Description
Seminar given as part of the QBS IBEM seminar speaker series.Abstract: Ever since the publication of Rindova, Barry, and Ketchen’s (2009) influential article on ‘Entrepreneuring as Emancipation,’ interest in the emancipatory potential of entrepreneurship has grown rapidly. Researchers adopting an emancipatory entrepreneuring perspective make entrepreneurs’ pursuit of autonomy relative to an existing status quo their focal point of inquiry. While this perspective has greatly expanded our understanding of entrepreneurship by framing it as a potential means of empowerment and social transformation, the current article identifies and discusses three shortcomings, its: (1) normative abstinence, (2) particularism, and (3) relative blindness toward the value and importance of entrepreneurs’ more passive, adaptive relationships to the world. Drawing on the Frankfurt School critical theorist Hartmut Rosa’s normative sociology of relationships to the world, I reconceptualise the meaning of entrepreneuring as emancipation in terms of ‘resonance theory.’ I argue that resonance theory can advance the emancipatory entrepreneuring perspective by: (1) providing a clear normative criterion to evaluate the targets, ends, and/or means of emancipatory entrepreneuring, (2) connecting entrepreneurs’ particular local struggles for emancipation with larger socio-structural challenges, and (3) carrying it beyond a focus on entrepreneurs’ desire for autonomy to include a corresponding desire to experience a world that affects and transforms them, while they simultaneously transform world. This, I call, seeking resonance.
| Period | 06 Apr 2024 |
|---|---|
| Held at | International Business, Entrepreneurship, and Marketing (IBEM) |
| Degree of Recognition | Local |