Ethnographies of social enterprise

Purpose – As a critical and intimate form of inquiry, ethnography remains close to lived realities and equips scholars with a unique methodological angle on social phenomena. This paper aims to explore the potential gains from an increased use of ethnography in social enterprise studies. Design/methodology/approach – The authors develop the argument through a set of dualistic themes, namely, the socio-economic dichotomy and the discourse/practice divide as predominant critical lenses through which social enterprise is currently examined, and suggest shifts from visible leaders to invisible collectives and from case study-based monologues to dialogic ethnography. Findings – Ethnography sheds new light on at least four neglected aspects. Studying social enterprises ethnographically complicates simple reductions to socio-economic tensions, by enriching the set of differences through which practitioners make sense of their work-world. Ethnography provides a tool for unravelling how practitioners engage with discourse(s) of power, thus marking the concrete results of intervention (to some degree at least) as unplannable, and yet effective. Ethnographic examples signal the merits of moving beyond leaders towards more collective representations and in-depth accounts of (self-)development. Reflexive ethnographies demonstrate the heuristic value of accepting the self as an inevitable part of research and exemplify insights won through a thoroughly bodily and emotional commitment to sharing the life world of others. Originality/value – The present volume collects original ethnographic research of social enterprises. The editorial develops the first consistent account of the merits of studying social enterprises ethnographically

Flight Dynamics-based Recovery of a UAV Trajectory using Ground Cameras

We propose a new method to estimate the 6-dof trajectory of a flying object such as a quadrotor UAV within a 3D airspace monitored using multiple fixed ground cameras. It is based on a new structure from motion formulation for the 3D reconstruction of a single moving point with known motion dynamics. Our main contribution is a new bundle adjustment procedure which in addition to optimizing the camera poses, regularizes the point trajectory using a prior based on motion dynamics (or specifically flight dynamics). Furthermore, we can infer the underlying control input sent to the UAV's autopilot that determined its flight trajectory. Our method requires neither perfect single-view tracking nor appearance matching across views. For robustness, we allow the tracker to generate multiple detections per frame in each video. The true detections and the data association across videos is estimated using robust multi-view triangulation and subsequently refined during our bundle adjustment procedure. Quantitative evaluation on simulated data and experiments on real videos from indoor and outdoor scenes demonstrates the effectiveness of our method

Rethinking the space of ethics in social entrepreneurship: Power, subjectivity, and practices of freedom’

This article identifies power, subjectivity, and practices of freedom as neglected but significant elements for understanding the ethics of social entrepreneurship. While the ethics of social entrepreneurship is typically conceptualized in conjunction with innate properties or moral commitments of the individual, we problematize this view based on its presupposition of an essentialist conception of the authentic subject. We offer, based on Foucault’s ethical oeuvre, a practice-based alternative which sees ethics as being exercised through a critical and creative dealing with the limits imposed by power, notably as they pertain to the conditioning of the neoliberal subject. To this end, we first draw on prior research which looks at how practitioners of social enterprises engage with government policies that demand that they should act and think more like prototypical entrepreneurs. Instead of simply endorsing the kind of entrepreneurial subjectivity implied in prevailing policies, our results indicate that practitioners are mostly reluctant to identify themselves with the invocation of governmental power, often rejecting the subjectivity offered to them by discourse. Conceiving these acts of resistance as emblematic of how social entrepreneurs practice ethics by retaining a skeptical attitude toward attempts that seek to determine who they should be and how they should live, we introduce three vignettes that illustrate how practices of freedom relate to critique, the care for others, and reflected choice. We conclude that a practice-based approach of ethics can advance our understanding of how social entrepreneurs actively produce conditions of freedom for themselves as well as for others without supposing a ‘true self’ or a utopian space of liberty beyond power

Whatever the problem, entrepreneurship is the solution! Confronting the panacea myth of entrepreneurship with structural injustice

A topic of growing interest in entrepreneurship research is how entrepreneurial ventures address grand challenges. This literature, we argue, tends to produce a panacea myth by suggesting that entrepreneurship is the universal remedy for existing social and environmental ills. Starting from the claim that the persuasive power or ‘stickiness’ of the panacea myth depends not only on what it explicitly says (in terms of ideas and beliefs) but also on what it leaves out, we suggest that the exclusion of explicitly political and holistic explanations of grand challenges such as Iris Marion Young's theory of structural injustice, which we use as an illustrative example, precipitates a ‘constitutive absence’ whose mythic function is to sanitize the image of entrepreneurship as the preferred solution to grand challenges. In an effort to denaturalize the panacea myth, we first identify three ‘figures of thought’ – coined ‘extrapolation fallacy,’ ‘political agnosticism,’ and ‘positive acculturation’ – that define the content of the panacea myth while simultaneously excluding theoretical concepts and frameworks, such as structural injustice, that conceptualize grand challenges as structural, multidetermined, and inherently political problems that are not necessarily amenable to stand-alone entrepreneurial approaches and solutions. Second, to loosen the grip of the panacea myth, we suggest rethinking entrepreneurship research in terms of who is involved, what methods are used, and how we talk about it. Taken together, these tactics create an opening in entrepreneurship research for a more complexity-sensitive and political understanding of grand challenges that cultivates a more humble and realistic depiction of entrepreneurship's problem-solving capacity

Treating disability as an asset (not a limitation): A critical examination of disability inclusion through social entrepreneurship

