Skip to main content

Lund University Publications

LUND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Coming to terms with the empowerment-complicity tension in social entrepreneurship

Lüthy, Christina LU orcid and Endrissat, Nada (2024) In Academy of Management Proceedings 2024(1).
Abstract
Despite their emancipatory aspirations, collective entrepreneurial efforts to change organizations bottom-up are often complicit with the power structures they seek to transform. Our study takes a closer look at how workers experience and deal with the tensions between emancipation and complicity and how this can inform the entrepreneurial process. Empirically, we draw from a qualitative single-case study of a private contemporary art museum in Russia, in which museum workers venture entrepreneurial initiatives to create the museum as an inclusive and politicized organization. Engaging with literature on affective embodiment, our findings suggest that vulnerability and critical hope are key in understanding how discomfort about complicity... (More)
Despite their emancipatory aspirations, collective entrepreneurial efforts to change organizations bottom-up are often complicit with the power structures they seek to transform. Our study takes a closer look at how workers experience and deal with the tensions between emancipation and complicity and how this can inform the entrepreneurial process. Empirically, we draw from a qualitative single-case study of a private contemporary art museum in Russia, in which museum workers venture entrepreneurial initiatives to create the museum as an inclusive and politicized organization. Engaging with literature on affective embodiment, our findings suggest that vulnerability and critical hope are key in understanding how discomfort about complicity fosters critical reflections that reinvigorates hopeful entrepreneurial efforts for emancipation and new organizational responses. We show how this interplay drives entrepreneurial initiatives, spiraling the entrepreneurial process in an affective movement towards expansion or fragmentation. We contribute to scholarship on entrepreneurship by highlighting the affective and processual nature of dealing with the interlacing of emancipation and complicity, and to scholarship on affective embodiment, by deepening our understanding of the conditions that shape our ability to stay affected by our implication in power relations and harness these experiences in our organizational efforts for better futures. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
and
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
in
Academy of Management Proceedings
volume
2024
issue
1
publisher
Academy of Management
ISSN
0065-0668
DOI
10.5465/AMPROC.2024.18761abstract
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
de862b71-8696-4d5f-9179-3da67f673b24
date added to LUP
2024-09-20 12:00:46
date last changed
2024-09-26 13:18:30
@misc{de862b71-8696-4d5f-9179-3da67f673b24,
  abstract     = {{Despite their emancipatory aspirations, collective entrepreneurial efforts to change organizations bottom-up are often complicit with the power structures they seek to transform. Our study takes a closer look at how workers experience and deal with the tensions between emancipation and complicity and how this can inform the entrepreneurial process. Empirically, we draw from a qualitative single-case study of a private contemporary art museum in Russia, in which museum workers venture entrepreneurial initiatives to create the museum as an inclusive and politicized organization. Engaging with literature on affective embodiment, our findings suggest that vulnerability and critical hope are key in understanding how discomfort about complicity fosters critical reflections that reinvigorates hopeful entrepreneurial efforts for emancipation and new organizational responses. We show how this interplay drives entrepreneurial initiatives, spiraling the entrepreneurial process in an affective movement towards expansion or fragmentation. We contribute to scholarship on entrepreneurship by highlighting the affective and processual nature of dealing with the interlacing of emancipation and complicity, and to scholarship on affective embodiment, by deepening our understanding of the conditions that shape our ability to stay affected by our implication in power relations and harness these experiences in our organizational efforts for better futures.}},
  author       = {{Lüthy, Christina and Endrissat, Nada}},
  issn         = {{0065-0668}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  month        = {{07}},
  note         = {{Conference Abstract}},
  number       = {{1}},
  publisher    = {{Academy of Management}},
  series       = {{Academy of Management Proceedings}},
  title        = {{Coming to terms with the empowerment-complicity tension in social entrepreneurship}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/AMPROC.2024.18761abstract}},
  doi          = {{10.5465/AMPROC.2024.18761abstract}},
  volume       = {{2024}},
  year         = {{2024}},
}