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21 – 30 of over 1000This chapter provides more in-depth focus on the intersection of innovation and entrepreneurship and the associated capacities for creating diverse forms of change. More…
Abstract
This chapter provides more in-depth focus on the intersection of innovation and entrepreneurship and the associated capacities for creating diverse forms of change. More specifically, the theoretical underpinning of entrepreneurship is carefully introduced in order to illuminate and extenuate its role as the mechanism that makes novel products and processes available to society where impact of various types can be realized.
Sara E. Green, Rosalyn Benjamin Darling and Loren Wilbers
This chapter reviews qualitative research on parenting children with disabilities published over the last 50 years to explore whether shifts in academic discourse and changes in…
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter reviews qualitative research on parenting children with disabilities published over the last 50 years to explore whether shifts in academic discourse and changes in professional training have affected research on parenting and/or the experiences of parents who are the subject of such research.
Methodology/approach
An extensive literature search was conducted, and 78 peer-reviewed, qualitative studies on the experience of parenting a child with a disability were included in the sample. Themes were extracted from the reviewed literature and compared across decades.
Findings
The findings of the present review suggest that some aspects of the parenting experience have changed very little. In particular, parents continue to experience negative reactions such as stress and anomie, especially early in their children’s lives, and socially imposed barriers such as unhelpful professionals, and a lack of needed services continue to create problems and inspire an entrepreneurial response. In addition, stigmatizing encounters with others continue to be a common occurrence. In contrast to earlier decades, studies conducted in more recent years have begun to use the social model of disability as an analytic frame and also increasingly report that parents are questioning and challenging the concept of “normal” itself.
Social/practical implications
Additional improvements are needed in professional education and services to reduce the negative reactions experienced by parents of children with disabilities.
Originality/value of chapter
The findings of this meta-analysis can serve as a guide to future research on parenting children with disabilities.
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Research universities are recognized as primary sources of the knowledge essential to the development of innovative solutions to a wide range of economic, social, and ecological…
Abstract
Research universities are recognized as primary sources of the knowledge essential to the development of innovative solutions to a wide range of economic, social, and ecological problems that affect humankind. This utilitarian function of American higher education dates back to the creation of land grant institutions with the passing of the Morrill Act of 1862 (Lucas, 1994; Veysey, 1965). The prominent higher education historian John R. Thelin (2004) described the importance of this land grant legislation by stating, “Its institutional legacy was the accessible state college and university, characterized by a curriculum that was broad and utilitarian” (p. 76). Shifts in the research paradigm that followed the World War II placed further emphasis on applied research that was to be “directed toward some individual or group or societal need or use” (Stokes, 1997, p. 8). Most recently, the utilitarian function of higher education has become closely linked to the commercialization of knowledge and discovery. Specifically, the passing of the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which allowed colleges and universities to take ownership of intellectual properties created in part or in full through federal funding, allowed the transfer of knowledge from higher education to society through market channels to become standard practice.
Ana Colovic and Sonia Mehrotra
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how a local trade union improves living conditions for women entrepreneurs in India and how its activities have evolved over time.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how a local trade union improves living conditions for women entrepreneurs in India and how its activities have evolved over time.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted a longitudinal case study of the self-employed women’s association (SEWA) in India. Founded in 1972, this organization fosters and supports women’s entrepreneurship. The approach of this study combines qualitative face-to-face interviews and secondary data analysis.
Findings
The findings highlight the fact that SEWA, which combines the features of a trade union and a social movement, improves women’s conditions in several different ways. The study shows that the organization’s main role has evolved from creating a community to expanding it and finally to becoming an agent of societal change.
Originality/value
The study contributes to the literature by analyzing how locally grown organizations fight social exclusion and improve the conditions of deprived groups in emerging economies.
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Given the growing interest in social movements as policy agenda setters, this paper investigates the contexts within which movement groups and actors work with political elites to…
Abstract
Given the growing interest in social movements as policy agenda setters, this paper investigates the contexts within which movement groups and actors work with political elites to promote their common goals for policy change. In asking how and why so-called outsiders gain access to elites and to the policymaking process, I address several contemporary theoretical and empirical concerns associated with policy change as a social movement goal. I examine the claim that movements use a multipronged, long-term strategy by working with and targeting policymakers and political institutions on the one hand, while shaping public preferences – hearts and minds – on the other; that these efforts are not mutually exclusive. In addition, I look at how social movement organizations and actors are critical in expanding issue conflict outside narrow policy networks, often encouraged to do so by political elites with similar policy objectives. And, I discuss actors’ mobility in transitioning from institutional activists to movement and organizational leaders, and even to protesters, and vice versa. The interchangeability of roles among actors promoting social change in strategic action fields points to the porous and fluid boundaries between state and nonstate actors and organizations.
