Social Entrepreneurship Research

Social entrepreneurship is often seen as differing from other forms of entrepreneurship in the relatively larger emphasis put on social benefit over monetary benefit. However, a key component to entrepreneurship remains — that is, the need and ability to demonstrate profitability to ensure scale and long term viability, which in turn maximize social benefit.

As a field of scholarly investigation, social entrepreneurship provides a unique opportunity to constantly challenge and rethink standard business and management assumptions.

Social enterprise research is therefore often “a source of explanation, prediction, and delight,” according to IESE Business School academics, Johanna Mair and Ignasi Marti. Their article, Social Entrepreneurship Research: A Source of Explanation, Prediction and Delight,” elaborates on the view that social entrepreneurship is a process that catalyzes social change and addresses social need in a way not dominated by direct financial benefit for the entrepreneur.

The article explores several themes along the way. Crucially, it distinguishes social enterprises from regular enterprises as the “relative priority given to social wealth creation versus economic wealth creation.”

Therefore the authors believe, the concept of embededness (or social value within economic value) as the nexus between the ideas and theoretical perspectives for the study of social entrepreneurship introduced in the last section.

These theoretical perspectives are divided as follows:

Structuration Theory: That it is impossible to detach the agent (social entrepreneur) from the sturcture (community, society).

Institutional Entrepreneurship: These are actors who have an interest in modifying institutional sturctures or creating new ones. They leverage resources to create new institutions and transform existing ones.

Social Capital: This is broadly defined by researchers as actual and potential assets embedded in relationships among individuals, communities, networks and societies.

Social Movements: Which researchers have found focus their efforts on four key issues: a) political opportunities and threats, b) resource mobilizing structures and active appropriation of sites for mobilization, c) collective action frames and identity formation; and d) established reportoires of contention and innovative collective action by challengers and their member opponents.

Read the entire article here.