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The Sekem Initiative
(2005)
La Iniciativa Sekem
(2005)
This case documents the circumstances of managing the growth phase of a start-up company. Entropy International faces the unique challenges and opportunities of social entrepreneurship but also entrepreneurship in general. Founded by a visionary environmental activist in 1996 as an environmental consulting boutique in the United Kingdom, Entropy grew with the emerging needs of large multinational corporations to publicly report on and minimise the environmental and social impacts of their operations. Entropy started out as a two-person consultancy to become the market leader in Europe, selling an integrated environmental, health and safety, quality control and reporting suite. At the time of the case (March 2003), Entropy employed 30 people and expected revenues of 1.6 million pounds for fiscal year 2003.
This case portrays a complex set of circumstances that frames Sekem's decisions to further grow and develop the initiative along its historical path of holistic development in the social, economic and cultural spheres. The case documents the history of the initiative and lays out the major constituents and their internal and external relations. Sekem was founded by Ibrahim Abouleish, an Egyptian who had been living, studying and working in Austria prior to his return to Egypt in 1977, the year he established Sekem. Literally starting from nothing, ie, a piece of desert land north of Cairo, Abouleish showed tremendous resourcefulness, creativity, and perseverance. Driven by a strong belief in his personal mission, Abouleish built up the Sekem initiative that in 2003 consisted of three main parts: the Sekem group of companies, the Egyptian Society for Cultural Development and the Co-operative of Sekem Employees, together employing more than 2,000 people. Sekem was also a hub managing a large network of associated farmers and companies within Egypt and abroad. It also ran a medical centre for the local community, a kindergarten, primary and secondary schools, an adult training centre, special needs education programmes, and an academy for applied arts and sciences. In 2003, Abouleish won the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the 'Alternative Nobel Prize', in recognition of Sekem being the blueprint of the organisation of the 21st century. Abouleish has also received an award as an 'outstanding social entrepreneur' from the Schwab Foundation of the World Economic Forum. Abouleish's objective was to heal Egyptian society from the wounds of the past and to initiate holistic development able to create economic, social and cultural value in a sustainable manner.
This case describes the evolution of a community affairs initiative called the India Programme, run by the Zurich Financial Services (UKISA) Community Trust. ZFS (UKISA) is UK-based and specialises in general insurance and life assurance. It is part of the Zurich Financial Services group of companies, headquartered in Switzerland, and was formed in 2000 after the completion of the merger between Zurich Insurance of Switzerland and the UK-based insurance operations of BAT Industries - Allied Dunbar and Eagle Star. The case explores how an initiative with a social objective (the India Programme) comes into being within a large organisation and is subsequently developed. It describes how external events such as the merger affect the development of the programme and offers the potential to explore how the mechanics of the initiative can be changed to fit with company strategy. The case also examines how a company can create economic value through a social initiative and how to manage the twin objectives of social value creation and economic value creation over the longer term. As an example of an initiative that combines social and economic value creation, the case can be used to illustrate a range of issues within the fields of corporate social responsibility, social entrepreneurship and community affairs management. It also deals with interesting human resources and talent development issues.
At the end of 1997 Allianz, the German insurance group, acquired AGF, a key player in the French market. With this move Allianz not only reinforced its strategy of multilocality, but also added momentum to the ongoing consolidation process in the European and global insurance sector. In the course of the merger implementation process several issues appeared; among the most prominent, the integration of existing businesses (subsidiaries) in other than the domestic markets. This case series focuses on the Spanish market and illustrates Allianz's endeavor to integrate 3 previously autonomous and organizationally and strategically distinct subsidiaries (Allianz-Ras, AGF-Union Fénix, Athena).
