Tinkering with space: The organizational practices of a nascent social venture (original) (raw)
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Tinkering with space. Tinkering with Space: The Organizational Practices of a Nascent Social Venture
Organization Studies, 2017
The article seeks to further our understanding of the process of organizing nascent social ventures. It builds upon current research on the political and collaborative nature of the social entrepreneurial process, and takes an ANT-inspired processual approach to follow the organizational practices carried by a nascent social venture in its efforts to mobilize stakeholders, bring about collaboration and ultimately secure resources. It draws upon empirical material generated during the first year of FiC, a social venture I founded and continue to chair. Findings highlight the adaptive and fluid nature of the organizational practices involved in nascent organizations and indicate that the capacity to continuously adjust the qualities of the eventual venture to the stakes of potential partners is instrumental to start up the venture. The article suggests the notion of tinkering to underscore the fluidity, the ongoing and piecemeal everyday work of such organizing processes. Further, findings highlight the extent to which social ventures, as well as the engaged scholar, are caught in the networks that contribute to reproduce the problem they aim to change.
Start-up incubation: a rite of passage of entrepreneurs and their social ventures
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This dissertation presents a socio-anthropological investigation of social venture incubation: a process of providing enterprise support aimed at creating social change. Most previous research on incubation has focused on venture development and growth, and the efficacy of incubation in terms of the economic contribution firms make. In this study I contribute by investigating the process of incubation, conceptualising it as a rite of passage of both the entrepreneur and the venture. I conducted an ethnographic study following the rites of passage of one cohort of social entrepreneurs and their ventures - from selection to incorporation into the business world. The insider perspective provided access to both the organisers and designers of the process as well as the entrepreneurs over a period of 15 months. I thematically analysed my data with NVivo using an a priori and emergent coding system. The key finding of the study was the dual nature of the incubatee, the liminal entity in t...
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This paper employs grounded theory to understand how social entrepreneurship ventures pursue the types of change that supporters demand with very limited budgets. A multiple case study found that organizations walk a fine line, inspiring supporters by emphasizing grand change goals while at the same time, buffering supporter enthusiasm from disappointment by refraining from identifying as mission critical any goals for which the factors that would influence success are largely outside of the organizations control. SEVs used inter-organizational cooperation to pursue change goals where short term failures were likely and where eventual success was only possible after a protracted effort.
Overcoming Inertia: The social question in social entrepreneurship
In Daniel Hjorth (ed.) Handbook on Organizational Entrepreneurship, pp. 242-256. Edward Elgar Publishing.
The literature on social entrepreneurship continues to grow. This research is novel and vibrant, yet erratic and fragmented. In this chapter I first organize the burgeoning social-entrepreneurship literature into two streams: one conceptual stream concerned with defining social entrepreneurship; a second management-oriented stream concerned with the establishment and development of social ventures. Within the management-oriented research stream, three units of analysis can be further distinguished: the individual, the organizational, and the inter-organizational levels. This organization of the literature highlights the need to develop a social approach to the study of the methods, strategies and notions used by social entrepreneurial initiatives in their work towards social change. Next, the essay takes a first step in this direction, suggesting a matrix for analysing the congruency between the social change aimed at by social entrepreneurial initiatives and the methods they use to ignite it.
VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 2020
Social entrepreneurship research highlights the collaborative nature of social entrepreneurial efforts. Further, acknowledging the embeddedness of social ventures in the wider socioeconomic and cultural context, the literature stresses the need to move our analysis from the micro-level of intraorganizational practices to the meso-level of inter-organizational dynamics. To answer to these calls, the article engages Fligstein's and McAdam's theory of Strategic Action Fields (SAF) to investigate the dynamics of the interorganizational collaborative work of social ventures. Empirical material comes from the efforts of a social venture to scale up to a new city through developing a cross-sectoral collaboration with the city administration. Findings indicate the risk of mission-drift that weaker partners in SAFs run when collaborating with incumbent actors. In this doing, the study illustrates how a meso-level analysis can further our understanding of social entrepreneurial ventures in particular, and cross-sectoral partnerships in general.
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Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, 22, 1: 97-122., 2015
Social ventures are now widely regarded as playing an essential role in addressing persistent and pervasive societal challenges. This insight has prompted an active search for readily-scaleable and replicable business models. However, relatively little consideration has been given to the longer-term growth and performance of these hybrid organizational forms. This paper examines how historically-informed research might enhance our understanding of growth processes. It considers the conceptualization of organizational growth in social ventures and the relevance of prevailing constructs. The explanatory potential of ‘long view’ approaches examined by applying three constructs, opportunity recognition, entrepreneurial adjustment, and institutional structure, in a comparative historical analysis of two British social ventures.
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Community-Led Social Venture Creation
Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 2007
The addition of new enterprises to the economy has long been considered essential to economic growth. The process of venture creation in the private sector has been heavily researched and frequently modeled, although few models explain the process of nonprofit enterprise creation. Nonprofit social ventures pursue economic, social, or environmental aims, generating at least part of their income from trading. They fill market gaps between private enterprise and public sector provision, and, increasingly, policy makers consider them to be valuable agents in social, economic, and environmental regeneration and renewal. This article presents findings from a qualitative study of the inception of five community–led nonprofit social ventures, producing a model of the stages of venture creation: (1) opportunity identification, (2) idea articulation, (3) idea ownership, (4) stakeholder mobilization, (5) opportunity exploitation, and (6) stakeholder reflection. A formal support network and a t...