infonet-economy

Seen the disconnection between the interest for language diversity in international management and the interest for the linguistic production of organization in organization studies, there is an urgent need to re-theorize language itself in the organization and management studies of multilingualism. Such re-theorizing of language can not only be informed by the insights which came from considering the linguistic turn in organization studies but needs to incorporate insights from cultural studies of globalization. Inspired by Appadurai's transna-tional anthropology, this paper attempts to re-theorize multilingual organizations as languagescapes which suggest to be characterized by dialogicality, continuous translation and hybridity. We give some illustrations based on a preliminary discussion of an empirical study of how language strategies are formed in national and international companies based in Swit-zerland.

Unlike the term ‘enterprise', which since the industrial phase primarily meant a capitalist organization with economical finalities (Berardi, 2009), ‘social entrepreneurship' has been introduced as something infinitely more emancipatory. What is at stake in social entrepreneurship is nothing less than the imagination of an alternative to the capitalist economy (Driver, 2012; Shaw & de Bruin, 2013); an alternative which places democracy, solidarity and equality (back) at the heart of the debate. When taking a closer look at this "hot word" and what it symbolizes, social entrepreneurship - due not least to its kinship with managerialism (Hjorth, 2013) and economic thought (Jones &Murtola, 2012) - is often nothing more than a cliché of its initial promise. Attempting to understand how such a conversion came about, but also to transgress the depoliticized image of social entrepreneurship, our contribution reverts to Roland Barthes' work on writing (1969; 1977) and mythology (1972) and Paul Ricoeur's (1974; 1986) hermeneutic philosophy. Premised on the idea that all symbols have two meanings (an explicit and an indirect or mythical meaning), this contribution grapples with the indirect meaning of social entrepreneurship as it pertains to ideological and utopian imagination. The guiding idea, indebted to Ricoeur, is that social entrepreneurship is not either ideological (in the sense of preserving the status quo) or utopian (in the sense of projecting alternatives to the present), but always both things at the same time. So understood, a critical hermeneutic of imagination comprises two complementary steps: first, a ‘hermeneutic of suspicion' which is geared toward unmasking the ideological operation of a given symbol and, second, a "hermeneutic of affirmation' which uses the remainder of the demystified symbol to invent other possible worlds (Kearney, 2004).

This paper critiques and re-imagines current research approaches to the field of social entrepreneurship. Taking a theoretical view of research as ‘enactment', this paper explores research as a constitutive act and explores a range of ways of relating with and constructing the subject of inquiry. Three models of enactive research are presented, each based on three verbs which denote the contours of a ‘dangerous' research agenda for social entrepreneurship. These include: (a) ‘critiquing' approaches to research through denaturalizing, critically performing and reflexivity; (b) ‘inheriting' approaches through contextualizing, historicizing and connecting; and (c) ‘intervening' approaches through participating, spatializing and minorizing.