University of New Hampshire
“Changing the System While Leading an Organization”: Multilevel Opportunity Processes and Hybrid Organization-Field Logics
Abstract
Entrepreneurs who prioritize both organizational viability/performance and also desired changes to an issue field (such as poverty alleviation or protection of the natural environment) recognize and exploit opportunities across institutional levels. How do entrepreneurs with hybrid organization-field logics recognize and exploit opportunities for field-level change? To build theory of opportunity processes across multiple institutional levels, I propose an exploratory inductive multiple-case study of an exemplar group: Ashoka Fellows (‘pattern-changing’ social entrepreneurs) who both lead a market-based organization and have a successfully changed a state or federal policy. My research will contribute to theories of multilevel opportunity processes and the coevolution of organizations and fields, with practical implications for social and sustainable entrepreneurs who address ‘grand challenges’ of society.
Biography
Yusi Turell is a doctoral candidate at the University of New Hampshire, where she researches how social entrepreneurs change the institutional fields in which they are embedded. Previously, Yusi was founding co-director of the Center for Social Innovation and Enterprise, a joint venture of UNH’s business and policy schools. Prior to her academic career, Yusi led new initiatives at a national social enterprise (Citizen Schools), worked as a strategy consultant at Ernst & Young’s Center for Business Innovation, and researched case studies at Harvard Business School. Yusi holds a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and a master’s degree in technology and innovation management from the University of Sussex (UK) through a Marshall Scholarship.
Yusi Turell