Der vorliegende Learning Report ist Ergebnis des Begleitforschungsprojekts zum Open Social Innovation Format UpdateDeutschland. Ziel ist es, alle Interessierten mit Konzepten, Sprache und Erkenntnissen auszustatten, um Open Social Innovation besser zu verstehen und gemeinsam weiterzuentwickeln. Der Learning Report bietet einen Überblick über UpdateDeutschland und erklärt anhand von UpdateDeutschland den Open Social Innovation Prozess; analysiert Daten rund um Herausforderungen, Teilhabe und Aktivität, um das Verständnis der Open Social Innovation Methode bei UpdateDeutschland zu vertiefen; zeigt vier verschiedene Pfade auf, die versinnbildlichen, wie bei UpdateDeutschland Wirkung entstanden ist; beleuchtet welchen breiteren Nutzen und welche Herausforderungen sich für Verwaltungen im Laufe des Prozesses ergaben; beschäftigt sich mit vier zentralen organisatorischen Herausforderungen; und bietet eine kritische Reflexion über Open Social Innovation und zeigt das transformative Potential auf.
Social innovation is a fast-growing field of practice that has caught the attention of management and entrepreneurship scholars. The recent excitement surrounding “open social innovation” contests raises the question of what makes social innovation solutions successful contenders in these ubiquitous contests. We used uniquely assembled data, including data generated from external evaluators, to explore what determines success in an open social innovation contest (n = 150 out of 871 entries) in the field of poverty alleviation. We found that innovators who had networks with corporations and those who had commercial orientations were more likely to succeed in open social innovation contests. We also discovered that the perceived usefulness and innovativeness of social innovation solutions mediated these positive relationships. Our study offers early insights that deepen our understanding of success in the growing practice of open social innovation.
How informality affects habitual improvisation in firms: insights from the Nigerian movie industry
(2021)
Research has often underestimated the pervasive and global occurrence of informality because studies largely define informality as illegal economic practices. This study adopts a multidimensional view of informality to explain how and why firms habitually improvise even when they do not experience unexpected or extreme eventualities. We addressed this concern through a comparative ethnographic study of three film production crews in the Nigerian movie industry. Our findings unravel the multiple dimensions of informality and define habitual improvization. We build a theoretical model that traces the organizing principles of informality and how they affect the modes of implementation and outcomes of habitual improvization. Finally, we offer an agenda for future theoretical and empirical research on informality and organizational improvization.
How firms strategically navigate informal and formal copyright practices: insights from Nollywood
(2021)
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to explain how and why firms configure copyright practices when confronted with state-sanctioned laws and informal customs projected by local ethnic or religious communities.
Design/methodology/approach
A multi-case inductive study of four film-producing organizations within the Nigerian film industry (i.e. Nollywood) was conducted. Specifically considered were firms that started their operations around the same time with similar founding conditions, experiences, resources and technical competencies. Field observations and multiple rounds of in-depth interviews were conducted to achieve the research objectives.
Findings
The study found that firms adopted dominant or hybrid configurations when interacting with informality and formality. Dominant configurations represent the exclusive adoption of informal copyright practices while hybrid configurations refer to the blended use of informal and formal copyright practices. The second set of findings revealed that each firm’s strategic intent affected the type of interactional configuration that unfolded in the firm. Specifically, firms with social intents tended to adopt dominant configurations, whereas firms with socio-economic intents tended to adopt hybrid configurations.
Practical implications
The study implies that firms may profit from strategically focusing on when and in what circumstances to adopt informality. Strategic intents that blend social and economic rationales may secure more positive interactive outcomes from internal and external stakeholders promoting formality and informality.
Social implications
This study highlights the fact that firms embedded in local religious and ethnic communities use organizational practices to solve social and institutional problems of their members. The copyright practices of these organizations encourage apprenticeship, youth empowerment and entrepreneurship in Nigeria.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that goes beyond macro-level analysis to investigate the interactional dynamics between formality and informality at the firm, community, and state levels. The study is also first of its kind to use copyright practices as an analytical lens to explore the interaction between informality and formality.
