lotteries funding scholarships at no cost to the state, may focus dia- logue on the joy of alleviating symptoms rather than upon the difficult process of resolving the social pathologies that produced them.
The social entrepreneur’s answer to this critique is obvious and pow- erful. It is easy to argue that society needs consensus around major structural changes rather than entrepreneurial solutions to patholo- gical symptoms. But when markets and states are unresponsive to
‘social’ considerations, then surely it is better to intervene and assist those in need rather than to sacrifice them for the sake of attracting attention to the need for social change. This is an important and valid critique, and it is beyond the scope of this paper to resolve the debate.
objectives. These political processes of negotiation are both formal and informal, and they represent the best hope of achieving a discursively mediated compromise around what constitutes the common good.
SE may, however, sidestep these processes in a monological effort to circumvent grid-locked institutional processes of negotiation.
Monological approaches pose two principal threats: they may coer- cively impose entrepreneurs’ visions of terminal objectives and the means appropriate to achieve them, and they may yield incomplete, even perverse solutions that ignore fundamental drivers of social problems. As Iris Marion Young notes:
Ensuring investment in needs, infrastructure, and education and training enough to support self-development for everyone and the organization of the work of society so that everyone who is able does meaningful work requires much society-wide decision-making and coordinated action. Precisely the virtues of civil society, how- ever – voluntary association, decentralization, freedom to start new and unusual things – mitigate against such coordination. Indeed, the activities of civil society may exacerbate problems of inequality, marginalization, and inhibition of the development of capabilities.
For persons and groups with greater material and organizational resources are liable to maintain and even enlarge their social advan- tages through their associational activity. Especially to the extent that their associational life is private as distinct from civicly ori- ented, their associational activities often reinforce unequal oppor- tunities for developing capabilities. Associations of civil society, moreover, cannot mobilize the amount of resources necessary to support conditions for the self-development of everyone. (Young, 2000: 186)
As a subset of ‘civil society’ that pursues putatively common objec- tives, SE should heed Young’s admonitions. First, while SE may produce immediate and impressive gains, it cannot replace sustained public engagement with questions of social importance. Second, as the lottery example suggests, relying on SE to fill these gaps raises the pos- sibility of generating unexpectedly perverse outcomes that may disem- power its intended beneficiaries. Third, while SE addresses local symptoms of deeper political and institutional malaise – poverty, exclusion, marginalization, environmental degradation – it may also avoid discursively mediated processes that could produce more inclu- sive and integrative systemic solutions. Social entrepreneurs, then, may Albert Hyunbae Cho 53
need to adjust their optical depth of field to include the background institutional processes that generate the pathologies that motivate their existence, and realign their behavior accordingly.
The analysis of SE’s political dimension suggests a number of guiding principles for social entrepreneurs. Initially, SE is a promising tool for resolving specific problems, but it must be seen as a comple- ment to, rather than a substitute for, processes of governance and deliberation. Social entrepreneurs must not underestimate the impor- tance of participation in processes intended to broker and articulate social compromises. They should approach the public sector as a potential partner rather than a competitor in the delivery of key ser- vices. In places where governance is weak, this may entail supporting movements designed to improve and rehabilitate the capacity of the public sector to define and meet social needs. If social entrepreneurs are truly committed to the advancement of broader social objectives, they cannot afford to isolate themselves from other key actors, but must actively search for opportunities to cooperate with and actively support their partners.
To avoid the adverse consequences of monologue, the social entre- preneur can attempt to supplant monologue with dialogue. Dialogical action is not subjective, but intersubjective; it treats others as inter- locutors whose needs and ideas should be respected, rather than as objects to be manipulated or inferiors to be taught, enlightened or instructed. Approaching SE through the spirit of dialogue entails both a shift in frame and a shift in action. Initially, it involves moving toward an understanding that others might have valid views and objectives very different from one’s own; what Laible (2000) calls a
‘loving epistemology’. Second, it means putting dialogue in practice, through partnerships and networks that include affected stakeholders in the articulation and assessment of needs, as well as in relevant delib- erative processes. Partnerships and networks help organizations expand the scope of their inquiries and provide a discursive forum for social entrepreneurs to test hypotheses about their interpretations of social needs. But if they are to be substantively valuable and not perfunctory exercises, dissenting views need to be taken seriously and incorporated into decision-making processes and outcomes.
