New concepts in post-disaster development: Learning from social entrepreneurs in Northern Haiti

Research Objective This research studies social entrepreneurship as a development tool. The motivation stems from the low ability of the hundreds of international organizations to provide tangible solutions for a better life for the local population in the post-disaster situation. The question raised is how social entrepreneurs can support the development of post-disaster Haiti. Social entrepreneurship seems a promising way to acknowledge social opportunities, while applying business practices in a sustainable manner. The purpose of the research was to analyse whether the activities of social entrepreneurship can be supported in future post-disaster scenarios. Methodology Through an ethnographic study in-depth data has been collected – partly via videography. In collaboration with Earth Aid Finland the work of two social entrepreneurs has been studied. The empirical data has been analysed through a practice theoretical lens with a critical realist epistemology. An edited film shows the results of the data analysis by following the model of the effectuation logic. Findings The action-oriented social entrepreneurs are effective in addressing and solving the local social obstacles, because they are well embedded in the environment. They primarily follow effectuation logic to exploit the opportunity. However the international community follows a rational logic that offsets the effect. This study suggests a shift in development policies towards a stronger commitment and capability support of local entrepreneurs, instead of continuing with the linear and sequential opportunity process. To achieve a greater impact the entrepreneurs require a stronger effectual stakeholder commitment

Collective Emotions in Institutional Creation Work

In this paper, we explain how and why collective emotions enable institutional creation work. Based on an ethnography in Limonade, a Haitian community affected by the 2010 earthquake, we identify social practices that elicit collective emotions through the creation of new institutions across the three disaster recovery phases. Our study’s key insight is that new institutions converge collective emotions such that they in turn justify ongoing, as well as motivate engagement in new, institutional creation work practices. Theorizing from our findings, we develop a generative model that describes the justifying and motivating function of collective emotions in the establishment of embedded institutions. In conclusion, our paper advances theory on collective emotions in institutional work and generates implications for post-disaster management practice

The Buzz Before Business

This paper examines how entrepreneurial opportunities co-evolve within a sustainable entrepreneurship ecosystem (SEE). Most of the literature on entrepreneurial ecosystems falls short on integrating the entrepreneurial process in empirical research. To analyze data collected from pre-start-up teams within a nascent SEE on high-tech cellulose-based materials over three years, we apply a design-science approach that helps understand actors’ collaborative sense-making in designing and structuring ecosystem features and relationships. Our findings show that the SEE can be seen as a design artifact which evolves by ecosystem actors collectively engaging in new venture ideation and developing opportunity confidence. Furthermore, the paper presents a novel SEE framework, which elaborates on phases and enablers of the opportunity co-evolution process within an emerging ecosystem. We contribute to the literature on sustainable as well as general entrepreneurial ecosystems and offer a new theoretical foundation for a process view on ecosystems.Peer reviewe

The Buzz Before Business

This paper examines how entrepreneurial opportunities co-evolve within a sustainable entrepreneurship ecosystem (SEE). Most of the literature on entrepreneurial ecosystems falls short on integrating the entrepreneurial process in empirical research. To analyze data collected from pre-start-up teams within a nascent SEE on high-tech cellulose-based materials over 3 years, we apply a design science approach that helps understand actors’ collaborative sensemaking in designing and structuring ecosystem features and relationships. Our findings show that the SEE can be seen as a design artifact which evolves by ecosystem actors collectively engaging in new venture ideation and developing opportunity confidence. Furthermore, the paper presents a novel SEE framework, which elaborates on phases and enablers of the opportunity co-evolution process within an emerging ecosystem. We contribute to the literature on sustainable as well as general entrepreneurial ecosystems and offer a new theoretical foundation for a process view on ecosystems.Peer reviewe

Volunteer Retention in Prosocial Venturing: The Role of Emotional Connectivity

This study develops an understanding of the role of emotional connectivity for volunteer retention in prosocial business venturing. By embedding it in organizational ambivalence theory, our analysis of four volunteer-dependent community ventures reveals two mechanisms through which entrepreneurs strengthen volunteers’ emotional connectivity. We first identify emotion-focused practices that form volunteers’ emotional attachment to the venture, and then demonstrate how duality-focused practices, in the form of managing inherent organizational duality, complement emotion-focused practices to foster volunteers’ emotional loyalty to the venture. Theorizing from our findings, we introduce a model of managing volunteers’ emotional connectivity, and conclude by discussing its implications for prosocial venture research on volunteerism and affective commitment.Peer reviewe

Post-failure impression management: A typology of entrepreneurs’ public narratives after business closure

What are the strategies entrepreneurs apply to present business closure to public audiences? Most entrepreneurs choose to communicate venture failure publicly so as to foster a favorable impression of failure, in effect engaging in impression management to maintain and/or repair their professional reputation for future career actions. To date, however, the focus of most research has been on managing failure within organizational settings, where organizational actors can interact closely with their audiences. We know little about entrepreneurs’ strategies in presenting failure to public audiences in cases where they have limited opportunities for interaction. In response to this, we present an analysis of public business-closure statements to generate a typology of five venture-failure narratives—Triumph, Harmony, Embrace, Offset, and Show—that explains entrepreneurs’ distinct sets of impression-management strategies to portray failure in public. In conclusion, we theorize from our public venture-failure typology to discuss how our work advances understanding of the interaction between organizational failure, impression management, and entrepreneurial narratives.Peer reviewe

How founders harness tensions in hybrid venture development

Although the simultaneous presence of multiple ambitions is inherent in hybrid venturing, pursuing social and/or environmental missions while securing commercial viability can generate ambivalence amongst stakeholders. In this study, we draw on the notion of ‘holism’ to show how venture founders both embrace tensioned ambitions and sustain hybridity during critical venture development phases. Based on six years of data on The People’s Supermarket in the UK, we identify three distinct practices––fantasising, bartering, and conjuring––used by founders to harness tensions productively, without compromising their venture’s multiple ambitions. These practices demonstrate founders’ ability to maintain a venture’s hybrid nature throughout the ideation, organisational, and scale-up phases, thereby shedding light on the application of ‘holism’ within the realm of hybrid venturing

Living on the slopes: entrepreneurial preparedness in a context under continuous threat

In this paper, we examine how entrepreneurs living in communities under continuous threat prepare themselves to continue with their enterprising activities or engage in new ones after the expected crisis occurs. Most of the crisis literature on disasters and entrepreneurship focuses on aftermath responses, but the antecedents of such entrepreneurial behaviour and its connection to past and future crises remains largely unexplored. Based on a two-stage exploratory study pre and post the Calbuco Volcano eruptions in 2015 and 2016 in Chile, we introduce the notion of entrepreneurial preparedness in a context of continuous threat and elaborate on its four central attributes: anchored reflectiveness, situated experience, breaking through, and reaching out. Subsequently, our work develops a refined understanding of pre and post-disaster entrepreneurship and offers a novel base for theorizing on the relationship between entrepreneurial preparedness in contexts of continuous threat