The Benefits of Ambiguity: The Emergence of the Organizational Category of Social Entrepreneurship

Organizational sociologists are reaching consensus that the path towards societal change often passes through the emergence of new organizational categories with initially ambiguous and contested boundaries. Nevertheless, ambiguity is treated as a temporary condition that recedes once contestation is resolved in favor of one emerging category with clear boundaries and a dominant definition. Our study of the emergence of the category of "social entrepreneurship" challenges the assumption that one category variant will become dominant over time. Instead, it offers insights into the conditions and processes that enable ambiguous organizational categories, which accommodate multiple category variants and embody the expectations of multiple audiences, to emerge and persist over time. Our proposed model highlights how fragmentation and new opportunities across fields give rise to multiple category variants that enjoy varying degrees of moral, cognitive and pragmatic legitimacy. In the absence of one variant tha...