Open Social Innovation
(2021)
Literature on categories recognizes that in the early stages of a category, ambiguity can arise from divergent frames used to define the category. Yet it also largely expects this ambiguity to be either temporary, or else detrimental to the survival and evolution of the category. In this study, we demonstrate and explain how, alternatively, category ambiguity can persist when multiple frames continue to be applied to a category as it progresses into maturity. Drawing on an in-depth qualitative study of the case of social entrepreneurship, we examine how and under what conditions this outcome occurs. We specify two co-occurring conditions that prompt category stakeholders to shift their framing from exclusive to inclusive, enabling category ambiguity to persist. We furthermore show how the use of category frames that draw from pre-existing resonant categories supports the persistence of category ambiguity. We contribute to literature on categories by clarifying the antecedents of category evolution towards a trajectory of persistent ambiguity.
Sharing Economy
(2020)
The sharing economy can be understood as a web of markets in which individuals exchange goods and services. Market exchange is typically based on transactions mediated by a digital platform operated by an organization (Mair and Reischauer 2017). The multiple legal forms, orientations, and modes of compensation these organizations adopt combined with the broad range of markets including food, tool, and ride-sharing exemplify the potential of the sharing economy to nurture alternative forms of organizing with social purpose (Mair and Rathert forthcoming) to affect the economy, society, and the environment in new ways (Frenken and Schor 2017).
Das #WirvsVirus Begleitforschungsprogramm
Seit dem Start des Hackathons begleiten wir, Prof. Johanna Mair (Hertie School und Stanford University), Thomas Gegenhuber (Leuphana Universität und JKU Linz), René Lührsen und Laura Thäter (wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter*innen) den #WirvsVirus Hackathon und das Umsetzungsprogramm. Ziel ist es zu erforschen, welche Lehren aus diesem Experiment für künftige Initiativen gezogen werden können. Wir als Forschungsteam verstehen uns als Lernpartner*innen dieses Experiments: Neben regelmäßigem Austausch mit den #WirvsVirus Organisator*innen schufen wir eine respekt¬volle, kollaborative Umgebung für gemeinsames Lernen mit allen beteiligten Interessensgruppen.
Die Datenerhebung besteht aus 200+ semi-strukturierten Interviews mit allen Interessensgruppen (Teams, Organisator*innen, Pat*innen und Unterstützer*innen, sowie politische und zivilgesell¬schaftliche Akteure), Dokumentenanalyse (z.B. Analyse von Medienartikeln) sowie teilnehmende Beobachtungen (circa 650 Stunden Begleitung in „Echtzeit“, wie z.B. Teilnahme an Community- Calls). Darüber hinaus organisierten wir am Ende des Umsetzungsprogramms einen Workshop mit ausgewählten Teams, bei dem wir gemeinsam die Innovationsreise der einzelnen Projekte reflek¬tierten. Unsere Analysen basieren auf den empirischen Daten, die wir im Zeitraum eines knappen Jahres – von März 2020 bis Februar 2021 – sammeln konnten. Unsere Analysemethoden und -werkzeuge, sowie die Modelle, die wir anwenden und entwickeln, sind inspiriert von zahlreichen Vor¬denker*innen (s. Literaturliste).
Die ersten Ergebnisse aus dieser Forschungsphase sind der vorliegende Learning Report und der bereits veröffentlichte Policy Brief. Diese Ergebnisse ergänzen die Abschlussberichte der Organisa¬tor*innen.
Das Forschungsprojekt wird vom Bundeskanzleramt befürwortet und dieser Teil wird von der Vodafone Stiftung gefördert.
Services that are especially suited to being offered via online labor platforms, such as cleaning, driving and tutoring, are frequently performed in an informal way, especially in emerging-market countries. The informal economy is thus important for recruiting workers for labor platforms. Platform use, however, requires formal service provision, which workers in the informal economy often resist. Thus, labor platforms have to promote workers’ transition from informal to formal service provision. While recent studies have hinted at labor platforms’ fostering of formal economic activity, we know little about how such intermediation unfolds. We use a process lens and comprehensive qualitative data on labor platforms in Panama and Mexico to study how labor platforms steer workers to formal service provision. Detailing the interactive process of workers transitioning to formal service provision as triggered by labor platforms, we add to platform research and literature on intermediation between informal and formal economic activity.
