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Journal ArticleDOI

The Legitimacy of Social Entrepreneurship: Reflexive Isomorphism in a Pre–Paradigmatic Field:

Alex Nicholls
- 01 Jul 2010 - 
- Vol. 34, Iss: 4, pp 611-633
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TLDR
This article conceptualized social entrepreneurship as a field of action in a pre-paradigmatic state that currently lacks an established epistemology, and used approaches from neo-institutional theory to characterize the development of social entrepreneurship in terms of its key actors, discourses, and emerging narrative logics.
Abstract
Following Kuhn, this article conceptualizes social entrepreneurship as a field of action in a pre-paradigmatic state that currently lacks an established epistemology. Using approaches from neo-institutional theory, this research focuses on the microstructures of legitimation that characterize the development of social entrepreneurship in terms of its key actors, discourses, and emerging narrative logics. This analysis suggests that the dominant discourses of social entrepreneurship represent legitimating material for resource-rich actors in a process of reflexive isomorphism. Returning to Kuhn, the article concludes by delineating a critical role for scholarly research on social entrepreneurship in terms of resolving conflicting discourses within its future paradigmatic development.

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References
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Book ChapterDOI

The iron cage revisited institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them, and describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative.
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Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony

TL;DR: Many formal organizational structures arise as reflections of rationalized institutional rules as discussed by the authors, and the elaboration of such rules in modern states and societies accounts in part for the expansion and i...
Journal ArticleDOI

Managing Legitimacy: Strategic and Institutional Approaches

TL;DR: This article synthesize the large but diverse literature on organizational legitimacy, highlighting similarities and disparities among the leading strategic and institutional approaches, and identify three primary forms of legitimacy: pragmatic, based on audience self-interest; moral, based upon normative approval; and cognitive, according to comprehensibility and taken-for-grantedness.
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