Educational Entrepreneurship as Institutional Work

• In Event: Organizational Theory in and out of Practice

Abstract

Based on new institutional theory, this study aims to deepen our understanding of the nature of the institutional work in which entrepreneurs engage. A case study analysis of an entrepreneurial school that operated for four years before closing down, revealed the interrelation between three entrepreneurial work processes: sensemaking, theorization, and translation. We show how each process contributes to the establishment of entrepreneurship, and what might be the consequences for the innovation when these processes fail. We conclude that by giving the necessary attention to each process individually, and to all of them together, the entrepreneurs increase their innovation’s prospects.

Authors

• Hilla Tal, Israeli Ministry of Education

• Dorit Tubin, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev