IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/wdevel/v107y2018icp306-326.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

New narratives of development work? Making sense of social entrepreneurs’ development narratives across time and economies

Author

Listed:
  • Chandra, Yanto

Abstract

This article views social entrepreneurship as a relatively new model for achieving sustainable development. It also identifies development narratives that social entrepreneurs (SEs) construct to represent and promote their work as an important research gap in development studies. Drawing on the development and narratology literature, and employing computational linguistics (CL) techniques, this article compares the development narratives of 1076 Ashoka SEs across two periods (2009–2013 and 1994–1998) and two economies (developing and developed). CL analyses reveal important themes that characterize the identity, framing and orientations of development SEs across time and economies. The findings demonstrate how SE development narratives i) tend to be more pragmatic and solution-centric, and contain less political ideology than conventional development narratives, ii) combine extant development ideas and models but reframe them in new ways to address contemporary, complex development challenges, and iii) reflect a ‘bottom-up’ approach that encourages local ownership and collaborations with various social and economic sectors to achieve development goals. Overall, this study identifies the increasing importance of SEs in the development industry and reveals new aspects of SEs—their latent political framing, collective-utilitarian identities, and topical areas—that require further research via development narratives.

Suggested Citation

  • Chandra, Yanto, 2018. "New narratives of development work? Making sense of social entrepreneurs’ development narratives across time and economies," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 306-326.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:107:y:2018:i:c:p:306-326
    DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2018.02.033
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X18300780
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.worlddev.2018.02.033?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Roe, Emery M., 1995. "Except-Africa: Postscript to a special section on development narratives," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 23(6), pages 1065-1069, June.
    2. Choi, Nia & Majumdar, Satyajit, 2014. "Social entrepreneurship as an essentially contested concept: Opening a new avenue for systematic future research," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 363-376.
    3. Venot, Jean-Philippe, 2016. "A Success of Some Sort: Social Enterprises and Drip Irrigation in the Developing World," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 69-81.
    4. Cieslik, Katarzyna, 2016. "Moral Economy Meets Social Enterprise Community-Based Green Energy Project in Rural Burundi," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 12-26.
    5. Parhankangas, Annaleena & Ehrlich, Michael, 2014. "How entrepreneurs seduce business angels: An impression management approach," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 543-564.
    6. Charles Gore & Charles Gore, 2015. "The Post‐2015 Moment: Towards Sustainable Development Goals and a New Global Development Paradigm," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(6), pages 717-732, August.
    7. Roe, Emery M., 1991. "Development narratives, or making the best of blueprint development," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 287-300, April.
    8. Susan Engel, 2014. "The not-so-great aid debate," Third World Quarterly, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(8), pages 1374-1389, September.
    9. Filipe Santos, 2012. "A Positive Theory of Social Entrepreneurship," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 111(3), pages 335-351, December.
    10. Ben Fine, 2009. "Development as Zombieconomics in the Age of Neoliberalism," Third World Quarterly, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(5), pages 885-904.
    11. Chandra, Yanto, 2017. "Social entrepreneurship as emancipatory work," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 32(6), pages 657-673.
    12. Peter Foreman & David A. Whetten, 2002. "Members' Identification with Multiple-Identity Organizations," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 13(6), pages 618-635, December.
    13. Nathan Andrews & Sylvia Bawa, 2014. "A Post-development Hoax? (Re)-examining the Past, Present and Future of Development Studies," Third World Quarterly, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(6), pages 922-938, July.
    14. Ruebottom, Trish, 2013. "The microstructures of rhetorical strategy in social entrepreneurship: Building legitimacy through heroes and villains," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 98-116.
    15. Kuriyan, Renee & Ray, Isha, 2009. "Outsourcing the State? Public-Private Partnerships and Information Technologies in India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(10), pages 1663-1673, October.
    16. Cheryl McEwan & Emma Mawdsley & Glenn Banks & Regina Scheyvens, 2017. "Enrolling the Private Sector in Community Development: Magic Bullet or Sleight of Hand?," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 48(1), pages 28-53, January.
    17. Michael Lounsbury & Mary Ann Glynn, 2001. "Cultural entrepreneurship: stories, legitimacy, and the acquisition of resources," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(6‐7), pages 545-564, June.
    18. Pascal Dey & Chris Steyaert, 2010. "The politics of narrating social entrepreneurship," Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 4(1), pages 85-108, March.
    19. A. Montgomery & Peter Dacin & M. Dacin, 2012. "Collective Social Entrepreneurship: Collaboratively Shaping Social Good," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 111(3), pages 375-388, December.
    20. Caroline Parkinson & Carole Howorth, 2008. "The language of social entrepreneurs," Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(3), pages 285-309, May.
    21. Smith, Wendy K. & Gonin, Michael & Besharov, Marya L., 2013. "Managing Social-Business Tensions: A Review and Research Agenda for Social Enterprise," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 23(3), pages 407-442, July.
    22. Charis Enns & Brock Bersaglio & Thembela Kepe, 2014. "Indigenous voices and the making of the post-2015 development agenda: the recurring tyranny of participation," Third World Quarterly, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(3), pages 358-375, March.
