Search results

We argue that entrepreneurship emerged as a celebrated global cultural ideology during the neoliberal era; it is a product of the intensified celebration of the individual as the source of progress. As a result of these cultural roots, contemporary ideas of entrepreneurship are constituted by intertwined dimensions that reflect the sacred status of individuals; namely, vision and leadership. We illustrate our arguments about the expanded discursive celebration of entrepreneurship and its dimensions using the empirical example of changes in the content of Harvard Business Review articles over time. Our analysis of 13,117 abstracts and titles over the period 1925–2019 show an early focus on concrete industry settings, followed by a period dominated by formal organization and management, and then the rise of a focus on entrepreneurship, vision, and leadership since the 1990s. As a cultural trend, the discursive valorization of entrepreneurship is disconnected from the typical entrepreneurial experience (of failure) and from actual founding rates of new ventures (which decline in recent years). Moreover, the shift from liberal to neoliberal cultural ideologies supported a fundamental transformation away from formal management and organization and toward leadership and entrepreneurship. If the cultural foundations shift again, as recent global declines in democracy and trade suggest may be occurring, we are likely to see changes in the nature of the favored models for structuring economy and society.

This paper contributes to a growing literature that examines entrepreneurship with a critical perspective, arguing for a research agenda that makes entrepreneurialism as discourse visible. We define the discourse of entrepreneurialism as a style of thinking and economic intervention that invites actors to pursue their interests by drawing on a limited notion of agency that locates itself in an imaginary economic universe independent of institutions, broad social contexts, and identity considerations. Associated with the global rise of neoliberalism, entrepreneurialism provides actors with tools and competences to imagine organizations in narrow, instrumental terms and with an idealized notion of agency. We argue that seeing entrepreneurial capacity in such a limited way makes it impossible to fully understand entrepreneurship as a phenomenon. Highlighting the adverse consequences of entrepreneurialism, we map areas of inquiry that can contribute to the emergence of a more effective and comprehensive critical research agenda concerning entrepreneurialism.

Financial accounting necessarily depends on an entity assumption that shapes the way it recognizes and accounts for organizational exchanges with social environments. It thereby constructs boundaries and frames permeability in terms of what counts, is accounted for, as being inside and outside of the organization. Yet there are different possible entity concepts reflecting different values about the relationship between the organizational entity and society. This essay considers four problem areas in which these values and the entity–society relationship are at stake within financial accounting: the problem of control within group accounting; accounting for externalities; the economization of public organizations; and the construction of organizational actorhood. These four problematics suggest that financial accounting, its boundary determining assumptions, and the forms of organizational permeability it permits are deeply intertwined and subject to continuous pressure for change.

We explore the acceptance of new contingent work relationships in the United States to reveal an emergent entrepreneurial ideology. Our argument is that these new work relationships represent a new social order not situated in the conglomerates and labor unions of the past, but on a confluence of neo-liberalism and individual action situated in the discourse of entrepreneurialism, employability, and free agency. This new employment relationship, which arose during the economic and social disruptions in the 1970s, defines who belongs inside an organization (and can take part in its benefits) and who must properly remain outside to fend for themselves. More generally, the fusing of entrepreneurship with neo-liberalism has altered not only how we work and where we work but also what we believe is appropriate work and what rewards should accompany it.

Like language, the law is an instrument – a tool – for the accomplishment of certain purposes. The idealized understanding insisted that the law is, if not divinely inspired, the empirical manifestation of received wisdom and truth. On this view the law is crafted to produce ideal outcomes. Richard Posner once insisted that the law was purposefully crafted to achieve economic efficiency (1973).¹ Warren Samuels reminded us that the law is an instrument to get one's way. The interesting question, therefore, concerns who is able to control this valuable instrument? Sometimes good and noble people wield the tool. At other times nefarious forces prevail. Samuels presented his vision of the law by means of a Virginia statute concerning an obscure pest known as Cedar Rust (Samuels, 1971). As it happens, Virginia apple growers were able to wield the tool – saws and axes – against red cedar trees which serve as an intermediate host for a fungus detrimental to apple trees. Small spores make for large debates.

Undoubtedly, digital transformation is permeating all domains of business and society. We envisage this volume as an opportunity to explore how manifestations of digital transformation require rethinking of our understanding and theorization of institutional processes. To achieve this goal, a collaborative forum of organization and management theory scholars and information systems researchers was developed to enrich and advance institutional theory approaches in understanding digital transformation. This volume’s contributions advance the three institutional perspectives. The first perspective, institutional logics, technological affordances and digital transformation, seeks to deepen our understanding of the pervasive and increasingly important relationship between technology and institutions. The second perspective, digital transformation, professional projects and new institutional agents, explores how existing professions respond to the introduction of digital technologies as well as the emergence of new professional projects and institutional agents in the wake of digital transformation. The third perspective, institutional infrastructure, field governance and digital transformation, inquires how new digital organizational forms, such as platforms, affect institutional fields, their infrastructure and thus their governance. For each of these perspectives, we outline an agenda for future research, complemented by a brief discussion of new research frontiers (i.e., digital work and sites of technological (re-)production; artificial intelligence (AI) and actorhood; digital transformation and grand challenges) and methodological reflections.

Volumes 70 and 71 of Research in the Sociology of Organizations combine to comprise cutting edge theory and empirical scholarship at the interface of practice and institution in organization studies. As we highlight, this interface has spurred particularly generative conversations with many open questions, and much to explore. We provide a review of scholarly developments in practice theory and organizational institutionalism that have given rise to this interest in building a bridge between scholarly communities. As signaled by recent efforts to construct a practice-driven institutionalism, we highlight how connecting practice theory with the institutional logics perspective provides a particularly attractive focal point for scholarship at this interface due to a variety of shared ontological and epistemological commitments, including the constitution of actors and their behavior. Collectively, the papers assembled unlock exciting opportunities to connect distinct, but related scholarly communities on practice and institution, seeding scholarship that can advance our understanding of organizational and societal dynamics.