Social enterprises play an increasing role in providing employment opportunities for disabled people. This paper examines the implications of social enterprises’ market-based approach to disability inclusion, which is characterized by viewing disability as an asset rather than a limitation. Taking our inspiration from critical disability scholars who have pointed out that inclusion agendas produce disability as a distinct social reality, we use a performative lens to examine how social enterprises variously ‘do disability’, for instance, by defining where the potentials of disabled people lie and how best to promote them. Drawing on an ethnographic study of Magic Fingers, a Nepal-based enterprise that employs blind people as massage therapists, we identify entrepreneurial ‘doings’ of disability that were guided by ideals of empowerment but that ultimately produced new and subtle forms of exclusion. By closely examining the case organization’s founding phase, as well as its practices of advertising, recruitment, and day-to-day management, we show how Magic Fingers commodified disability in novel ways, reinforced the notion of disability as a negative condition that must be ‘overcome’ through work, and introduced new market-oriented evaluative distinctions between ‘more able’ and ‘less able’ disabled individuals. By exploring and evaluating these effects, this paper draws attention to the ways in which social enterprises, while challenging deficit-oriented representations of disability, can paradoxically solidify disability as something profoundly ‘other’

Registering ideology in the creation of social entrepreneurs: intermediary organizations, 'ideal subject' and the promise of enjoyment

Research on social entrepreneurship has taken an increasing interest in issues pertaining to ideology. In contrast to existing research which tends to couch ‘ideology’ in pejorative terms (i.e. something which needs to be overcome), this paper conceives of ideology as a key mechanism for rendering social entrepreneurship an object with which people can identify. Specifically, drawing on qualitative research of one of the most prolific social entrepreneurship intermediaries, the Impact Hub, we investigate how social entrepreneurship is narrated as an ‘ideal subject’ which signals toward others what it takes to lead a meaningful (working) life. Taking its theoretical cues from Luc Boltanski’s theory of justification and from recent affect-based theorizing on ideology, our findings indicate that becoming a social entrepreneur gets framed less as a matter of struggle, hardship and perseverance than of ‘having fun’. We caution that the promise of enjoyment which pervades portrayals of the social entrepreneur might cultivate a passive attitude of empty ‘pleasure’ which effectively forecloses the properly political. The paper concludes by discussing the broader implications this hedonistic rendition of social entrepreneurship has, thus suggesting a re-politicization of social entrepreneurship through a confronting with the ‘impossible’

Intermediary Organisations and the Hegemonisation of Social Entrepreneurship: Fantasmatic Articulations, Constitutive Quiescences, and Moments of Indeterminacy

The rapid rise of alternative organisations such as social enterprises is largely due to the promotional activities of intermediary organisations. So far, little is known about the affective nature of such activities. The present article thus investigates how intermediary organisations make social entrepreneurship palatable for a broader audience by establishing it as an object of desire. Drawing on affect-oriented extensions of Laclau and Mouffe's poststructuralist theory, hegemonisation is suggested as a way of understanding how social entrepreneurship is articulated through a complementary process of signification and affective investment. Specifically, by examining Austrian intermediaries, we show how social entrepreneurship is endowed with a sense of affective thrust that is based on three interlocking dynamics: the articulation of fantasies such as 'inclusive exclusiveness', 'large-scale social change' and 'pragmatic solutions'; the repression of anxiety-provoking and contentious issues (constitutive quiescences); as well as the use of conceptually vague, floating signifiers (moments of indeterminacy). Demonstrating that the hegemonisation of social entrepreneurship involves articulating certain issues whilst, at the same time, omitting others, or rendering them elusive, the article invites a counter-hegemonic critique of social entrepreneurship, and, on a more general level, of alternative forms of organising, that embraces affect as a driving force of change, while simultaneously affirming the impossibility of harmony and wholeness

'Utopia’ failed? Social enterprise, everyday practices and the closure of neoliberalism

In the context of recurrent economic crises, ‘alternative’ models of economic organising such as social enterprise offer compelling examples of utopian imageries of a better future ‘to come’. Social enterprise qua utopia implies not only that alternative ways of being and co-existence are desirable, but that there is often a disjuncture between the desirable futures such utopian imaginaries project and the extent to which they are actualised or even actualisable in practice. The UK, which has long been considered the most conducive environment for social enterprise activity, offers a fertile ground to study this tension between utopian imagination and empirical actualization. Drawing from three large-scale research projects focusing on the social economy in Scotland and the North of England, this paper explores the link between social enterprise as a political program and as lived material practices unfolding under conditions of extreme resource scarcity caused by austerity measures. Our findings reveal that whatever utopian impulse social enterprise might contain, it is constituted, in the last instance, in the movement between ideas and everyday life, i.e. the aggregate of mundane practices, routines and experiences. Attentiveness to the precariousness instigated through austerity measures, such as social budget cuts, the key contribution this paper makes is to jettison approaches that treat social enterprise as a context-independent and totalizing ideal that divorces its utopian potential from the everyday practices through which this potential is being realized

Wie die BFH unternehmerische Initiativen fördert

Das Unternehmertum hat sich stark verändert. Neu gehören soziales oder nachhaltiges Unternehmertum, Impact Unternehmen, Low-end Innovation oder Benefit Corporations dazu. Wie die BFH das Spektrum des Unternehmertums in Forschung und Lehre abdeckt, schildern drei Dozierende