In this chapter, we assess the link between scaling, control and organizational achievements. We argue that control is essential to coordinate organizational members towards a common and shared goal and to provide guardrails for scaling. We use the experience of the Aravind Eye Care System, a non-profit organization based in India providing eye care services to poor people to specify the mechanisms employed by Aravind underpinning three popular organizational scaling modes—branching, affiliation and dissemination. Our objective is to show how control and scaling can be combined in order to protect the value base of a social enterprise and at the same time ensure growth.
This Learning Report is the result of the accompanying research project on the Open Social Innovation format UpdateDeutschland. The aim is to equip all interested parties with concepts, language and insights to better understand and jointly develop Open Social Innovation. The Learning Report provides an overview of UpdateDeutschland and uses UpdateDeutschland to explain the Open Social Innovation process; analyzes data around challenges, participation, and activity to deepen understanding of the Open Social Innovation methodology in UpdateDeutschland; highlights four different pathways that symbolize how impact was created in UpdateDeutschland; illuminates what broader benefits and challenges emerged for administrations throughout the process; addresses four key organizational challenges; and offers a critical reflection on Open Social Innovation and highlights its transformative potential.
Organizations across sectors appear to be shifting their ambitions from solving social problems to changing entire social systems. This phenomenon offers a timely opportunity to revisit what came to be known as the third mandate of organizational theory. In this paper we interrogate how organizational scholarship can productively explore and theorize the relationship between organizations and social systems in organized system change – an effort by organizations to alter the conditions that generate the characteristics of social problems and their dynamics of change. As a basis for theorizing organized system change, we develop an analytical scaffold that helps researchers to attend to fundamental aspects of the phenomenon and to achieve parsimony without blanking out complexity. Grounded in realist metatheory and principles, the scaffold reduces ambiguity, provides a backbone for empirical analysis, and favours mechanism-based explanation. We suggest that generating theoretically interesting and practically adequate knowledge on organized system change requires attention to three system realms: First, the subjectively constructed problem realm of systems concerned with processes of evaluating and problematizing situations. Second, the objectively constituted situational realm that attends to factual characteristics of situations and their dynamics of change. And third, the realm of causality understood as the mechanisms that generate both the objective characteristics of situations and the subjective criteria by which situations are evaluated as problems. In concluding, we reflect on the topics of boundaries and power as two promising areas for theorizing organized system change.
Sozialunternehmertum
(2020)
Sozialunternehmertum bezieht sich auf die innovative Nutzung wie Kombination von Ressourcen zur Bewältigung sozialer Probleme und Bedürfnisse. Wir zeichnen Debatten um die Definition von Sozialunternehmertum nach und stellen institutionellen Wandel und die Verfolgung vielfältiger Ziele als Schlüsselmerkmale von Sozialunternehmertum heraus. Auf Basis einer Diskussion verschiedener Arbeiten der Management-, Organisations- und Unternehmertumsforschung eröffnen wir eine prägnante und generative Perspektive auf Sozialunternehmertum. Sie soll helfen, die Erforschung sozialer Innovationen voran zu treiben.
Social enterprises are organisations that pursue a social mission using market mechanisms. From a policy perspective, they are promising vehicles to create both social and economic value for society in times when public funds are shrinking and the financial viability of charities and non-profit organisations (NPOs) is increasingly at stake. From a civil society perspective, they are an important organisational form to ensure longevity, financial viability, and sustainability of mission-driven organisations. Social enterprises are neither typical charities nor typical businesses but combine aspects of both, using commercial activities as means toward social ends. They are often small or medium-sized1 and do not draw on highly elaborated governance arrangements as do larger for- or non-profit organisations. Governance often resembles a grey zone for these organisations, and the approach social enterprises adopt ranges from formal, legally binding arrangements to more flexible and context-based ones.
