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Bringing Change into the Lives of the Poor: Entrepreneurship Outside Traditional Boundaries

Item

Title
Bringing Change into the Lives of the Poor: Entrepreneurship Outside Traditional Boundaries
Abstract/Description
The powerful imagery of entrepreneurship as a means to induce and explain institutional change is gaining momentum (Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006; Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006). In response to criticisms that institutional theory was chiefly being used to explain homogeneity and persistence, important efforts have been devoted to restoring human agency in explanations of endogenous institutional change (DiMaggio, 1988; Sewell, 1992; Emirbayer & Mische, 1998). However, the image of the entrepreneur as institutional change agent has also been a source of controversy among institutional theorists, especially when accompanied by voluntarist, un-embedded conceptions of individual action (Holm, 1995; Leca & Naccache, 2006). As a result we observe vivid scholarly discussions on how to solve the “paradox of embedded agency”– i.e. on explaining how institutional change is possible if actors are fully conditioned by the institutions that they wish to change (Holm, 1995; Seo & Creed, 2002; Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006).

The current debate is important and we welcome more agent-oriented views on institutions. The purpose of this chapter is to advance institutional theory by rethinking various aspects of institutional work (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006; DiMaggio, 1988) and thereby to contribute new insights into the paradox of embedded agency. We do so by challenging and breaking dominant patterns in current empirical research. While previous research on institutional entrepreneurship has predominantly looked at elite and/or powerful actors (DiMaggio, 1988; Fligstein & Mara-Drita, 1996) who assume either peripheral (Leblebici, Salancik, Copay & King, 1991) or central (Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006) positions, we focus instead on institutional work carried out by actors with limited power and very few resources.
Author/creator
Martí, Ignasi
Mair, Johanna
Date
2009
In publication
Institutional Work: Actors and Agency in Institutional Studies of Organizations
Editor
Leca, Bernard
Suddaby, Roy
Lawrence, Thomas B.
Pages
92-119
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Resource type
en Background/Context
Medium
en Print
Background/context type
en Conceptual
Open access/free-text available
en Yes
ISBN
978-0-521-51855-0
DOI
10.1017/CBO9780511596605.004
URL
Official Publisher's Webpage (CambridgeCore)
Full-text PDF Shared by Author (ResearchGate)
Citation
Martí, I., & Mair, J. (2009). Bringing Change into the Lives of the Poor: Entrepreneurship Outside Traditional Boundaries. In B. Leca, R. Suddaby, & T. B. Lawrence (Eds.), Institutional Work: Actors and Agency in Institutional Studies of Organizations (pp. 92–119). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511596605.004
Cited in
Conclusion: Building the Field of Improvement Research in Education
Resource status/form
en Published Text
Scholarship genre
en Theoretical
Place
Cambridge
Item sets
Handbook Conclusion Citations

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