Biography & Abstract
Hannah Knox Tucker
Hannah is Assistant Professor tenure-track at CBS and a member of the Rethinking Entrepreneurship in Society team. She is interested in the entrepreneurial and managerial functions of traders in the early-modern Atlantic and the social effects of entrepreneurship on society in past and present.
Toward a political theory of entrepreneurial capitalism
In this paper we draw on the political philosophy of Isaiah Berlin and Charles Taylor to develop a political theory of entrepreneurial capitalism. Specifically, we introduce the construct of “entrepreneurial imaginaries” as collective moral judgments of forms of entrepreneurial organization that are considered threats or aids to mutual freedom. We theorize that forms of entrepreneurial organization that were once understood as aids to freedom are reinterpreted as threats to freedom as they grow dominant. The result is a dialectical political theory of entrepreneurial capitalism. We illustrate the theory by showing how it can explain the evolution over America capitalism over the last two centuries, and we draw out the implications for interpretations of entrepreneurial capitalism today.