Doing Good and Selling Goods

Abstract

This paper explores a network of organizations and their perspectives on the social enterprise commodity. Based on ethnographic research, I present the case of recycled bags sold in the city centre of Vienna (Austria) by three organizations, including a work integration social enterprise. By reviewing two different strands in the organizational studies literature that both employ biological notions to theorize (social) enterprising, I argue that opposing "hybridity" to "ecosystems" is a suitable way to assess two different research agendas in that field. While I subscribe to the ecosystem focusseeing organizations as a function of the social environment -I make the case for the importance of research into "hybrid commodities" as a way to explore larger issues concerning social enterprise scholarship, such as mission drift, hidden agendas or organizational identity work.

The Fate of Social Modernity

“…Such organisations have at times been found to carry a strong ideational imprint of small activist groups or even a single person. Thus, Pfeilstetter (2020), studying a small firm employing marginalised citizens (e.g., former drug addicts) in Austria, illustrates the special approach of its founder (and manager) who defined her organisation as an ordinary ('petty capitalist') business 'paying "normal wages"' (ibid: 516-17) to its (temporary) employees, despite receiving huge amounts of public funding. The enterprise, selling expensive, recycled fashionable hand-bags modelled on a well-known commercial product, was competing with both private firms and other charitable projects.…”