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This paper takes seriously the feminist adage that “the personal is political” by critically exploring my experiences as an early career scholar of gender and entrepreneurship…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper takes seriously the feminist adage that “the personal is political” by critically exploring my experiences as an early career scholar of gender and entrepreneurship studies to offer vital context for the contributions of my work and future research agenda, in light of the current historical moment of interconnected political, public health and environmental calamity.
Design/methodology/approach
The author presents reflections on her positionality, philosophical and political commitments, and theorises from her experiences of racist distraction and intersectional marginality in contemporary academia, considering their implications for incoming and aspiring gender and entrepreneurship scholars whose research agendas are still in development.
Findings
Racism functions as a persistent distraction from overall research agendas and activities, and delimits the lane of perceived contributions. However, collectively challenging it in work and study presents a vehicle by which intellectual and affective experiences of academic work may be enriched, and a spacious and expansive legacy of critical scholarship built that will be resonant for years to come.
Originality/value
The paper argues that although racism will doubtlessly continue to cause immense distraction, it presents an invitation to create positive social change, through collectivising with a community that aims to shape a liveable, equitable and imaginative academic future.
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Most theories of entrepreneurship have focused on explaining individual actions, neglecting the extent to which entrepreneurs are embedded in particular socio‐historical contexts…
Abstract
Most theories of entrepreneurship have focused on explaining individual actions, neglecting the extent to which entrepreneurs are embedded in particular socio‐historical contexts that shape both opportunity structures and the interactions that enable particular entrepreneurial responses to opportunities. Evidence from an ethnography of college and university recycling coordinators and programs is drawn on to extend the concept of “collective entrepreneurship” to account for broader social dynamics having to do with the construction of a recycling coordinator occupational identity and resource mobilization oriented towards the defense of that identity. Social marginality and linkage to a wider environmental social movement are argued to be the key conditions that made the collective efforts of recycling coordinators to safeguard and increase the status of their nascent occupation possible.
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Carla Riverola, Ozgur Dedehayir, Stephen Harrington and Santiago Velasquez Franco
Of all industries, agri-food has one of the largest environmental impacts. Reducing the production and consumption of meat, dairy and seafood, and moving to predominantly…
Abstract
Purpose
Of all industries, agri-food has one of the largest environmental impacts. Reducing the production and consumption of meat, dairy and seafood, and moving to predominantly plant-based diets, is key to lowering our environmental footprint. Veg-friendly restaurants play a key role in this transition as they have the capacity to build a greener dining scene (e.g. positively change consumer opinions towards vegan food). Hence, the purpose of this paper is to understand the entrepreneurial journey of veg-friendly restaurateurs.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors employed an inductive-qualitative approach to analyse 12 veg-friendly restaurants in three countries (Spain, Australia and Colombia). In addition to inspecting available data on the restaurants and their menus, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the restaurateurs to uncover (1) the impact of their venture for customers and society, (2) the drivers to establishing their businesses and (3) the challenges faced and strategies used in the management of veg-friendly restaurants.
Findings
This work recognises veg-friendly restaurateurs as key actors in building a sustainable future through a greener dining scene. The authors uncover the main drivers of the entrepreneurial journey and propose a multi-dimensional approach to identity and passion as key antecedents of entrepreneurial intention. The authors also discuss how social and sustainable entrepreneurship may be the expression of an activist behaviour. Finally, challenges and strategies to manage veg-friendly restaurants are discussed with directions that contribute to both theory and practice.
Originality/value
A switch towards vegan and vegetarian diets has important implications for ecology, society and the economy. While most research has focused on the consumer side, this paper is unique in understanding how veg-friendly restaurants emerge. This is quite distinctive in the literature regarding sustainable restaurants, which until now, has focused on the managers' adoption of sustainable practices rather than the restaurateurs' entrepreneurial journey. This work additionally builds new insights in the entrepreneurship literature, through uncovering the motivations, experiences and challenges of entrepreneurs that, in most cases, show activist attributes.
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M. Paola Ometto, Michael Lounsbury and Joel Gehman
How do radical technological fields become naturalized and taken for granted? This is a fundamental question given both the positive and negative hype surrounding the emergence of…
Abstract
How do radical technological fields become naturalized and taken for granted? This is a fundamental question given both the positive and negative hype surrounding the emergence of many new technologies. In this chapter, we study the emergence of the US nanotechnology field, focusing on uncovering the mechanisms by which leaders of the National Nanotechnology Initiative managed hype and its concomitant legitimacy challenges which threatened the commercial viability of nanotechnology. Drawing on the cultural entrepreneurship literature at the interface of strategy and organization theory, we argue that the construction of a naturalizing frame – a frame that focuses attention and practice on mundane, “rationalized” activity – is key to legitimating a novel and uncertain technological field. Leveraging the insights from our case study, we further develop a staged process model of how a naturalizing frame may be constructed, thereby paving the way for a decrease in hype and the institutionalization of new technologies.
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