The local construction of social enterprise markets: an evaluation of Jens Beckert's field approach

Abstract

Despite the rapid growth of interest in social enterprises (SEs) and the intense controversies over their merits in addressing pressing social, economic and environmental issues, there has been surprisingly little attention given to explicit theorization of how the markets for their goods and services are constructed and maintained. Towards this end this paper examines the conceptualization of market fields formulated by Jens Beckert. His approach conceptualises firms as engaged in a constant struggle to defend or improve their position in relation to others firms by either protecting existing structures or changing them to realise new opportunities. This framework is used to analyse the reciprocal interactions between forces of institutions, networks and cognitive frameworks as they serve to construct opportunities for SE. These relationships are exemplified with evidence from respondents in SEs in four cities in England – Liverpool, Birmingham, Southampton and the London borough of Newham. The analysis suggests that Beckert’s approach helps to move beyond a singular notion of a single ‘market logic’ and allows us to unpack some of the hybrid character of SE markets. However, because of the way in the field perspective has been designed to explain agency in orthodox capitalist markets, it struggles to incorporate the motivations that drive agency in these markets.

More information

Identifiers

ORCID for Peter Sunley: orcid.org/0000-0003-4803-5299

Catalogue record

Export record

Altmetrics