Politicising Social Entrepreneurship: Three Social Entrepreneurial Rationalities Toward Social Change

Scholars in the field of social entrepreneurship are challenging the researchers to produce empirical research on the social dimension of this phenomenon. Drawing on Foucault, this paper proposes the notion of ‘social entrepreneurial rationality’ to capture the social dimension of social entrepreneurship. The article builds on a comparative case study of three social ventures, each adopting a different rationality to bring about change in regards to the organisation of their societies along ethnicity. The first introduces micro-finance in Sweden to address long-term unemployed women of immigrant background; the second is an immigrant youth association working to promote the group's values; the third is the collective production of public art in traditional immigrant suburbs of Stockholm. Whereas the first uses an economic rationality to address ethnic inequality, the second and the third make use of discursive and community rationality, respectively. This challenges social entrepreneurship scholars to acknowledge the political mileage of social entrepreneurial rationalities toward social change.