New narratives of development work? Making sense of social entrepreneurs’ development narratives across time and economies

• Published in: World development Vol. 107; pp. 306 - 326
• Main Author: Chandra, Yanto
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01.07.2018; Elsevier Science Publishers; Pergamon Press Inc
• Subjects: Analysis; Businesspeople; Computational linguistics; Computer applications; Development; Development narrative; Development studies; Economic aspects; Economic development; Economic sectors; Entrepreneurs; Entrepreneurship; Framing; Identity; Industrial development; Language processing; Linguistics; Narratives; Natural language interfaces; Ownership; Political ideologies; Pragmatics; Social development; Social enterprise; Social entrepreneur; Social entrepreneurship; Sustainable development; Development; Computational linguistics; Social enterprise; Social entrepreneur; Development narrative
• ISSN: 0305-750X; 1873-5991
• DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2018.02.033

•This article examines the ‘development narratives’ of 1076 social entrepreneurs (SEs) using computational linguistics (CL).•SE narratives follow the “compelling story” format, and neutral- to soft-sell genre.•SE narratives are less political and more pragmatic, community focused, and steeped in technical language than conventional narratives.•SE narratives incorporate current development ideas and models but are reframed to address contemporary, complex development challenges.•SE narratives show that SEs employ a bottom-up approach and multi stakeholder collaborations to achieve their goals. This article views social entrepreneurship as a relatively new model for achieving sustainable development. It also identifies development narratives that social entrepreneurs (SEs) construct to represent and promote their work as an important research gap in development studies. Drawing on the development and narratology literature, and employing computational linguistics (CL) techniques, this article compares the development narratives of 1076 Ashoka SEs across two periods (2009–2013 and 1994–1998) and two economies (developing and developed). CL analyses reveal important themes that characterize the identity, framing and orientations of development SEs across time and economies. The findings demonstrate how SE development narratives i) tend to be more pragmatic and solution-centric, and contain less political ideology than conventional development narratives, ii) combine extant development ideas and models but reframe them in new ways to address contemporary, complex development challenges, and iii) reflect a ‘bottom-up’ approach that encourages local ownership and collaborations with various social and economic sectors to achieve development goals. Overall, this study identifies the increasing importance of SEs in the development industry and reveals new aspects of SEs—their latent political framing, collective-utilitarian identities, and topical areas—that require further research via development narratives.