What is hope about ? Nurturing hope as a boundary condition for turning social identity development into entrepreneurial intentions
(2024) BERD 2024 - Belgian Entrepreneurship Research Day — Location: Bruxelles (25.April.2024)
Files
SolbreuxHermansBERD2024v2.pdf
Open Access - Adobe PDF
- 363.15 KB
Details
- Authors
- Abstract
- In a social & sustainable entrepreneurship course, reflective devices (reflective journals, lessons learned) should allow learners to make sense of “what” they have experienced, of those “with whom” they have experienced it, and of “why” this is important for them as members of the same collective (Solbreux et al. 2024). This process of meaning creation can support the development of a social identity anchored within different levels of collectives. For instance, learners make sense of their entrepreneurial experience as individual aspiring social entrepreneurs as well as a member of an entrepreneurial team (Wagenschwanz, 2021). Likewise, they can develop a social identity as members of an ecosystem (Radu-Lefevbre et al. 2021) and, in the case of social or sustainable entrepreneurs, as members of the community that fights against a given social or environmental injustice (Smith & Woodworth, 2012). However, this process of identity development will not necessarily lead to a higher entrepreneurial intention. In particular, eco-anxiety – approached here in the form of despair about the future of the planet – is a probable obstacle which would prevent the learners from projecting themselves into a future where entrepreneurial action is not in vain. Its counterpart, Hope, has been presented has a key lever for keeping the good fight in social and sustainable entrepreneurship (Miller et al. 2012). Likewise, the literature in collective action already provides evidence that Hope interacts with social identity and efficacy to influence the participation in collective action (see Thomas et al. 2016). In this work, our goal is thus to better understand whether learners develop socially anchored identities through their experience in a social & sustainable entrepreneurship course, the impact of identity development on entrepreneurial intention formation, as well as the role that Hope plays this process.
- Affiliations
Citations
Hermans, J., & Solbreux, J. (2024). What is hope about ? Nurturing hope as a boundary condition for turning social identity development into entrepreneurial intentions. BERD 2024 - Belgian Entrepreneurship Research Day, Bruxelles. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/272381