Organizational Entrepreneurship, Politics and the Political

Entrepreneurship, as the creation of new organizations, has globally become an appealing call for individuals and governments alike. Too often still, it is simply associated with the idea of 'enterprise', thus sustaining a pervasive politics of homo economicus agents living a 'measured life' in competition-based individuality.

Organizational Entrepreneurship, Politics and the Political disconnects entrepreneurship from the politics of enterprise to more fully explore its potential to resist the economic and ethical demand of the enterprise to be instrumentally innovative and instead to disrupt and disturb the established order. As such, entrepreneurship is seen as inevitably political – it is a constant attempt at declassifying existing structures and institutions, de-normalizing practices and sensemaking to make room for and initiate the new. The chapters invite the readers to revisit key concepts in entrepreneurship studies – opportunity, motivation, identity, experimentation, creative destruction and experimentation – by approaching them through a political process lens. This book offers a new conceptual repertoire and vocabulary that reconnects entrepreneurship studies with the socio-political dimensions of organization-creation, opening up multiple possibilities for understanding and questioning the meanings and effects of entrepreneurship in society.

Combining philosophical reflections with organizational and processual perspectives, this book will be of interest to academics, students and researchers in the areas of business, social and political entrepreneurship, organization studies and management.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Entrepreneurship and Regional Development.

Carine Farias is Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship and Business Ethics at IÉSEG School of Management, France. She is a member of the Copenhagen Business School Entrepreneurship Platform, Denmark, and EMLYON OCE Research Centre, France. Her research interests focus on social entrepreneurship and the creation of alternative organizational practices.

Pablo Fernandez is Associate Professor of Business and Society at IAE Business School, Argentina. His research centres on processes of social inclusion in which marginalized actors seek to organize and work together to regain their dignity. At a broader level, he is interested in understanding issues of power and resistance in and around organizations.

Daniel Hjorth is Professor of Entrepreneurship and Organization in the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, Professor at Nottingham Business School, UK, and Adjunct Professor at Graduate School of Management, Kyoto University, Japan. He is Editor- in- Chief of Organization Studies, author and Editor (together with Chris Steyaert) of the New Movements in Entrepreneurship book series, through which a European School of Entrepreneurship research was proposed and Editor (with Jenny Helin, Tor Hernes and Robin Holt) of The Oxford Handbook of Process Philosophy & Organisation Studies. Hjorth has published widely in organization theory, management and entrepreneurship journals.

Robin Holt is Professor of Entrepreneurship, Politics and Society in the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, and Visiting Research Professor at Nottingham Business School, UK. He studies the nature of organizational form.