Competing Logics and Hybrid Positions: Social Enterprises and the Reimagining of Activism in Market Societies

• In Event: 50220 - Section on Organizations, Occupations, and Work Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 11: Improving Work and Organizations

Abstract

As private organizations increasingly assume roles traditionally associated with social movements and the welfare state, understanding how social enterprises pursue social change becomes crucial. Through semi-structured interviews with owners of L3Cs and B-Corps in Illinois, this study examines how social enterprise owners conceptualize their relationship to activism and legitimize their hybrid institutional positions. Findings reveal three distinct identity positions taken by social entrepreneurs: business as strategic activism, cultural entrepreneurship, and pragmatic reform. Rather than representing a simple or uniform neoliberalization of activism, these organizations function as sites of contestation where competing visions of business's role in society are negotiated. Some owners fully embrace an activist identity, others explicitly reject it, while many adopt hybrid positions that reimagine activism through market mechanisms. The findings demonstrate how social entrepreneurs often simultaneously accommodate and challenge dominant market logics, from using market positions to enable rather than replace collective action to leveraging professional expertise for movement goals to rejecting activist and business labels entirely. Such diversity suggests the relationship between private enterprise and activism is more varied than simple market co-optation. This research contributes to our understanding of institutional change by showing how social enterprises navigate multiple institutional logics, transforming both business and activist practices in the process while also highlighting both the opportunities and limitations of market-based approaches to social change.

Author

• Devin Kaiser, University of Illinois at Chicago