‘Different Strokes for Different Folks’- The Construction of Social Enterprise in India

Abstract

The discursive construction of the social enterprise phenomenon to an extent has dominantly been accomplished through the western academic literature and policy discourses by embracing a business-management school perspective. Literature also highlights social enterprises as a contextual phenomenon, however there is a dearth of qualitative and region-specific investigation and there is a considerable deficiency of literature critically examining the construction of social enterprises in India. Entrepreneurship research has highlighted the multiplicity and intersectionality of context and re-examines ‘all-are-alike’ approach which prevents from understanding diverse nature of entrepreneurship (Welter & Gartner, 2016), which involves moving away from compartmentalisation of ‘context’ and ‘individual’ to provide a more authentic understanding of entrepreneurial actions (Spedale & Watson, 2014). Although scholars highlight multiplicity of context in theorising context in entrepreneurship research, however context has been dealt in a simplistic manner ‘discrete contexts’ (singular variable) having a functionalist role in promoting or constraining entrepreneurship. Thus, theorising context in entrepreneurship needs ‘multi-context perspective’ using diverse sampling (groups), across multiple sectors (sampling) and conducting contextual research in diverse settings from different disciplines (Welter, 2011). Taking this forward, in a special issue of six papers Chandra and Kerlin (2021) puts back theorising context in social entrepreneurship research and expanding the facets of social entrepreneurship. This special issue offers a typology of contexts in social entrepreneurship research that points out the extant of areas available for further research that can help in theory, practice and policy building. This qualitative enquiry adopts a social constructivist lens and an inductive theory-building approach to examine social enterprise phenomenon in India. It will use semi-structured interviews involving thematic narrative analysis research design with two groups of participants: (a) paradigm building actors (i.e. Government, social impact investors, incubators and educational institutions) (b) practitioners from three generational cohorts (i.e. SG senior generation, generation X and generation Y).

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