In this chapter we argue that hybrid organizations, i.e., organizations pursuing dual goals, are an important site for rethinking and potentially recasting our perspective on organizational governance. We give an overview of the specific governance challenges hybrid organizations face and probe conventional and more novel approaches and their potential to understand governance in hybrid organizations. Introducing empirical findings from a large-scale qualitative and quantitative study about governance in social enterprises, we propose to complement the reactive approach dominant in the governance literature with a more proactive approach: drawing on the work of Philip Selznick, we introduce a governance approach focused on purpose, commitment and new ways of coordination. We propose that these three interlocking governance mechanisms allow hybrid organizations such as social enterprises to mitigate governance challenges such as the risk of mission drift in a proactive rather than reactive manner.
Social enterprises have long been considered ideal settings for studying hybrid organizing due to their combination of social and economic goals and activities. In this chapter, the authors argue that the current research focus on hybrid organizing foregrounds the paradox, conflicting logics, and multiple identities associated with the pursuit of multiple goals but underappreciates the relationship between hybrid organizing and its institutional context. Recognizing that the primary objective of social enterprises is to tackle social problems, the authors introduce the social problem domain as an analytically useful and theoretically interesting meso-level to examine the role of context for hybrid organizing and to advance conversations on hybridity in organizational theory. Social problem domains offer insights into the political, cultural, and material differences in how various societies deal with social problems, which in turn affects hybrid organizing. The authors provide empirical insights derived from an analysis of social enterprises across three countries and social problem domains. The authors show how the institutional arrangements of social enterprises differ considerably across contexts, and how these arrangements affect how social enterprises become more or less similar compared to traditional ways of organizing in these problem domains. Based on these findings, the authors outline a research agenda on social enterprises that focuses on examining the nature, antecedents, and outcomes of hybrid organizing around social problems across multiple levels of analysis. With this chapter, the authors move the focus of social enterprise research in organizational theory from studying how these organizations cope with multiple logics and goals toward studying how they engage in markets for public purpose.
Editorial notes in leading management journals have urged scholars to address Grand Challenges (GC) as an opportunity for producing knowledge that matters for society. This review explores whether current conceptualizations of GC support a productive path for management and organizational scholarship by guiding empirical inquiry, facilitating cumulative theory development, and informing practice. We systematically examine scholarly articles, calls for papers, and editorial notes published in management journals for consistency in how researchers use and define the concept of GC and the scope of associated phenomena and attributes. We find three prominent conceptual architectures in use: discursive, family resemblance, and phenomenon driven. The variety and incoherence of current uses of the GC concept and the lack of efforts to improve its analytical competence lead us to suggest its retirement. Instead, we propose building on the enthusiasm around GC research and using GC as a term to define research principles that collectively help align research efforts and improve theoretical development and practice. The principles we propose capture a genuine origin story for management research on GC.
Given rampant economic inequality, social exclusion and overconsumption, organizing in markets increasingly focuses on leveraging commercial activity for a social purpose. Alternative forms of organizing have developed to overcome the deficiencies of contemporary capitalism. They have become prevalent in numerous institutional contexts through types of organizations such as social enterprises, cooperatives and platform-based sharing economy organizations. Our objective is to ignite research on alternative organizing. We build on two important institutional perspectives, Neo-institutionalism and Comparative Capitalism, to investigate how these organizations diverge from the archetypal corporation. In addition, we develop a framework to guide institutional analysis of the origins, enabling conditions and consequences of alternative organizing in contemporary markets and society. We conclude by laying out pathways for future research.
