| 1. |
- Gaddefors, Johan, et al.
(författare)
-
Rural entrepreneurship research : promoting reflexivity or functional stupidity?
- 2013
-
Ingår i: Conference abstracts. - : University of West Scotland.
-
Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This paper departs from an ongoing interactive research project on entrepreneurial enclaves in southern Sweden aimed at promoting regional development through interaction between local stakeholders, academic researchers and undergraduate university students in three different municipalities. The logic of the project is that university students and academic researchers launch projects in the three municipalities. The projects are planned and performed with support from the local community. By initiating projects in the three municipalities, the research idea is that processes will start that can lead to new initiatives. Through initiating action and interaction the aim of the project is, in an experimental way, to see how entrepreneurship is mobilized. The question is how activities develop in the municipalities as a result of the research project, and how conflicts and resistance partake in this process.After having worked with the research project for half a year two issues surprised us; the conformity of the ideas in our three enclaves and the close relatedness, when it comes to practical solutions, between practice and academia. The research project seemed to have resulted in standardized, expected and widespread, common solutions to the kinds of problems and opportunities that are ascribed to the rural areas. As the solutions produced within the project are collaboratively discussed and decided upon by academic staff and local stakeholders, the fault of this lack of imagination seem to be a problem for all of us. Preconceptions about what is important in rural entrepreneurship guide us as researchers when we try to understand the field. Preconceptions were also a point of departure in the enclaves we studied, resulting in a few common solutions for how to cope with downturn and produce regional development. In this paper we are using the concept of functional stupidity (Alvesson & Spicer, 2012) to reflect upon the benefits as well as the drawbacks of the tendency, in the academy as well as in society at large, to produce a stereotypical menu of problems and suggested solutions when it comes to rural development. We also discuss the possibility to break this norm by promoting a kind of reflexivity that has the potential to produce surprising and norm-breaking ideas in the area of rural development.
|
|
| 2. |
- Gaddefors, Johan, et al.
(författare)
-
Staging rural entrepreneurship
- 2014
-
Ingår i: Presented at the 12th Rural Entrepreneurship Conference, Harper Adams University, Shropshire, UK, June 18-19, 2014. ; , s. 1-16
-
Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
|
|
| 3. |
- Gaddefors, Johan, et al.
(författare)
-
Stepping up from the audience : the researcher as director and part of the ensemble
- 2013
-
Ingår i: 22nd Nordic Academy of Management conference held at University of Iceland Reykjavík, 21-23 August, 2013. - : Nordic Academy of Management. ; , s. 73-73
-
Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Adopting a theatrical metaphor, we argue that the engaged researcher can interact with the situation studied in three different research positions: as one of the directors staging an event (1), as a member of the ensemble performing an event (2), as a member of the audience observing an event (3). The three research positions identified are developed theoretically based on action research and interactive research. Those two affiliated methodological traditions have been developed out of the conviction that the neutral and distant research ideal is unrealistic and even problematic, as it holds out the prospect of a possible “view from nowhere” where the presence of the researcher does not influence the situation studied. We give examples from two research projects. In the first project a PhD student interacted within three different events using a specific research position in all three events, thus using all three positions within the same project. In the second project undergraduate students staged his/her project with local stake-holders, and researchers interchangeably staged events as well as took part of the ensemble performing the event and took part in certain events as part of the audience. Taking different roles as well as changing roles made the travel between closeness and distance to the research process possible as well as making sense of the studied processes in both projects. In the first project with a sole researcher extended time is necessary, while in the second project the different roles can be divided by members of the research ensemble.
|
|
