University of Minnesota Twin Cities, United States
Finalist for the OMT Division Best Entrepreneurship Paper Award
There is increasing attention to how entrepreneurship cannot be disconnected from social change. Past work has investigated how social movements create entrepreneurial opportunities, but the reverse has received limited attention. We investigate how entrepreneurship which starts out as a product of broader economic transitions can set in motion social ‘residues’ that fuel future collective action. In particular, we argue that entrepreneurship in new domains is associated with the disruption of the existing social order and the emergence of new bases of association, which can be repurposed for activism in response to lightning rod events. We study this in the context of industrial entrepreneurship in early 20th century China in the WWI period, and its subsequent relationship with local social protest following the May 4th movement in 1919, using an event history framework. We contribute to the literature at the intersection of entrepreneurship and social movements and discuss implications from this historical study for understanding how economic change fueled by entrepreneurship can be engines of social disruption and change.
