An emergence perspective on entrepreneurship: processes, structure and methodology

This paper explores entrepreneurship from the perspective of emergence, drawing on literature in complexity theory, social theory and entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is conceptualised as the production of emergence, or emergent properties, via a simple model of initial conditions, processes of emergence that produces emergent properties at multiple levels (new phenomena such as products, services, firms, networks, patterns of behaviour, identities). Conceptualisation through emergence thus embraces actors, context, processes and (structural) outcomes. This paper builds on previous work that theorises the relationship between entrepreneurship and social change. We extend that work by considering the methodological implications of relating processes of entrepreneurship to the emergence of new phenomena

Measuring internet activity: a (selective) review of methods and metrics

Two Decades after the birth of the World Wide Web, more than two billion people around the world are Internet users. The digital landscape is littered with hints that the affordances of digital communications are being leveraged to transform life in profound and important ways. The reach and influence of digitally mediated activity grow by the day and touch upon all aspects of life, from health, education, and commerce to religion and governance. This trend demands that we seek answers to the biggest questions about how digitally mediated communication changes society and the role of different policies in helping or hindering the beneficial aspects of these changes. Yet despite the profusion of data the digital age has brought upon us—we now have access to a flood of information about the movements, relationships, purchasing decisions, interests, and intimate thoughts of people around the world—the distance between the great questions of the digital age and our understanding of the impact of digital communications on society remains large. A number of ongoing policy questions have emerged that beg for better empirical data and analyses upon which to base wider and more insightful perspectives on the mechanics of social, economic, and political life online. This paper seeks to describe the conceptual and practical impediments to measuring and understanding digital activity and highlights a sample of the many efforts to fill the gap between our incomplete understanding of digital life and the formidable policy questions related to developing a vibrant and healthy Internet that serves the public interest and contributes to human wellbeing. Our primary focus is on efforts to measure Internet activity, as we believe obtaining robust, accurate data is a necessary and valuable first step that will lead us closer to answering the vitally important questions of the digital realm. Even this step is challenging: the Internet is difficult to measure and monitor, and there is no simple aggregate measure of Internet activity—no GDP, no HDI. In the following section we present a framework for assessing efforts to document digital activity. The next three sections offer a summary and description of many of the ongoing projects that document digital activity, with two final sections devoted to discussion and conclusions

Transnational reflections on transnational research projects on men, boys and gender relations

This article reflects on the research project, ‘Engaging South African and Finnish youth towards new traditions of non-violence, equality and social well-being’, funded by the Finnish and South African national research councils, in the context of wider debates on research, projects and transnational processes. The project is located within a broader analysis of research projects and projectization (the reduction of research to separate projects), and the increasing tendencies for research to be framed within and as projects, with their own specific temporal and organizational characteristics. This approach is developed further in terms of different understandings of research across borders: international, comparative, multinational and transnational. Special attention is given to differences between research projects that are in the Europe and the EU, and projects that are between the global North and the global South. The theoretical, political and practical challenges of the North-South research project are discussed

Understanding “Diversity in Organizations” Paradigmatically and Methodologically

This paper is part of a larger dissertation project named: A Production of Diversity: Appearances, Ideas, Interests, Actions, Contradictions and Praxis. In this dissertation project, which is planned to be completed by the first half of 2006, I have attempted to describe, understand and analyse a process of diversity production at a large manufacturing company, which is located in Sweden and owned by a large American company (for the reason of confidentiality the name of the studied company, which is a large, technical-oriented company, has been changed and some of the information is modified, while another cannot be offered because it would expose the company. The studied manufacturing company will from now be called Diversico). My ambition with this paper is to call attention to different paradigmatical and methodological ways of understanding and studying “diversity in organizations”. A starting-point for my discussion here is an assumption that researchers, by exploring different social phenomena (including “diversity in organizations”), bring their different sets of assumptions to what the studied phenomenon is (or could be) but also at the same time make assumptions on what organizations are (or could be). In other words, researchers, by studying “diversity in organizations” (as well as other social phenomena) construct ideas of diversity by positioning this phenomenon differently, asking different questions or designing research projects differently. In that sense I try to actively engage in both showing some benefits and limits in the present literature and searching for new theoretical and methodological possibilities. In that sense, I give some empirical illustrations inspired by one of these other possibilities. More concretely, I show how my study fulfils images of diversity as actively produced and positioned significant issues, and as domination of particular sectional interests. Furthermore I give illustrations of universalization and naturalization of some aspects of diversity, as identified in the studied process of diversity production at the manufacturing company.Diversity, Critical Theory, Social-Historical Context and Domination