1. 4th INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL INNOVATION
RESEARCH CONFERENCE (ISIRC 2012)
‘Social enterprise’ and
dis/identification in the UK
third sector:
Toward a dialectic view of
power / resistance
Pascal Dey & Simon Teasdale

3. Content
1
Social enterprise and the UK third sector: Power,
government, resistance
2 Empricial analysis of processes of dis/identification in the
UK third sector
3 Social enterprise and the dialectic of power / resistance

4. Social enterprise and government
UK is the most developed government-led support
structure for SE (Nicholls, 2010)
The ideological role of social enterprise in UK post-
welfarism:
“‘Social enterprised’ as opposed to ‘privatised’ public
services becomes ideologically more appealing for many
and politically less controversial and/or confrontational”
(Sepulveda, 2009, p. 3).

5. Power: Condign, compensatory and
conditioned (Galbraith, 1983)
Condign power produces submission on the part of the
individual by “inflicting or threatening appropriately
adverse consequences” (p. 5).
Compensatory power tries to win submission by offering
people rewards
Conditioned power works in a more subtle manner; i.e. by
changing the belief (and identity) of the individual

6. Power: Condign, compensatory and
conditioned (Galbraith, 1983)
Condign power produces submission on the part of the
individual by “inflicting or threatening appropriately
adverse consequences” (p. 5).
Compensatory power tries to win submission by offering
people rewards
Conditioned power works in a more subtle manner; i.e. by
changing the belief (and identity) of the individual

7. Government) power and social enterprise
Condign power: ???
Compensatory power: Government grants, contracts,
recognition/prestige, social capital
Conditioned power: Discourse, ideology

8. Social enterprise and conditioned power
Mason (2012): government uses social enterprise
policies (SEASS, SEAP) as a means to reconstruct
“contested ideas to conform with its own interests”
Grenier (2009): government policies use social enterprise
“to influence how practitioners [...] think, to imply possible
futures and to constrain what is done in practice”
(Grenier, 2009, p. 177)
Carmel & Harlock (2008): discourse of social enterprise
prescribes that „all VCO (voluntary and community
sector) public service providers are to be social
enterprises, behaving like business enterprises in a level
playing field with the private and public sectors.” (p. 163)

9. The limits of social enterprise discourse
Seanor & Baines (forthcoming): “taking place at the level
of national government and business discourse, it does
not reflect the ethos and resistance amongst
practitioners” (p. 17).
Parkinson & Howorth (2008): “discursive shifts [towards
dominant entrepreneurship discourse], driven by policy-
makers, funders, the sector and academics alike, do not
necessarily infiltrate ideology at the level where the action
is located” (p. 305).

10. Social enterprise and local resistance
Parkinson & Howorth (2008): Social enterprise: “’it’s
amusing!’, ‘it’s ridiculous!’, ‘too posh … I’m working
class’” (p. 301).
Seanor & Meaton (2007): social enterprise practitioners
reject the prevailing image of the heroic leader and even
deny wanting to become social entrepreneurs.

11. The Project
‚Real Times‘
Longitudinal project aimed at understanding the day-to-
day reality of SE (e.g. practices, patterns of change,
challenges)
15 core case studies
Interviews (N > 200)

12. Michel Pêcheux’s Model
Dis/identification forms the process through which
individuals either submit to discursive invocations or
else resist them
Three-part model:
→ Identification: individuals ‘freely consent’ to the ideological
discourse
→ Counter-identification: individuals reject or oppose the ideological
discourse
→ Disidentification: individuals properly displace ideological
discourse, for instance by tactically misrecognising and hence
demystifying the dominant rhetoric

13. Preliminary Results
Enthusiastic Practitioners embrace SE without mentioning any
engagement form of concern or reservation: „we‘re a social
Identification enterprise and we‘re something different“
Reflective Practitioners embrace SE while conceding that their
endorsement identification was ambivalent: „the CIC status ...
wasn‘t going to help entirely with a sense of identity“
Private irony Practitioners express their sense of discomfort vis-a-
vis SE privately while publicly endorsing it
Counter-
identification Public Practitioners publicly reject SE
opposition
Displacement Practitioners eschew SE by adopting an alternative
Disidentifica- discourse: „we’re a co-op first, we are part of the
tion third sector and we are a [sports] club”

14. Social enterprise as a failing operation?
Social enterprise Social entrepreneur Social innovation
N. Transcripts / References References References
Observation notes
ASH 16 37 3 11
BEECH 9 86 5 -
BIRCH 19 21 - 1
CEDAR 19 34 - -
CHERRY 19 10 - -
FIG 16 2 - -
FIR 12 38 - -
HAWTHORN 13 7 - -
INDIGO 8 0 - -
LARCH 14 27 2 -
MIMOSA 17 1 - -
MULBERRY 12 4 - -
PINE 6 1 - -
SYCAMORE 22 3 - -
TEAK 15 195 - -
TOTAL 217 466 10 12

15. The missing links
Economic resources: “the dull compulsion of
economic relations completes the subjugation of the
laborer to the capitalist” (Marx, 1954, p. 689)
Synchronic inquiries ignore the dynamic nature of
identity work and the ever-changing nature of social
enterprise discourse

16. Dialectic approach
Dialectics implies that power and resistance belong
together → circular pattern
Practitioners are never able to fully step outside of the
influence of social enterprise discourse nor fully
determined by it
Dialectics would explore the possibilities and
impossibilities that exist precisely in keeping the
opposites between power and resistance in tension
and play

17. Dialectic of power / resistance
Teasdale (2010): practitioners present themselves
and their organizations in different ways to different
observers → gain economic resources from a wide
range of sources and helps them resist pressures to
conform to a singular way of thinking and acting
Own study: ‚tactical mimicry‘ → practitioners
“pretended” to be social entrepreneurs in order to
create particular opportunities

18. Thank you for your attention

19. Appendix

20. The Project (Cont.)
Analysis
→ Step 1: keyword search to identify cases and interview
passages where practitioners talked about SE (‚social
enterprise‘ (n = 466), ‚social entrepreneur‘ (n = 10),
‚social innovation‘ (n = 12))
→ Step 2: analyzing the identified interviews from the five
selected cases in terms of dis/identification
→ Step 3: iterative negotiation of results to further
refine/develop Pêcheux’s three-part model