A dark side of institutional entrepreneurship: Soccer balls, child labour and postcolonial impoverishment

Institutional entrepreneurship is typically portrayed in a positive light in the institutional theory literature, frequently symbolizing ideals of progress and innovation. In this paper, we explore a 'darker' side of institutional entrepreneurship by considering how the long-standing institutional practice of child labour was eliminated from the world's largest soccer ball manufacturing cluster in Sialkot, Pakistan. Our focus is upon the operation of power rather than the agency of the coalition of entrepreneurs. We show how power operated hegemonically in solving and reporting the issue of child labour in a way that deflected attention from 'darker' problematic aspects of this seemingly progressive and benign institutional reform. Consideration of these dynamics presents a challenge to conventional representations of institutional entrepreneurship and suggests the relevance of developing a more critical perspective when studying instances of institutional work.