Solidarity Economy, Social Enterprise, and Innovation Discourses: Understanding Hybrid Forms in Postcolonial Colombia

Abstract

Dominant conceptions of solidarity economy, social enterprise, and innovation (SSEI) remain poorly positioned for understanding the diverse models emerging across the global South. The purpose of this paper is to examine the power relations between the global North and South in the production and dissemination of SSEI knowledge, highlighting the importance of recognizing alternative discourses in the global South. This contextual analysis is developed through consideration of the construction of the hybrid SSEI model in Colombia, drawing upon postcolonial theory and using Nicholls’ framework on the legitimacy of SSEI discourses. This paper offers the first application of postcolonial theory to the analysis of SSEI in the global South. This research has demonstrated that the construction of the SSEI sector in Colombia is a reflection of the dynamic interplay of the hybrids, as it incorporates the hero entrepreneur and business-like discourses within the traditional community discourse, which indeed is a combination of domestic (indigenous collective practices) and colonizer influences (e.g., cooperatives, associations). This paper also identifies the current tensions that have emerged from such hybridity within the country.

Postcolonial theories

“…Research on postcolonial approaches in the SSE framework is scarce. They have mainly focused on solidarity economy initiatives in the Global South (Lucas dos Santos and Banerjee 2019; Hillenkamp and Lucas dos Santos 2019; Calvo Martínez et al 2019), but have also started to provide an analytical framework for the social economy and voluntary sector in Western contexts (Lucas dos Santos forthcoming). It is worth recalling the huge potential for postcolonial theories to critically analyse how minorities have been supported by social welfare policies and included in projects by social economy organisations in Europe.…”

The Correlation Analysis Between Salary Gap and Enterprise Innovation Efficiency Based on the Entrepreneur Psychology

“…Based on individual achievement needs, the entrepreneur's achievement motivation is regarded as a psychological process of individual pursuit of goals. Therefore, more emphasis is placed on the discussion of achievement motivation as a psychological characteristic (Abodohoui et al, 2013;Ye et al, 2018;Martínez et al, 2019). The reason for entrepreneurs to take risk action measures in the decision-making process is that they have relatively optimistic expectations about the set decision-making scheme.…”