    23. Sophie Bacq & Chantal Hartog & Brigitte Hoogendoorn, 2016. "Beyond the Moral Portrayal of Social Entrepreneurs: An Empirical Approach to Who They Are and What Drives Them," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 133(4), pages 703-718, February.
    24. Alex Nicholls, 2010. "The Legitimacy of Social Entrepreneurship: Reflexive Isomorphism in a Pre–Paradigmatic Field," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 34(4), pages 611-633, July.
    25. Fahimul Quadir, 2013. "Rising Donors and the New Narrative of ‘South–South’ Cooperation: what prospects for changing the landscape of development assistance programmes?," Third World Quarterly, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(2), pages 321-338.
    26. Frank Moulaert & Oana Ailenei, 2005. "Social Economy, Third Sector and Solidarity Relations: A Conceptual Synthesis from History to Present," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 42(11), pages 2037-2053, October.
    27. Charles Gore & Gabriele Koehler, 2015. "Seven Decades of ‘Development’, and Now What?," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(6), pages 733-751, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yuliya Snihur & Llewellyn D. W. Thomas & Raghu Garud & Nelson Phillips, 2022. "Entrepreneurial Framing: A Literature Review and Future Research Directions," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 46(3), pages 578-606, May.
    2. Manning, Stephan & Vavilov, Stanislav, 2023. "Global development agenda meets local opportunities: The rise of development-focused entrepreneurship support," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(7).
    3. Virva Salmivaara & Ewald Kibler, 2020. "“Rhetoric Mix†of Argumentations: How Policy Rhetoric Conveys Meaning of Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Development," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 44(4), pages 700-732, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gupta, Parul & Chauhan, Sumedha & Paul, Justin & Jaiswal, M.P., 2020. "Social entrepreneurship research: A review and future research agenda," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 209-229.
    2. Babita Bhatt & Israr Qureshi & Suhaib Riaz, 2019. "Social Entrepreneurship in Non-munificent Institutional Environments and Implications for Institutional Work: Insights from China," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 154(3), pages 605-630, February.
    3. Adélie Ranville & Marcos Barros, 2022. "Towards Normative Theories of Social Entrepreneurship. A Review of the Top Publications of the Field," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 180(2), pages 407-438, October.
    4. Pradeep Kumar Hota & Balaji Subramanian & Gopalakrishnan Narayanamurthy, 2020. "Mapping the Intellectual Structure of Social Entrepreneurship Research: A Citation/Co-citation Analysis," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 166(1), pages 89-114, September.
    5. Pradeep Kumar Hota, 2023. "Tracing the Intellectual Evolution of Social Entrepreneurship Research: Past Advances, Current Trends, and Future Directions," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 182(3), pages 637-659, January.
    6. Lortie, Jason & Cox, Kevin C. & Roundy, Philip T., 2022. "Social impact models, legitimacy perceptions, and consumer responses to social ventures," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 312-321.
    7. Bolzani, Daniela & Marabello, Selenia & Honig, Benson, 2020. "Exploring the multi-level processes of legitimacy in transnational social enterprises," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 35(3).
    8. Paola Bernardi & Alberto Bertello & Canio Forliano & Ludovico Bullini Orlandi, 2022. "Beyond the “ivory tower”. Comparing academic and non-academic knowledge on social entrepreneurship," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 18(3), pages 999-1032, September.
    9. Chris Mason & Bob Doherty, 2016. "A Fair Trade-off? Paradoxes in the Governance of Fair-trade Social Enterprises," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 136(3), pages 451-469, July.
    10. Gali, Nazha & Niemand, Thomas & Shaw, Eleanor & Hughes, Mathew & Kraus, Sascha & Brem, Alexander, 2020. "Social entrepreneurship orientation and company success: The mediating role of social performance," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 160(C).
    11. Patricio Osorio-Vega, 2019. "The Ethics of Entrepreneurial Shared Value," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 157(4), pages 981-995, July.
    12. Rob Lubberink & Vincent Blok & Johan van Ophem & Gerben van der Velde & Onno Omta, 2018. "Innovation for Society: Towards a Typology of Developing Innovations by Social Entrepreneurs," Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(1), pages 52-78, January.
    13. Philip T. Roundy & Michaël Bonnal, 2017. "The Singularity of Social Entrepreneurship: Untangling its Uniqueness and Market Function," Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Emerging Economies, Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India, vol. 26(2), pages 137-162, September.
    14. Elena-Simina Lakatos & Bercea Oana Bianca & Laura Bacali, 2016. "The concept of innovation in social economy. A review and a research agenda," Review of Applied Socio-Economic Research, Pro Global Science Association, vol. 11(1), pages 32-50, June.
    15. Alice Mascena Barbosa & Guillaume Dumont, 2024. "A New Understanding of the Role of Self-oriented Motivations in the Creation of Social Enterprises," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 191(3), pages 591-609, May.
    16. Serres, Coline & Hudon, Marek & Maon, François, 2022. "Social corporations under the spotlight: A governance perspective," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 37(3).
    17. Luca Mongelli & Francesco Rullani & Tommaso Ramus & Tomislav Rimac, 2019. "The Bright Side of Hybridity: Exploring How Social Enterprises Manage and Leverage Their Hybrid Nature," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 159(2), pages 301-305, October.
    18. Michael H. Morris & Susana C. Santos & Donald F. Kuratko, 2021. "The great divides in social entrepreneurship and where they lead us," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 57(3), pages 1089-1106, October.
    19. Miguel Rivera-Santos & Diane Holt & David Littlewood & Ans Kolk, 2015. "Social Entrepreneurship in Sub-Saharan Africa," Post-Print hal-02276715, HAL.
    20. Micaela Mazzei & Tom Montgomery & Pascal Dey, 2021. "‘Utopia’ failed? Social enterprise, everyday practices and the closure of neoliberalism," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 39(7), pages 1625-1643, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:107:y:2018:i:c:p:306-326. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/worlddev .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.