1. Who do social entrepreneurs think they are? Carole Howorth & Caroline Parkinson Institute of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development Lancaster University

2. Introduction study of ‘social entrepreneurs’ taking part in a learning programme also steering group and managers of local SE support project focus on discourse & micro narratives – Fairclough 38 interviews + 1 steering group meeting over 1 year

3. Research interests How is the (social) enterprise discourse reproduced? appropriated? - enterprise discourse hegemonic?? How do on-line constructions match up with externally imposed identities? Where do interviewees draw their legitimacy from? Tensions/struggles between meta rhetorics and micro discourses?

4. Participants & data identified by agencies as social entrepreneurs for new programme 19 total: 11 participants; 8 non-participants. of which: - 12 female, 7 male; - 6 incomers,13 local/returners; - 2 private sector. 3 ‘agency’ interviews 30 min - 3 hr semi-structured interviews taped and transcribed

5. Some caveats specificity of context limitations of interviews; influence of interviewers problematic nature of entrepreneurship research; cultural and conceptual barriers

6. Identity Chose to tell about: job history (& the chance element), domicile, the organisation or project, collective activities, motivations (helping people; helping selves) ie NOT enterprise/entrepreneurship S e’eur: disinterest; manager/pioneer; ‘social’ dropped; anyone can do S ent: money, income, sustainability (‘business’) Other identities – includes heroic saviour

7. Legitimacy committedness ‘out there’- ness R: Anything to do with the community, you’re out there trying to set up a partnership with them to you know build up the [organisation’s] name…I mean at the moment my main job is to go out there, meet people, meet residents, look at what the need is…. welfare local acceptance C: Just the acceptance locally I think is one of the big things. And fishermen, local people all think we’re on to a good thing for the community, for the area. And it could have been quite the opposite, very much the opposite.

8. Ideological/power struggles business talk, palliative (Cho, 2006) reality? D: I wouldn’t want to do it as a business as such because I wouldn’t want to make a profit out of people’s ill health and stuff. But yeah. meritocracy over capitalism D: I maybe wish it was easier just to get money on merit, like. Instead of having to have an exact costing for everything, I would like it if somebody could just say ‘here’s like….you know, it looks like a good business plan, here’s £300,000, see how it gets on. If you don’t spend it, give it us back’ sort of thing. I know it’s not really possible but […]if I hadn’t had to do all that [funding], I could have put so much more time into promotion and marketing and actually getting people in and making the service better. local government (not regional/national or industry) - central to both the problem and support networks community/people as ? - social pathology

9. Discourse & intertextuality 1 entrepreneurship/entrepreneur hardly reproduced (despite interview focus) enterprise re-written as business - then rejected or qualified (the ‘dark side’!) welfare and management discourses intertextually more important business assimilates to more moral/social discourse

10. Discourse & intertextuality 2: enterprise appropriated sustainability = the goal of business income = antidote to dependency success: i) achieved through stubbornness, dogmatism; ii) good feedback, ‘getting it up and running’, immeasurable difference (‘smiles’) idea generation = collective and problematised SEs as brokering ideas process, making the space for others. opportunity identification = unclear (except 3 males) risk = about others (liability, protection) networks = formal only (particularly LAs and trustees)

11. Compare to local ‘agents’ speak ‘the enterprises’, ‘social enterprises’ their remit: sorting the wheat from the chaff; adding value to new and existing start-up enterprises; working with people who have ideas identified themes for SEs: legals, business plans, marketplace, admin, corporate governance (‘small business operations’)

12. Thoughts & conclusions Not telling us much different to earlier research …or common sense?? But check the rhetoric and literature… May be acting ‘entrepreneurially’... but present a modified social construction of entrepreneurship? Critical awareness of: - meanings and misunderstandings (people will “talk the talk”) - the sustainability discourse in particular Implications for: i) understanding success (and support, resources, measurement) ii) understanding what makes people - and teams - tick iii) care in future research