De-linking Enterprise Culture from Capitalism and its Public Policy Implications
| Author | Colin C. Williams |
| Date | 01 October 2007 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0952076707081590 |
| Published date | 01 October 2007 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
© Public Policy and Administration
SAGE Publications Ltd
Los Angeles, London, New Delhi
and Singapore
0952-0767
200710 22(4) 461–474
De-linking Enterprise Culture
from Capitalism and its Public
Policy Implications
Colin C. Williams
University of Sheffield, UK
Abstract
Although a small literature has recently emerged that highlights the existence
of social entrepreneurship, the idea that entrepreneurship and enterprise culture
might be other than profit-driven capitalist endeavour is seldom entertained.
Instead, enterprise culture is widely viewed as a by-word for contemporary
capitalist culture. The aim of this article is to evaluate critically this dominant
narrative. To do this, GEM’s UK Social Entrepreneurship Monitor is used to
compare the levels and ratios of commercial-to-social entrepreneurship across
various population groups and areas in the UK. The finding is that one-third of
all entrepreneurs are driven primarily by social goals rather than profit, and that
cultures of entrepreneurship markedly vary across population groups and areas,
with rural and marginalized populations displaying a greater propensity to
engage in social rather than profit-driven entrepreneurship. The article
concludes by discussing the public policy implications of this finding that
enterprise cultures are not everywhere and always profit-driven, raising
questions not only about whether the promotion of profit-driven
entrepreneurship in marginalized populations is akin to parachuting in an alien
enterprise culture but also whether a focus upon social entrepreneurship might
promote greater inclusiveness in the enterprise culture agenda than is currently
the case.
Keywords
enterprise culture, entrepreneurship, public policy, third sector, UK
Introduction
Are enterprise cultures always embedded within the social relations of profit-
driven capitalism and are entrepreneurs everywhere motivated by individual
financial gain? If not, what proportion of entrepreneurs are driven by wider social
DOI: 10.1177/0952076707081590
Colin C. Williams, School of Management, University of Sheffield, 9 Mappin Street,
Sheffield S1 4DT, UK. [email: C.C.Williams@sheffield.ac.uk]
461
Public Policy and Administration 22(4)
goals and are they evenly spread across all groups and areas or concentrated in
some populations? If the latter, then where are they concentrated and what impli-
cations does this have for public policy? Do cultures of entrepreneurship exist
among some populations where the promotion of profit-driven entrepreneurship
could be seen as akin to parachuting in ‘foreign’ enterprise cultures? And would a
focus on promoting social entrepreneurship in such populations enable greater
inclusiveness in the enterprise culture agenda than might otherwise be the case?
This article seeks to answer these questions. To do this, first, a brief review is
undertaken of the discourses that profit-driven capitalism is becoming hegemonic
and that enterprise culture and entrepreneurship is always and everywhere
intimately related to the advent of this more commercialized culture. To evaluate
critically this dominant discourse, the article then analyses the findings of Global
Entrepreneurship Monitor’s (GEM) UK Social Entrepreneurship Monitor.
Comparing the degree to which entrepreneurs are driven by wider social goals
rather than individual financial gain in different UK population groups and
geographical areas, this will reveal the existence of different cultures of entrepre-
neurship in various populations. Many marginalized groups will be here shown to
display a culture of entrepreneurship that is more oriented towards wider social
goals than profit. The article then concludes by beginning to explore the implica-
tions for public policy. This finding that cultures of entrepreneurship markedly
vary across populations will be here shown to raise questions about whether it
is appropriate to parachute into some populations a culture of commercial entre-
preneurship ‘foreign’ to their enterprise culture, and whether a focus on social
entrepreneurship in the enterprise culture agenda will promote greater inclusive-
ness of populations traditionally under-represented.
Enterprise Cultures and Profit-driven Capitalism
All societies have to produce, distribute and allocate the goods and services
required by their citizens. In all societies, therefore, an economy of some type
exists. Economies, however, can be organized in various ways. To depict how
economies can be configured, commentators commonly differentiate three modes
of delivering goods and services, namely the ‘market’ (private sector), the ‘state’
(public sector) and the ‘third’ sector (Boswell, 1990; Giddens, 1998; Gough,
2000; Polanyi, 1944; Powell, 1990; Putterman, 1990; Thompson et al., 1991),
even if different labels are often used, with Polanyi (1944) referring to ‘market
exchange’, ‘redistribution’ and ‘reciprocity’, and Giddens (1998) discussing
‘private’, ‘public’ and ‘civil society’.
At the present historical juncture, the widespread belief is that of the three
modes of delivering goods and services, it is the market that is expanding while the
other two spheres are contracting (e.g. Scott, 2001; Smith, 2000; Watts, 1999).
Indeed, few today can conjure up an image of the future based on anything other
than the further encroachment of profit-driven capitalism. As Amin et al. (2002:
462
Williams: De-linking Enterprise Culture from Capitalism
60) pronounce, ‘the pervasive reach of exchange-value society makes it ever more
difficult to imagine and legitimate non-market forms of organisation and provi-
sion’. Although few would go so far as to assert that the other spheres have totally
disappeared, the widespread belief is nonetheless that what is variously called the
commercial, market, commodified or capitalist sphere is becoming ever more
dominant and approaching a near hegemonic position. This is argued not only by
populist writers such as Rifkin (2000: 3) who argues that ‘The marketplace is a
pervasive force in our lives’, but also political economists such as Ciscel and
Heath (2001: 401) who assert that capitalism is transforming ‘every human inter-
action into a transient market exchange’, and anthropologists such as Gudeman
(2001: 144) who purports that ‘markets are subsuming greater portions of every-
day life’, as well as Carruthers and Babb (2000: 4) who believe that there has been
‘the near-complete penetration of market relations into our modern economic
lives’. The outcome, in the eyes of one leading neo-liberal economist, is that
‘Capitalism stands alone as the only feasible way rationally to organize a modern
economy’ (De Soto, 2001: 1) and asserts that ‘all plausible alternatives to
capitalism have now evaporated’ (De Soto, 2001: 13). It is not just neo-liberals,
however, who view this to be the case. As one of the key intellectuals of the west-
ern left, Perry Anderson, asserts, ‘For the first time since the Reformation, there
are no longer any significant oppositions – that is, systematic rival outlooks –
within the thought-world of the West; and scarcely any on a world scale either, if
we discount religious doctrines as largely inoperative archaisms’ (Anderson,
2000: 17).
For adherents to this capitalist hegemony thesis, therefore, one mode of
exchange is replacing all others. Profit-driven monetary exchange of goods and
services (i.e. capitalism) is becoming the economic institution rather than one
mode of producing and delivering goods and services. As Slater and Tonkiss
(2001: 3–4) assert, ‘recent political and economic orthodoxies treat markets as
self-evident, permanent and incontestable’.
This dominant discourse concerning the growing dominance of profit-driven
capitalism is similarly mirrored in the vast majority of the literature on entrepre-
neurship and enterprise culture. Although since the late 1990s there has emerged a
small sub-stream of literature that highlights the existence of social entrepreneur-
ship (Dees, 1998; Drayton,...
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