Reconstructing Social Enterprise
Broadly informed by Critical Management Studies (Alvesson et al. 2009), the seminar series aims to show that (a) Social enterprise (SE) must not exclusively be related to business-related issues and outcomes, that (b) SE should be studied in terms of how it is linguistically and politically constructed, and that (c) SE scholars should become more aware of how their own assumptions, preferences, and interests have a direct effect on the knowledge they produce (cf. Fournier and Grey, 2000; Spicer et al., 2009). This will be achieved through the establishment of a multi-disciplinary group of international academics and practitioners approaching the field of SE from a critical yet sympathetic perspective, and through the co-production of a shared research agenda.
Social enterprise (SE), broadly defined as market-based strategies aimed at achieving a social purpose (Kerlin, 2006), has received much academic, policy and practitioner attention in recent years. In the United States an Office of Social Innovation has been created within the White House. In the United Kingdom the Social Enterprise Unit was initially created within the then department for Trade and Industry and has since been subsumed within the Cabinet Office. At the EU level SE has become increasingly popular as both a legal category and as a policy instrument, notably in conjunction with services previously provided by the state (Nyssens, 2006). Early academic research into SE derived largely from business schools (Nicholls and Young, 2008) and was mainly descriptive. A common format was the use of selective case study evidence to “demonstrate” the potential of this ‘new’ organisational form, and powerful stories of heroic individuals seeking to change social systems abounded (Nicholls and Young, 2008). More theoretically informed work sought to explain the emergence of SE as a distinct organisational form. However, SE remains a contested concept as different authors keep using different theories to explain different entities (Teasdale, 2011). Though most academic work refers to the transformative potential of SE, empirical evidence supporting (or denying) such claims is notably absent. As a result, there are doubts over whether SE research depicts social reality or whether it merely mimics the politicised climate of which it is part.
In the mid 2000s a stream of research informed by poststructuralist thinking began to emerge in England, and separately in continental Europe. This view saw SE as a social artifact being produced via language, discourse and power. From this inherently critical perspective, SE was seen as a power-laden discourse conveying the Third Way rhetoric (Haugh and Kitson, 2007) that doing good and doing well can be combined under the seemingly unproblematic notion of the ‘double bottom line’ (Dey and Steyaert, 2010). This perspective proved helpful for showing that SE, at least in the way it is currently constructed through social policies, has moved away from the collective approach to self-help envisaged by early practitioners in the SE ‘movement’ (Teasdale, 2011). A growing disjuncture between dominant discourses of policy makers (and academics) and the small narratives of practitioners (Parkinson and Howorth, 2008) calls for a novel ethos of research which simultaneously makes scholarly work more critical and reflective while rendering it significant for practicing social entrepreneurs.
Our seminar series tackles this dual aim, first by invoking critical streams of thinking that disrupt dominant, managerial interpretations of SE. Aspiring to develop alternative bodies of knowledge and modes of practice, we propose five seminars which challenge, in different ways, the current orthodoxy that SE is primarily to be seen as a value-neutral technology for solving social problems. Conceiving of critique not as negativity but as affirmative action aimed at advancing the object of inquiry, the first two seminars are devoted to deconstructive reflexivity (Alvesson et al. 2008) calling into question the ostensible “naturalness” of SE. The third and fourth seminars will then be devoted to reconstructive reflexivity (Alvesson et al. 2008), addressing how the trajectory of SE can be changed via the incorporation of alternative paradigms, perspectives and values. The final seminar aims to give voice to practitioners through engaging with them in an open space format to begin to develop a SE future research agenda.
Broadly informed by Critical Management Studies (Alvesson et al. 2009), the seminar series aims to show that (a) Social enterprise (SE) must not exclusively be related to business-related issues and outcomes, that (b) SE should be studied in terms of how it is linguistically and politically constructed, and that (c) SE scholars should become more aware of how their own assumptions, preferences, and interests have a direct effect on the knowledge they produce (cf. Fournier and Grey, 2000; Spicer et al., 2009). This will be achieved through the establishment of a multi-disciplinary group of international academics and practitioners approaching the field of SE from a critical yet sympathetic perspective, and through the co-production of a shared research agenda.
Social enterprise (SE), broadly defined as market-based strategies aimed at achieving a social purpose (Kerlin, 2006), has received much academic, policy and practitioner attention in recent years. In the United States an Office of Social Innovation has been created within the White House. In the United Kingdom the Social Enterprise Unit was initially created within the then department for Trade and Industry and has since been subsumed within the Cabinet Office. At the EU level SE has become increasingly popular as both a legal category and as a policy instrument, notably in conjunction with services previously provided by the state (Nyssens, 2006). Early academic research into SE derived largely from business schools (Nicholls and Young, 2008) and was mainly descriptive. A common format was the use of selective case study evidence to “demonstrate” the potential of this ‘new’ organisational form, and powerful stories of heroic individuals seeking to change social systems abounded (Nicholls and Young, 2008). More theoretically informed work sought to explain the emergence of SE as a distinct organisational form. However, SE remains a contested concept as different authors keep using different theories to explain different entities (Teasdale, 2011). Though most academic work refers to the transformative potential of SE, empirical evidence supporting (or denying) such claims is notably absent. As a result, there are doubts over whether SE research depicts social reality or whether it merely mimics the politicised climate of which it is part.
In the mid 2000s a stream of research informed by poststructuralist thinking began to emerge in England, and separately in continental Europe. This view saw SE as a social artifact being produced via language, discourse and power. From this inherently critical perspective, SE was seen as a power-laden discourse conveying the Third Way rhetoric (Haugh and Kitson, 2007) that doing good and doing well can be combined under the seemingly unproblematic notion of the ‘double bottom line’ (Dey and Steyaert, 2010). This perspective proved helpful for showing that SE, at least in the way it is currently constructed through social policies, has moved away from the collective approach to self-help envisaged by early practitioners in the SE ‘movement’ (Teasdale, 2011). A growing disjuncture between dominant discourses of policy makers (and academics) and the small narratives of practitioners (Parkinson and Howorth, 2008) calls for a novel ethos of research which simultaneously makes scholarly work more critical and reflective while rendering it significant for practicing social entrepreneurs.
Our seminar series tackles this dual aim, first by invoking critical streams of thinking that disrupt dominant, managerial interpretations of SE. Aspiring to develop alternative bodies of knowledge and modes of practice, we propose five seminars which challenge, in different ways, the current orthodoxy that SE is primarily to be seen as a value-neutral technology for solving social problems. Conceiving of critique not as negativity but as affirmative action aimed at advancing the object of inquiry, the first two seminars are devoted to deconstructive reflexivity (Alvesson et al. 2008) calling into question the ostensible “naturalness” of SE. The third and fourth seminars will then be devoted to reconstructive reflexivity (Alvesson et al. 2008), addressing how the trajectory of SE can be changed via the incorporation of alternative paradigms, perspectives and values. The final seminar aims to give voice to practitioners through engaging with them in an open space format to begin to develop a SE future research agenda.