revisions: opportunities for social entrepreneurship
Ellen S. O’Connor*
This chapter focuses on high-profile social entrepreneurship (HPSE) and ways to expand it. HPSE represents a particular interpretation of social entrepre- neurship (SE) that attracts considerable attention and support but is narrow in its location and scope. SE has the potential to address vital relationships across entrepreneurship and society (Steyaert and Katz, 2004). This chapter pursues that potential. First, it seeks to explain HPSE’s narrowness by locating it within specific historical, economic, and social contexts (limited to the US).
Then it pursues an expanded SE through three cases. The cases portray social action observed through an entrepreneurial lens and entrepreneurship through a social lens. Doing so illuminates three aspects of entrepreneurship that HPSE excludes: society as a field where entrepreneurial action occurs, social processes and entrepreneurial action as interdependent, and entrepreneurship as emergent in this field through these processes. These ideas extend Kaufman’s (1985) cauldron metaphor of entrepreneurship, which is reframed as the social cauldron.
to fund ‘students pursuing a businesslike approach to social science fields’
(Wall Street Journal, 13 May 2005, p. D2). Certain individuals, foundations, and nonprofit organizations (NPOs) have secured status as thought leaders in SE. Gregory Dees (Duke University) has published extensively on the topic, as has Jed Emerson (who helped start the Roberts Enterprise Development Fund [REDF] – George R. Roberts being of Kohlberg, Kravis and Roberts, one of the best known private equity firms in the US). REDF, which calls its approach SE, is known for employing, training, and retaining employees that for-profit companies do not typically hire. Jeff Skoll, a Stanford MBA and the first president of eBay, gave $7.5 million to Oxford to establish the Skoll Centre for SE; and his Skoll Foundation has developed an online SE network,
‘Social Edge,’ with global reach. Skoll has partnered with Bill Drayton and his organization, Ashoka, offering a mentoring approach to SE and a model whereby funds go to individuals rather than to organizations. The approach focuses on ‘systemic social change’ by rewarding and cultivating ‘social heroes’. The Skoll Foundation offers a checklist that applicants may use to determine if they are new heroes or not (www.skollfoundation.org/newheroes/
index.asp). Sharing stories of social heroes is a means to cultivate more social heroes. To this end, Skoll has partnered with Robert Redford. Skoll funds Sundance, Redford’s company; and Redford funds and makes films about social heroes for Skoll’s foundation – ‘documentaries that make a difference’
(Antonucci, 2005).
HPSE resides in business schools, particularly the elite schools, who must lead and certainly keep up with the latest trends. It emerges out of entrepre- neurship studies, itself a relatively new field in business schools – endowed chairs, for example, only having been established in the last generation.
Economically and socially, it arises out of high technology and venture capi- tal. It grew out of the ‘new economy’ of the 1990s in that wealthy entrepre- neurs, particularly in Silicon Valley, began to apply their business acumen and networks to social issues in three ways: (1) Prominent venture capitalists (such as John Doerr), high-tech CEOs (such as Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Ross Perot), and philanthropists intervened in the public school reform movement through political (lobbying) and charitable (donations, alliances) means as well as through for-profit educational enterprises (for example Leapfrog, owned by Ellison); (2) a new generation of young but wealthy entrepreneurs launched philanthropic efforts noted for a hands-on approach called ‘venture philanthropy’ (started family foundations, donated start-up stock to charities, funded and/or advised new NPOs); and (3) salons were convened, like the one in Silicon Valley by Laura Arrillaga, a lecturer in philanthropy at Stanford Business School (and daughter of a real estate tycoon and long-term Stanford benefactor), where young philanthropists discussed social investing and estab- lished ‘social venture’ portfolios. These networks are constructed and recon-
structed through events such as social venture competitions at business schools, where venture capitalists, CEOs, new-generation entrepreneurs and philanthropists, MBA students, and others convene.
HPSE also represents the latest form of an ongoing engagement of business and businesspeople in society. Going back to colonial life, philanthropy arose locally and from the ground up, in schools and churches, and through network, neighborhood, and family ties, especially among the elite (Hall, 1992).
Galaskiewicz (1997) emphasizes the role of peer pressure as elites build repu- tations and community ties by circulating across the three sectors.
Corporations have maintained ties to their local communities long before the current ‘strategic philanthropy’ or ‘corporate social responsibility’ develop- ments. ‘Cause-related marketing’ is hailed in the mainstream management literature as a pioneering development, with American Express’s Statue of Liberty restoration campaign credited as ‘the mother of all cause marketing campaigns’ (Gourville and Rangan, 2004, p. 40). However, unnoticed by social marketing experts is the fact that in 1885, Macy’s sponsored a sale of miniature copies of the Statue to raise funds for the pedestal of the original (Heald, 1970, p. 7). ‘[T]he firm’s records show enough cases of assistance rendered to social agencies to indicate a sense of relationship to the commu- nity beyond the walls and hours of the business itself’ (Heald, 1970, p. 7).
HPSE is of course managerialist, and that is one explanation for its narrow- ness. Baritz (1965) argued that management is only concerned with advancing its own agenda and cannot possibly address broad social issues. Collins (1998, p. 6) argued that such narrowness is characteristic of the US context. HPSE clearly brings a market orientation to social issues, and it originates in the US.
However, business efforts to ‘fix’ society have a long history, perhaps the most noteworthy being Taylor’s offer of scientific management as a way to solve social problems ranging from drunkenness and laziness to government waste (Taylor, 1911). At the same time, though, these moves represent business’s own struggle to fix, or perhaps redeem, itself – to show that, despite size and power and their uses and abuses, business is a legitimate institution and management is a profession. In this way, HPSE responds morally to the latest round of scandals, including the Internet bust, eroding public confidence in business as an institution, businesspeople as citizens, and – particularly in light of external threats such as globalization, multilateralism, and Islam – US capi- talism and capitalists.
Yet HPSE also comes with its unique contribution: an emphasis on vision and scale. The rhetoric of Silicon Valley, particularly in high-tech entrepre- neurship, is about changing the world (O’Connor, 2000). It appeals to large- scale ambition and heroism (Collins, 1998, pp. 36–38 describes the figure of the ‘hero-manager’). The high-tech industry (Apple, perhaps), was the first to establish formal job titles such as ‘Evangelist’. Vision is a rhetorical and
strategic statement in the appeal for moral and material support (O’Connor, 2002). Scale refers to the replication of one’s vision and methods on a national or global level. Impact is dramatic and transformational: systemic change, global change.