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Biography & Abstract
Florence Villesèche

Florence is Associate Professor and Vice-Head of Department for Research at CBS. She works on gender and diversity, identity, the corporate elite and networks. Since August 2019 she has also held the position as Academic Director of the CBS Business in Society Platform ‘Diversity and Difference’.

Social entrepreneurship as an alternative form of political organizing in post-revolution Tunisia

The political dimension is rarely addressed in the entrepreneurship literature despite clear links between social entrepreneurship, political and social change. In this article, we take interest in the Arab post-revolutionary context where activism has been studied mainly in the form of political activism including participation in protests, political engagement, or civil society projects. We investigate how ventures in the social and solidarity economy in Tunisia can constitute alternatives to conventional forms of political organizing and activism, beyond reviving the economy. We connect the experiences of entrepreneurs to macro-level data about the social, economic, historical and political context, following the Extended Case Method. We delineate four profiles: activists disillusioned by other historical forms of political organizing; activists embracing the entrepreneurial ethos; entrepreneurs seeking to impact politics via economic activity; and chancers who see a business interest in adopting a political stance on social change.

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