Business as a pretext? Managing social-economic tensions on a social entreprise's websites

Abstract

The ubiquity of tensions and paradoxes in organizations is increasingly acknowledged, but literature is scarce on the actual practices mobilized to deal with them. This paper explores how the social-economic tension experienced by a social enterprise is dealt with discursively through its mission statement and two websites. While first sight observations suggest that the poles of the tension are split between the two websites (one regular and one transactional/for online sales), closer analysis reveals the micro-strategies used to innovatively reformulate and reconnect the poles. The store (online and physical) appears as “more than a store”, and communities are numerous and shifting in territorial and membership terms. This paradox-inspired analysis shows how the social and the economic are textually intertwined, but it also shows further “intra-pole” tensions. Websites appear as “sites of action” that allow the tensions to be both stressed (through the splitting of the organization over two sites) and accepted (through the links they allow to create between the poles, within and between texts), while constituting an organization with social and economic goals.