Theorizations of a Grand Challenge: The Danish Tech Industry’s Social-Symbolic Work with Diversity

In this paper we explore how different key actors within the Danish technology field use and theorize role models as a change tactic to work with the grand challenge of social diversity. We draw on an ethnographic field study of the Danish technology entrepreneurship field, when analyzing the collective effort of change agents and activists to change technology entrepreneurship to accommodate more social diversity, especially female entrepreneurs. Specifically, we examine change agents’ social-symbolic work in relation to the grand challenge of social diversity. We find three different ideal types of role models: the conservative, the revolutionary, and the reformist. These conceptions are accompanied by three distinct change theorizations and social-symbolic work, and ultimately infuse different institutional change pathways (institutional maintenance, - accretion, and - alignment). We contribute to the literature on institutional change and grand challenges, as we elaborate on how what might appear as a shared goal, with shared means (role model) and ends (social diversity) in mobilizing for a grand challenge, actually differ tremendously, because the same tactic is theorized quite differently, fostering different pathways for change. Based on our findings, we discuss some key unanticipated consequences of the three ideal types, i.e., the attribution of responsibility-, the narrowing of scope-, and the translation of the grand challenge.