Organizational form and pro-social fantasy in social enterprise creation

Abstract

Why do social entrepreneurs retain their faith in social entrepreneurship despite the organizational tensions and anxieties inherent to this field of practice? In this article, we employ the psychoanalytic concept of fantasy to advance knowledge on social enterprise creation. The research analyses qualitative data relating to the adoption of the Community Interest Company, a bespoke organizational form for social enterprise. We argue that social entrepreneurs adopt a specific organizational form because it represents a fantasmatic object that supports their desire for pro-social work. This fantasmatic form appears to temporarily neutralize tensions and anxieties while preserving attachments to pro-social ideals. Our first contribution is to extant research on the role of fantasy in social enterprise. Specifically, we elucidate how social enterprise creation is riven with fantasy-laden attachments to ideals of pro-social work that promise to counteract concerns about future viability as well as competing social and for-profit missions. Our second contribution is to highlight the role that organizational form choice plays in effectively managing such tensions and anxieties as it provides a robust anchor for pro-social desires. Fantasmatic attachments to pro-social work and organizational form thus emerge as integral to social enterprise creation.

How digital fantasy work induces organizational ideal reversal? Long-term conditioning and enactment of digital transformation fantasies at a large alternative bank (1963–2019)

“…Recent organizational scholarship on the role of fantasy in organizations has challenged critical theorists’ hierarchical and exploitative ‘power over’ assumptions (Ekman, 2013; Glynos, 2011; Kenny et al, 2020). Drawing on the seminal distinction between ideological and ethical sublogics of fantasy work (Glynos and Stavrakakis, 2008: 965; Lacan, 1966), Ekman (2013: 165) confirms that professionals tend to underinvest in the ethical sublogic, that is, collective choices on how to cut fantasies of limitless possibility to size.…”

“…Similar to Ekman (2013), Kenny et al (2020) argue that social entrepreneurs’ ideological attachments – in this case to the pro-social fantasy of societal enterprise projects (Driver, 2017; Moroz et al, 2018) – can sustain their desire to believe in the limitless possibilities of their work in the face of failure – the disillusion of an ethical ‘lack’ of social contingency. By contrast, ‘ethically overinvested’ members – for instance cooperative idealists – are unable to renew alternative organizational ideals because they find it ‘difficult to deal with contingency, recognize novelty, and [do] not feel at ease with experimenting with new ways of being’ (Byrne and Healy, 2006: 248; Glynos, 2011: 288).…”

“…The case analysis and theoretical model demonstrate how both post-critical and critical theory power assumptions of executive fantasy work come into play. As argued by post-critical authors (Driver, 2017; Ekman, 2013; Kenny et al, 2020; Moroz et al, 2018) executive fantasy work initially is motivated by positive power ambitions – increasing the organization’s ability to renew the alternative ideal’s through ‘power with’ and ‘power to’ processes. The long-run premise that ideological fantasies sustain managers’ desire to champion pro-social alternative ideals through disillusion (Driver, 2017; Kenny et al, 2020; Moroz et al, 2018) must be nuanced, however.…”

“…As argued by post-critical authors (Driver, 2017; Ekman, 2013; Kenny et al, 2020; Moroz et al, 2018) executive fantasy work initially is motivated by positive power ambitions – increasing the organization’s ability to renew the alternative ideal’s through ‘power with’ and ‘power to’ processes. The long-run premise that ideological fantasies sustain managers’ desire to champion pro-social alternative ideals through disillusion (Driver, 2017; Kenny et al, 2020; Moroz et al, 2018) must be nuanced, however. Structural disillusion and resentment at the end of a fantasmic project, in combination with disciplinary digitalization pressures, engenders a shift from managers conditioning fantasmic affordances with genuinely positive power and alternative ideal ambitions to a hierarchical, mainstreaming agenda of cynical and pre-emptive power over.…”

“…More recent organizational scholarship integrates assumptions of a new hegemonic spirit of capitalism – based on project-based professional ideals and voluntary power to and power with relations – to defy criticisms of the manipulative, hierarchical character of ideological overinvestment in organizational fantasy work (cf. Bloom, 2016; Ekman, 2013; Rhodes and Bloom, 2012; Roberts, 2005) and emphasize its potentially positive effects for alternative ideal entrepreneurs (Kenny et al, 2020).…”