IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/entreg/v35y2023i1-2p1-23.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The magical language of un-realistic venture ideas in social entrepreneurship

Author

Listed:
  • Marieshka Barton
  • Pablo Muñoz

Abstract

As social entrepreneurship gains maturity, research has begun to explore the less alluring aspects of the field, including the heroic stance of social entrepreneurs, the assumed moral superiority of their intentions, and the misleading emphasis on solutionism. In this paper, we explore a central component of this criticism, which is the construction of un-realistic venture ideas in social entrepreneurs’ pitches for social change. We analysed social venture business plans and the written feedback provided by judges during a social venture competition, and we used speech act theory to analyse the claims and promises triggering judges’ disbelief. We discovered three linguistic artefacts that underlie the construction of un-realistic venture ideas in social entrepreneurship, which we label holism, devotion, and enlightenment. While these artefacts trigger disbelief, they also play an expressive role as they channel both contestation and dreams. We leverage magical realism to forward an alternative explanation of how venture ideas in social entrepreneurship can act as a cultural form of social protest, which can be seen as a historically contingent, modern revolution.

Suggested Citation

  • Marieshka Barton & Pablo Muñoz, 2023. "The magical language of un-realistic venture ideas in social entrepreneurship," Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(1-2), pages 1-23, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:entreg:v:35:y:2023:i:1-2:p:1-23
    DOI: 10.1080/08985626.2022.2158492
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/08985626.2022.2158492
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/08985626.2022.2158492?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Domenico Dentoni & Carlo Cucchi & Marija Roglić & Rob Lubberink & Rahmin Bender & Timothy Manyise, 2023. "Systems Thinking, Mapping and Change in Food and Agriculture," Post-Print hal-04002011, HAL.
    2. Wesemann, Henrik & Antretter, Torben, 2023. "Why don’t you like me? Exploring the social venture funding gap in angel investing," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 20(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:entreg:v:35:y:2023:i:1-2:p:1-23. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/TEPN20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.