From ballet studio to business school: dancing in the social enterprise in-betweens

The Centre for Social Enterprise at Memorial University of Newfoundland was officially launched in 2017. With me in the role of founding manager, it became a hub of expertise and activity on social enterprise, specific to Newfoundland and Labrador, the most easterly province of Canada. During my five years in that role, I established the centre, designed and delivered its programmes and helped create a unique MBA in social enterprise and entrepreneurship at the university. These are the public works I engage with through this thesis.

Social enterprise is a pre-paradigmatic field and a popular trend. Through this thesis, I take an autoethnographic approach to engage with my public works and to examine the ques􀀁on ‘What is social enterprise?’ The objective is to raise new insights as a contribution to practice and teaching.

After explaining my choice of autoethnography as my critical lens, I contextualise my public works at the macro-, meso- and micro- levels. I then present my experiences creating my public works through an autoethnodrama as form of critical reflection.

The next sections comprise a critical analysis of social enterprise. Drawing on new insights which emerge from the autoethnodrama, I argue that various meanings of social enterprise are constructed through practice. I describe how social enterprise operates within a pluralistic market system where enterprising activities within that system co-exist, but do not participate equally.

I return to my background in dance to compare this conceptualisation of social enterprise with enterprise activity in the arts. Using the case of Les Ballets Russes, I describe parallels between art enterprise and social enterprise, and develop a conceptualisation based on a spectrum. To conclude, I discuss the autoethnographic process and present future directions for social enterprise education and research.