Piety and profit; the moral embeddedness of an enterprising community

ABSTRACT

We are interested in how morality can be sustained in entrepreneurial practice. We examine the interesting case of the Hutterites, a communal society who practice community entrepreneurship – entrepreneuring by the community and for the community. Arguing that culture provides values and that morals are cultural artefacts – we show how ethics determine the entrepreneurial practices of this remarkably successful entrepreneurial society. Our analysis explains how in this close-knit society, cultural morals and ethics of practice are perfectly aligned, embodied in practice and determine how entrepreneurship is practiced. The result is an economically viable society that preserves its ancient way of life and combines piety and profit. We demonstrate how cultural values shape entrepreneurial practice and how enterprising in this community is a change mechanism, yet also maintains social stability.

KEYWORDS:

• Moral embeddedness
• community enterprising
• ethics
• ethnography

Acknowledgments

This paper benefitted greatly from the feedback provided by the attendees of the 2018 Entrepreneurship-as-Practice Conference in Linneaus University. We would also like to express our gratitude to Trish Reay and Jennifer Jennings for their suggestions and guidance of the first author’s dissertation, which constituted the data source for this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. New ventures that are of the more standard form entrepreneurship – there is an already established market and clients.

2. New ventures that are more disruptive – markets and clients are not established.

3. The quotes in the findings are coded according to this table. For instance ‘1A’ refers to an informant A from colony 1, EX3 refers to external informant #3.

4. The Hutterites commonly assign positions using the term ‘boss’.

5. The ‘Front Bench’ is the Hutterite’s term for their executive team. This group of 3–5 men meet every morning and approve daily activities and requests.

6. Interview done together with Hog boss, also his cousin.

7. Interview done together with gardener (her mom).