Building alternative futures: The role of prefiguration in social entrepreneurship

Waseem, Maimoona and Shanahan, Genevieve ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5989-8992 2026. Building alternative futures: The role of prefiguration in social entrepreneurship. The International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation 10.1177/14657503261416701

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Abstract

Enterprises claiming a social mission face increasing scrutiny over whether their innovations drive genuine transformation or rather reinforce existing problematic systems. Building on the distinction between compensatory and transformative social entrepreneurship, this research note proposes prefiguration as an appropriate framework for theorizing the latter. Prefiguration names the pursuit of societal transformation by materializing alternative systems within local initiatives, which then together function as decentralized laboratories developing system-level solutions. This strategy is adopted by many social enterprises today, as illustrated by our case study of Equal Care Co-op, a platform-based care cooperative combining digital, social, and democratic innovations to challenge the exploitative UK care system. We argue that, by integrating prefiguration theory into social entrepreneurship scholarship, researchers can better distinguish genuine transformation from superficial disruption, yielding both more accurate models and greater support for enterprises pursuing emancipatory alternatives to contemporary capitalism's systemic failures.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Schools > Business (Including Economics)
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
ISSN:	1465-7503
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	26 January 2026
Date of Acceptance:	6 January 2026
Last Modified:	27 Jan 2026 09:10
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/184209

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