Entrepreneurship for Social Change 1
The project Entrepreneurship for Social Change, or more specifically - Entrepreneurship, Leadership and the Art to Write (Hi)story, aims to highlight and analyse human action, the organizing and management of activities aiming at social change. The study is based on the Red Cross' activities to prevent and alleviate human suffering in Sweden and in the world.
Theoretically the study is based on entrepreneurship, management and leadership theories and theories elaborating on the organizing of different types of activities in (civil) society. There is a particular interest in tensions such as the cross road between individuals' engagement, organizational governance and leadership beyond formal authority. The link between (emergency) response and long-term development is also emphasized in this study as well as the tension between internal and external interplay related to the identification of what needs are to be addressed, how this should be done and what it leads to for people in Sweden and the world.
The first two years of this Flexit-project is a field study where the Red Cross is the everyday workplace. The empirical material is developed through participatory observation, longer and shorter structured interviews, a large amount of conversations, as well as analysis of documents. The study has obvious elements of interactive research and collaboration.
The Flexit project "Entrepreneurship for Social Change," or more specifically "Entrepreneurship, Leadership and the Art to Write (Hi)story" is based on several years study of civil society and its role in society. The project's basic aim to illustrate the relationship between different types of interventions and long-term development has been established throughout the project even if the questions have been adapted due to current activities of the collaborating organization – the Swedish Red Cross.
The Flexit project design where the first two years of research are conducted 'in-house', in this case within the Swedish Red Cross, the aim has also come to include the relationship between different 'organizational logics' such as the more informal engagement driven voluntary work in relation to a more formal hierarchical decision making structure with clear influences of a corporate management culture.
A third aspect added to initial plans, has been to map and to initiate development of a more systematic collaboration between the organization and academia. This has been connected to a wider aim to highlight and improve learning from different types of knowledge in the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.
Empirical material has been collected mainly in Sweden but also through visits and conversations with people from the Red Cross or Red Crescent Societies in Bangladesh and Myanmar in Asia, Liberia and Sierra Leone in West Africa as well as Japan, UK, USA and at the international headquarters in Geneva. The Flexit researcher Gawell has also participated as an analytic interlocutor in projects with focus on volunteering in areas of conflict (based on transcribed interviews with volunteers in six conflict-affected countries) and work with so called psycho-social support in, or due to, armed conflicts and violence.
Within the first part of the Flexit project, several short texts have been delivered in different organizational contexts. Internal Red Cross reports will be made available during spring 2017 and then form basis for further scientific publishing.
During the Flexit project's second part, that is the third year at Södertörn University, the focus is on the completion of scientific publications primarily in the areas of organization / management and development studies. Also, publications on various aspects of methods for collaboration are currently being developed.
A more comprehensive description of the scientific contributions will be submitted as both parts of the Flexit project is completed and reported in 2018.