Martine Vézina

Constructing the legitimacy of a financial cooperative in the cultural sector: a case study using textual analysis

This article investigates the foundations of cooperative identity and how it is constructed by the organization. More specifically, our research focuses on a financial cooperative in the simultaneously emerging and consolidating cultural sector. The originality of this article lies in the methodology used – textual analysis. We use the Economies of Worth model developed by Boltanski and Thévenot (2006), which accounts for a plurality of legitimate forms of evaluation used in the processes of critique and justification.

A Conceptualization of Women’s Collective Entrepreneurship: From Strategic Perspectives to Public Policies

There has been a considerable increase in studies dealing with women’s entrepreneurship and with collective entrepreneurship, respectively. However, studies focusing on women’s collective entrepreneurship are far from understanding the conceptualization of the relationship between collective entrepreneurship and women. To help fill this void, the authors use the essay method. In the first part, they begin by identifying the two transformative perspectives at the foundation of women’s collective entrepreneurship, that is to say self-management and feminism, which both converge and differ. They then present concrete manifestations illustrating the building of new economic and gender-based social relations, through examples of social innovations at the organizational level. In the second part, they discuss the strategic positioning of the transformative perspectives in public policies, as it is from these perspectives that the movements develop their strategic capability to mobilize resources, such as those of the State.

MATURE SOCIAL ECONOMY ENTERPRISE AND SOCIAL INNOVATION: THE CASE OF THE DESJARDINS ENVIRONMENTAL FUND

This study seeks to understand the nature and process of social innovation driven by mature social economy enterprises, and the innovative capability that supports it. The research examines enterprise capabilities by means of the institutional approach to social innovation and the Resource-Based View theory (RBV). Based on grounded theory, this research focuses on a single case, the creation of the Desjardins Environment Fund (DEF). Launched 25 years ago,1 DEF is the first mutual fund in North America to include extra-financial criteria in its evaluation of business environmental management practices (fund securities) for the information of individual investors. The findings of this empirical research show how a major cooperative bank can generate social innovation and how this entails organizational innovations. The findings also reveal how these innovations benefit from the strategic and process resources that the Desjardins Movement managed to develop while taking into account both its core business (as a bank) and its purpose (as a cooperative). This study shows that the innovative potential of the mature social economy enterprise should not be underestimated.