Are They Really a New Species? Exploring the Emergence of Social Entrepreneurs Through Giddens’s Structuration Theory (original) (raw)
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Exploring the terrain of social entrepreneurship: new directions, paths less travelled
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The field of social entrepreneurship (SE) is reaching maturity (Sassmannshausen and Volkmann 2018). However, there remain numerous new directions and paths less travelled for exploring the varied and complex SE terrain. This book draws together sixteen chapter contributions from developing paths of the SE field, to signpost directions ahead. In this chapter we integrate and build on these rich insights, paving the way for a future research agenda to advance the maturing SE field. While some scholars suggest that mainstream entrepreneurship theories are sufficient to explain SE (Dacin et al. 2010), the field has been enriched by the application of different disciplinary approaches including management, public administration, economics, sociology, public health, and development studies. Up to this point methods have been predominately qualitative, arguably reflecting what a decade ago was characterised as a 'pre-paradigmatic' stage of field development (Nicholls 2010a), ranging from macro-studies of policy ecosystems to ethnographies. Economic theories have sought to explain the emergence of SE (Santos 2012) while realist evaluations (Roy et al. 2017) and systematic reviews (Calò et al. 2018; Roy et al. 2014) have been used to understand the impact of SE. Signs are emerging that scholars (and governments) are beginning to amass the datasets necessary for large-scale quantitative analysis (Estrin et al. 2013). While many authors use the terms social innovation, entrepreneurship and enterprise almost interchangeably, other scholars have focused on differentiating between them (de Bruin et al. 2014). Social innovation and SE are closely aligned. Despite this, the primary focus of this book is on SE, since a dual focus would have resulted in only thin coverage of both fields. However, the intricate and integral weaving together of the two fields is neatly captured in the final chapter of the book, Chapter 17 by Ziegler. The temporal perspective, future-orientation in capitalism and social imaginary ideas which are the crux of a chapter nominally focused on social innovation, are equally applicable to SE. As Ziegler aptly highlights, albeit in an endnote (note 1), his focus is on a strand of SE that relates to innovation and for brevity he refers to social innovations and social innovators, although this is not to assert that all social entrepreneurs are innovative. In similar vein, Luke and Chu (2013) show that not all social enterprises are entrepreneurial; although many chapters in this volume do not make such sharp distinctions between social enterprises and SE.
Unpacking the Antecedents of the Emergence of Social Entrepreneurship
2017
Despite the burgeoning research on social enterprise (SE), there is a dearth of research that investigates the biographical factors that influence the emergence of SEs in the form of hybrid organizations on a large scale. Drawing on the emerging narrative perspective of SE, we examine the biographical narratives of 317 self-identified social entrepreneurs who were selected as fellows by two of the world’s largest SE support organizations: Ashoka and the Schwab Foundation. We employ Gioia’s methodology and principal component analysis to derive and subsequently classify the biographical antecedents of SE emergence. This study makes a novel contribution to the SE-as-hybrid organization literature by revealing eight biographical antecedents of SE emergence, four of which can be categorized into social skills, and four others can be categorized into economic skills, which constitute SE’s social position. We also develop a typology of SE based on different combinations of individuals’ so...
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Journal of Entrepreneurship, Management and Innovation, 2018
INTRODUCTION Social entrepreneurship3, as a field of research, has gained enormous interest of academics in management and entrepreneurship literature for almost 30 years now. Also, scholars in other intellectual domains like economics, finance, marketing, political science, sociology and few others, have found it fascinating. As a term, it is common in public discourses and has found interest among policy makers, corporations, media, different groups of practitioners and professionals. As a phenomenon it is not new, although the SE term has been only recently coined (Banks, 1972; Drucker, 1979). For far more than two centuries great individuals and groups have tried to tackle the societal challenges, using economic means, such as the Rochdale Pioneers who inspired cooperative ideals, and Florence Nightingale – an English nurse and social activist, who changed the patient care landscape (Nicholls, 2006). Many of the ventures and actions of social initiatives can be traced to the earlier, medieval or even ancient times. Today, social initiatives and social enterprise have emerged in particular countries and regions as a result of their historical institutional trajectories, and “social enterprise landscape ZOO” (Young & Brewer, 2016) has become very heterogeneous. The interest of management and entrepreneurship research into the phenomenon has resulted in an unprecedented increase in scholarly output. The historical analysis of SE research (Moss, Lumpkin & Short, 2017) published in key journals and databases shows an increase from one paper to 45 papers published per year between 1990 and 2010. SE centers established in universities like Oxford, Harvard and Cambridge have designed degree programmes, dedicated textbooks, and separate SE conferences, special journals like Social Enterprise Journal, Journal of Social Entrepreneurship and many more have been introduced for educational and publication purposes. SE has become popular as a response to the inabilities of governments and business to solve pressing social problems, including poverty, social exclusion, and environmental issues. All of the above are manifested in the diversity of different SE initiatives. Thus, we express our interest to explain and predict SE and social enterprise as phenomena, to identify related antecedents and outcomes, but also to look into the box of SE processes. This special issue attempts to respond to this interest. Diverse methodological approaches including descriptive, explanatory or exploratory ones are included in the papers in this issue. SE phenomenon is studied on an individual, organizational, and even a macro level. Different data is employed: current or archival data, primary or secondary, referring to different country settings such as Taiwan, Poland, Italy and England. Through the inclusion of such diverse perspectives and context, this issue works as a holistic approach to the phenomenon under analysis. In the following sections of this paper, we first provide a succinct overview of SE as a phenomenon and research field. We summarize the definitional debate and point to valuable theoretical frameworks for studying SE. Next, we introduce individual authors’ contributions to the issue and, finally, we propose further suggestions for future research.
The quandaries of social entrepreneurship studies – a discursive review of the discipline
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The aim of this paper is to investigate the ways in which social entrepreneurship knowledge is both propelled and hindered by the socioeconomic circumstances. We examine the existing body of research and identify different conceptualizations and main schools of thought. We then demonstrate how the process of constructing academic representation is shaped by the prevalent public discourses. Our analysis leads to the differentiation between social entrepreneurship as mitigation and social entrepreneurship as transformation. We conclude that a better alignment of the two approaches-broadening research focus from outcome to process-would reveal their complementarity and contribute to the conceptual advancement of the discipline. We propose expanding the existing approaches with the politics of social entrepreneurship studies and stress the importance of increased reflexivity on the plight of the new discipline.