Exploring surveillance at the home-work interface

This article, which examines inspection experiences in the home-based context of the B&B, makes a distinctive contribution to surveillance theory, and specifically the concept of ‘exposure’. It draws on Levinas’s phenomenological ideas on identity and his concept of ‘sensibility’, in order to better place the ‘exposed’ subject at the centre of analysis. Our empirical research shows how B&B proprietors negotiate their exposure to surveillance within their homes when they take part in the tourist board’s accommodation grading process. Their ‘lifestyle businesses’ involve exposing the context of their own lives to their paying guests, and by extension to the hotel inspectors from the tourist board with its own covert inspectorial procedures. These are described from both the inspector’s and proprietor’s perspectives. We explore not only their subjective experiences of the inspection process, but also the power dynamics between proprietor and inspector, and the various resistance and counter-resistance strategies which each employ.

Big Data Surveillance and the Body-subject

This paper considers the implications of big data practices for theories about the surveilled subject who, analysed from afar, is still gazed upon, although not directly watched as with previous surveillance systems. We propose this surveilled subject be viewed through a lens of proximity rather than interactivity, to highlight the normative issues arising within digitally mediated relationships. We interpret the ontological proximity between subjects, data flows and big data surveillance through Merleau-Ponty’s ideas combined with Levinas’ approach to ethical proximity and Coeckelberg’s work on proximity in the digital age. This leads us to highlight how competing normativities, and normative dilemmas in these proximal spaces, manipulate the surveilled subject’s embodied practices to lead the embodied individual towards experiencing them in a local sense. We explore when and how the subject notices these big data practices and then interprets them through translating their experiences into courses of action, inaction or acquiescence.

Are plastic cows the future for farming? Implications of an alternative diversification model

This book aims to be a showcase for cutting edge research offering a high-edited selection of the best paper submitted to the 2006 tourism conference at the ...