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Social Entrepreneurship

Social entrepreneurship is one of the most notable innovations in the global era. By challenging the conventions of established social and environmental organizations and building new models of cooperation and exchange between the public, private, and civil society sectors, social entrepreneurship aims to provide systemic and scalable solutions to some of the most pressing threats and urgent issues that currently impact billions of people around the world. It is concerned with the effects of climate change and environmental degradation, new health pandemics, water and energy crises, growing migration, seemingly intractable issues of inequality and endemic poverty, the rise of terrorism and nuclear instability, and the “challenge of affluence” in many developed countries.

The impact and influence of social entrepreneurship can be identified across the world in terms of direct interventions and action on the ground and also in terms of its wider, political influence as a movement for societal change that aims to reframe debates and alter institutional logics to increase the effectiveness of the provision of public goods and grow the positive externalities of social and environmental action. This entry defines social entrepreneurship as a global-level phenomenon and locates it as a new set of logics and institutions that aim to achieve systemic change and address market failures across the public, private, and civil society spheres.

The Concept of Social Entrepreneurship

Social entrepreneurship is a fluid and contested phenomenon. Indeed, in some senses, it is a field of action in search of an established institutional narrative. To a large extent, the diversity of discourses and logics that characterize social entrepreneurship reflect the internal logics and self-legitimating discourses of a broad range of influential (resource-holding) actors actively engaged in building the field. Thus, for government, social entrepreneurship is conceptualized as the solution to state failures in welfare provision. For civil society, it is conceived of as space for new hybrid partnerships within civil society, a model of political transformation and empowerment, or a driver of systemic social change. Finally, for business, social entrepreneurship is cast as a new market opportunity or a development of socially responsible investment.

Nevertheless, despite its institutional flexibility, several defining characteristics of social entrepreneurship can be discerned. First, all social entrepreneurship shares a primary strategic focus on social or environmental outcomes that will always override other managerial considerations such as profit maximization. Second, there is evidence of innovation and novelty in challenging normative conceptions of an issue, in the organizational model developed, or in the products and services delivered (or, sometimes, in all three dimensions). Finally, there is a strong emphasis on performance measurement and improved accountability aligned with a relentless focus on improving the effectiveness of organizational impact and scale and durability of outcomes. These three factors can be further refined under three headings: sociality, innovation, and market orientation.

Sociality

The sociality—or social and environmental focus of social entrepreneurship—can be identified in three aspects of its action: the macro-level institutional context in which it operates, the organizational microprocesses it employs, and the focus and nature of its impacts and outcomes. In terms of institutional contexts, social entrepreneurship is usually associated with six domains focused on the creation of public goods: (1) welfare and health services (e.g., Aravind Eye hospitals in India), (2) education and training (e.g., the Committee to Democratize Information Technology in Brazil), economic development (e.g., work integration social enterprises in Europe), disaster relief and international aid (e.g., Keystone's innovative Farmer Voice project), social justice and political change (including race and gender empowerment, e.g., SEWA in Pakistan), and environmental planning and management (e.g., the Marine Stewardship Council). With respect to organizational processes, social entrepreneurs have pioneered innovations that create new social value in terms of employment practices (targeting excluded populations), supply chain management (fair trade), energy usage and recycling (the Green Thing), and financial structures (Community Interest Companies, cooperatives, L3Cs [low-profit, limited liability companies]). Finally, the outcomes of social entrepreneurship are defined by their social or environmental impact rather than their financial return with success or failure calibrated within an explicitly values-driven framework.

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