‘What happens when you put executives from Walmart and Patagonia in a room? This isn't the start of a bad joke, it's how the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (in short ‘coalition') was born' (Schwartz 2011). In February 2011, 30 large fashion compa- nies launched a multi-stakeholder alliance with the aim to draft a set of sustain- ability indicators for use across the entire garment industry (Moore 2011). With members accounting for 60% of global sales (Zeller 2011), the initative seemed to be a groundbreaking step forward in an attempt to green textile supply chains. Especially as it was the first grass-roots collaboration coming from the corporates themselves instead of initiated by NGOs or enforced by governments. At the same time, the new platform was critically received as just another ‘greenwashing initiative'. Many questioned the efficacy of quantifying and reducing negative social and environmental impact done within the boundaries of big-and thus bad per se?-business. Seen as an antithesis to a growing focus on local production and (re)valuation of resources and communities (McDermott 2011), the formation of the coalition could possibly endanger existing work done by organisations such as Textile Exchange and Made By. Traditionally perceived as an industry not known for its transparency, a thought- provoking question could be how members seek equilibrium between their own interests and the ambitions of the coalition. Most of them have their own sustain- ability initiatives and one might wonder how far they go in bringing these best practices to the table of the coalition. Additionally it is interesting how members view the existence of earlier initiatives and the foresight of collaboration with these institutions. Will the coalition become a strong multi-stakeholder initiative that really furthers innovation towards more sustainable business practices (O'Connor 2011)? Or will it end up being a loosely coupled network of companies that priori- tise advancement of their own brands over real industry change? In other words: will the coalition turn out to be an interlock that ties together best practices in a solid framework or will it rather be a zigzag stitch1 that allows companies to bend the rules to their own good?
This dissertation investigates ethical fashion businesses through studying the narrations and performances of the founder-entrepreneurs. The main purpose is to explore the interplay between design of clothing, self, organization and society and to figure out how to reveal those dynamics. To examine what this interplay looks like, a social-relational, affirmative approach is adopted that views entrepreneuring as a practice of creatively connecting and fashioning history, rather than a reasoned exercise of gathering facts and assets. To answer the how, the study adopts a mixed-method approach of combining a narrative/discursive analysis with a multi-sensorial ethnography. Through philandering with these theoretical and methodological positions, the study offers two distinct perspectives to venturing in the ethical fashion industry. First, the premise of embodied multi-discursivity is that discourses become materialized through practices at the interface of entrepreneuring and design of self. Embodied multi-discursivity makes visible how multi-discursive processes of entrepreneuring come into being, how they are interrupted and how they can break into a duality that ignores the variety of discourses. Second, the study looks how we can conceptualize entrepreneuring as a folding/un-folding of practices of ethico-aesthetic self-styling interconnecting the styling of self, fashion, enterprise and society at large. Both perspectives can lead to a more comprehensive understanding of the emancipatory potential of entrepreneuring and the effects on fashioning history. Unique to the study is the insider perspective of the author who is an active participant and entrepreneur herself in the field of ethical fashion. Taken together, the study contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by empirically "testing' and expanding on the affirmative perspective to processes of entrepreneuring. It provides novel insights to (potential) entrepreneurs and adds to a more aesthetic understanding of entrepreneurship in which creativity and imagination play an essential role. Above all, this dissertation discloses an authentic account of the journey of becoming a scholar. It is a celebration of the dynamics of self in a changing society.
Der Beitrag stellt Ergebnisse einer wissenssoziologischen Diskursanalyse von gleichstellungsorientierten Organisationsreformen an Schweizer und deutschen Universitäten vor. Organisationale Veränderung wird mit dem Ansatz des skandinavischen Institutionalismus als Übersetzungsprozess (Czarniawska/Sevòn 1996, Czarniawska 2014) konzipiert, bei dem Prozesse der lokalen Bedeutungskonstitution im Mittelpunkt stehen. Um Bedeutungsstiftung konsequent diskursanalytisch zu fassen, ergänzen wir den Ansatz um das diskurspsychologische Konzept der ‚interpretativen Repertoires‘ (Potter und Wheterell 1986). Hiermit untersuchen wir, wie lokale Sinnstiftung diskursiv vermittelt ist. Unsere Analyse zeigt, dass der untersuchte Veränderungsprozess in verschiedenen Zyklen prozessiert, die sich durch verschiedene jeweils dominant werdende interpretative Repertoires auszeichnen. Dies führt zum einen zu unterschiedlichen Legitimationen von neuen Ideen, zum anderen zu unterschiedlichen materialen Konsequenzen. Darüber hinaus zeigen wir, dass gleichstellungsorientierte Organisationsreformen bei entsprechender Gestaltung der Veränderungszyklen sukzessive an den Kernbestand von vergeschlechtlichten Organisationen heranreichen können, indem sie Schritt für Schritt den Bereich des Sag- und Thematisierbaren erweitern.
