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4 - Bringing change into the lives of the poor: entrepreneurship outside traditional boundaries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2009

By
Ignasi Martí  and
Johanna Mair
Edited by
Thomas B. Lawrence ,
Roy Suddaby  and
Bernard Leca
Thomas B. Lawrence
Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University, British Columbia
Roy Suddaby
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
Bernard Leca
Affiliation:
ESC Rouen
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Summary

Introduction

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.

Type
Chapter
Information
Institutional Work
Actors and Agency in Institutional Studies of Organizations
 , pp. 92 - 119
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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