Thursday, December 18th | 13h00-15h00
We will have the great pleasure of welcoming Medhi Malekifar. Medhi is a PhD student at emlyon. He’ll be giving a talk entitled:
Agency in Retreat: Entrepreneurs and the Strategic Disengagement from Social Conflicts
Abstract:
While entrepreneurship is often framed as a vehicle for (self-)emancipation or social impact, and entrepreneurial agency as the capacity to generate novelty and drive social change, this research investigates a less examined dynamic: How small for-profit businesses inadvertently become sites of resistance in conflicts unrelated to their core operations or goals. Drawing on qualitative data from media reports, social media content, and interviews with entrepreneurs, experts, and citizens, I examine entrepreneurs’ strategies in response to the enforcement of hijab laws by the Islamic Republic of Iran state in the wake of Woman, Life, Freedom social movement. The findings bring insights on a less-studied dimension of entrepreneurial agency by showing how entrepreneurs, when caught in the middle of social conflicts, actively avoid engagement by implementing a repertoire of strategies deployed through material means, direct action, discourse, and institutional channels. This research also shifts focus from the resource re-distribution approach, common in studies of entrepreneurs in authoritarian countries, by looking at the micro-level mechanisms of entrepreneurial agency in politically constrained environments.
The event takes place in emlyon business school, at Lyon and on Teams.