SE is unquestionably a very promising avenue for effecting social change. But the very efficiency that is its hallmark is also a critical cause for concern. History is littered with examples of individuals who have attempted to advance their view of the world to the exclusion of competing perspectives, and results have been decidedly mixed. Given 54 Social Entrepreneurship
the shifting and deeply contested nature of the ‘social’ good, attention to politics and values will be critical if SE is to fulfill its potential as a driving force for positive social change.
Note
1. ‘Type I’ errors are ‘false alarms’, for example, including in SE something that should not be. Type II errors are ‘failed alarms’, which omit relevant cases from the sample.
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56 Social Entrepreneurship
5
Social Entrepreneurship: Innovation and Social Change Across Theory and Practice
Francesco Perrini and Clodia Vurro
Introduction
Companies and nonprofits, regardless of the sector they belong to, their dimension or their geographical location, are increasingly asked to provide innovative solutions to manage complex social problems:
from community development to social exclusion and poverty reduc- tion (Margolis and Walsh, 2003). Social entrepreneurship (SE), an unusual contact point among entrepreneurship, innovation and social change, has been increasingly catalyzing the interest of academics, companies, and the business debate for about a decade. Attention is expanding exponentially with a multiplicity of publications, MBA core and elective courses and academic research centers explicitly focused on deep analysis of the SE phenomenon. There are also numerous innovative and supportive actors such as specialized consulting groups, social venture capitalists, social angels and so on.
In this context, therefore, it becomes critical to identify how SE pro- tagonists – ‘socially entrepreneurial ventures’ (SEVs) and ‘socially inno- vative entrepreneurs’ – feel about and act on social change in terms of the altered performance capacity of society (Bornstein, 2004).
It is not by chance that in this chapter we will speak about SEVs (Waddock and Post, 1991; Kanter, 1999; Henton, Melville and Walesh, 1997; Dorado and Haettich, 2004) or alternatively about ‘innovative social purpose business enterprises’ (Campbell, 1998; Foryt, 2002;
Larson, 2000; Mair and Noboa, 2003a; Schaltegger, 2002; Volery, 2002). These alternative expressions have been introduced in an attempt to give the same weight to the different components of the SE
57
construct (that is, entrepreneurship, innovation and social issues), as well as to avoid misunderstandings when assigning a typical nonprofit nomenclature (such as ‘social enterprise’) to organizations consistent with the SE paradigm.
Starting from these premises, the present contribution aims at an assessment of how SEVs are actually responding to this tension over entrepreneurial involvement in filling wider social gaps. In so doing, we first identify the drivers of SE affirmation and emergence. Second, we reframe current SE literature in order to answer three main ques- tions: (i) what does SE mean?; (ii) how do SEVs work and how are they managed?; and (iii) who are these socially innovative entrepreneurs?
Third, we shift from theory to practice and analyze the behavior of 35 acknowledged SEVs in order to uncover consistency in their aptitude towards social change and wealth creation. In this section, we focus on four areas: (I) mission, vision and organizational values; (II) entrepre- neurial opportunities and innovation; (III) entrepreneurial model; and (IV) social welfare impact. Fourth, we conclude with brief reflections on the correspondence between theory and practice in order to obtain a preliminary descriptive framework of the SE process. Ultimately, we draw attention to some empirical questions and implications for future research.
Before going on a clarification is due: the number of SEVs analyzed is not to be considered as comprehensive or perfectly proportionate to the current range of social entrepreneurial initiatives around the world. Organizations were at first chosen with reference to the avail- ability of structured data and information on their explicitly socially entrepreneurial nature and later with reference to their own awareness of being part of the SE movement. In so doing we have attempted an assessment of behavioral descriptions starting from well-established experiences and recognized best practices.