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How to Break Free: An Orders-of-Worth Perspective on Emancipatory Entrepreneurship

Violina P. Rindova (University of Southern California, USA)
Santosh B. Srinivas (HEC Paris, France)
Luis L. Martins (University of Texas at Austin, USA)

Entrepreneurialism and Society: New Theoretical Perspectives

ISBN: 978-1-80382-658-5, eISBN: 978-1-80382-657-8

Publication date: 22 September 2022

Abstract

The assumption of wealth creation as the dominant motive underlying entrepreneurial efforts has been challenged in recent work on entrepreneurship. Taking the perspective that entrepreneurship involves emancipatory efforts by social actors to escape ideological and material constraints in their environments (Rindova, Barry, & Ketchen, 2009), researchers have sought to explain a range of entrepreneurial activities in contexts that have traditionally been excluded from entrepreneurship research. We seek to extend this research by proposing that entrepreneurial acts toward emancipation can be guided by different notions of the common good underlying varying conceptions of worth, beyond those emphasized in the view of entrepreneurial activity as driven by economic wealth creation. These alternative conceptions of worth are associated with specific subjectivities of entrepreneurial self and relevant others, and distinct legitimate bases for actions and coordination, enabling emancipation by operating from alternative value system perspectives. Drawing on Boltanski and Thévenot’s (2006) work on multiple orders of worth (OOWs), we describe how emancipatory entrepreneurship is framed within – and limited by – the dominant view, which is rooted in a market OOW. As alternatives to this view, we theorize how the civic and inspired OOWs point to alternate emancipatory ends and means through which entrepreneurs break free from material and ideological constraints. We describe factors that enable and constrain emancipatory entrepreneurship efforts within each of these OOWs, and discuss the implications of our theoretical ideas for how entrepreneurs can choose among different OOWs as perspectives and for the competencies required for engaging with pluralistic value perspectives.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments

We thank Howard Aldrich, Robert Eberhart, Jennifer Jennings, Michael Lounsbury, Marc Ventresca, Tim Weiss, and the participants in the Reversing the Arrow: How Entrepreneurship Affects Society conferences in 2019 and 2020 for numerous insightful comments, support, and inspiration with the development of our ideas.

Citation

Rindova, V.P., Srinivas, S.B. and Martins, L.L. (2022), "How to Break Free: An Orders-of-Worth Perspective on Emancipatory Entrepreneurship", Eberhart, R.N., Lounsbury, M. and Aldrich, H.E. (Ed.) Entrepreneurialism and Society: New Theoretical Perspectives (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 81), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 101-127. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X20220000081006

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2022 Violina P. Rindova, Santosh B. Srinivas and Luis L. Martins