Forging a Local Social Economy: On the Institutional Work of Local Governments in South Korea
(2023)
This study investigates the strategies local governments can employ to stimulate the growth of the local social economy sector—a sector associated with improving residents’ subjective well-being. Acknowledging the under-explored but potentially pivotal role of local government as a catalyst, our research uses an institutionalist lens—focusing on institutional work, support, and public-sector entrepreneurship—to examine how local governments can encourage the establishment of social economy organizations. We adopt a Partial Least Squares Model-Structural Equation Modeling approach to analyze data from 69 South Korean urban metropolitan local governments between 2018 and 2020. Our findings reveal a significant positive relationship between the regulatory, administrative, and intermediary support mechanisms implemented by local governments and the scale of the local social economy. By integrating public-sector entrepreneurship with institutional perspectives, our findings enrich existing literature and provide insight into the strategic initiatives local governments can adopt to foster social entrepreneurship.
Insufficient access to medicines is a persistent global problem that affects billions of people in low- and middle-income countries. In this chapter, we use access to medicines as a case to understand how business can become instrumental in making progress on persistent and global problems we associate with sustainable development. We examine the emergence and evolution of access to medicines as a mandate for the pharmaceutical industry to contribute to sustainable development. More specifically, we trace the historical developments of corporate social initiatives in the industry and revisit existing research on access to medicines in management and related fields. We then introduce three distinct analytical perspectives - field emergence and change, firm heterogeneity, organizational processes - to examine access to medicine, expose managerial challenges and offer a research agenda that helps to advance research on access to medicines and, more generally, on corporate efforts to address pressing global problems subsumed under the Sustainable Development Goals.
Within the entrepreneurship literature, there is a growing interest in understanding collective entrepreneurial approaches to tackling societal challenges. In this study, we examine the orchestration of collective action in an open social innovation project bringing together public administrations, citizens and organized civil society to collaboratively address several societal challenges. Analyzing data generated in-situ and in real-time over the entire duration of the project we show how social impact orchestration can generate impact through four pathways: lead user focus, solution focus, problem focus, and ecosystem focus. For each pathway, we show how orchestration enhanced the impact potential of stakeholders involved by enabling learning and scaling. Our study contributes to the literature on impact entrepreneurship and advances knowledge on orchestrating innovation for social impact.
Open Social Innovation (OSI) involves the collaboration of multiple stakeholders to generate ideas, and develop and scale solutions to make progress on societal challenges. In an OSI project, stakeholders share data and information, utilize it to better understand a problem, and combine data with digital technologies to create digitally-enabled solutions. Consequently, data governance is essential for orchestrating an OSI project to facilitate the coordination of innovation. Because OSI brings multiple stakeholders together, and each stakeholder participates voluntarily, data governance in OSI has a distributed nature. In this essay we put forward a framework consisting of three dimensions allowing an inquiry into the effectiveness of such distributed data governance: (1) openness (i.e., freely sharing data and information), (2) accountability (i.e., willingness to be held responsible and provide justifications for one's conduct) and (3) power (i.e., resourceful actors' ability to impact other stakeholder's actions). We apply this framework to reflect on the OSI project #WirVsVirus (“We versus virus” in English), to illustrate the challenges in organizing effective distributed data governance, and derive implications for research and practice.
Open forms of organising innovation bear great potential to address societal challenges, such as the climate crisis. Existing approaches to open social innovation (OSI) draw on a corporate and organisation- centric open innovation model as a blueprint for addressing social and ecological problems. However, such problems are ‘wicked’ and ‘com-plex’ in nature and thus require concerted efforts from a diverse set of stakeholders, including businesses, government agencies, non-profits and communities. Based on a review of the open-, user- and social- innovation literature, this essay traces the evolution from an organisa-tion-centric view (OSI 1.0) to a multi-stakeholder, cross- sectoral perspective (OSI 2.0). More specifically, we understand OSI as a concerted effort undertaken by multiple stakeholders from various sectors throughout the social innovation process, from diagnosing societal challenges, to developing ideas for how to solve problems, creating solutions, effectively scaling solutions and generating impact. We sharpen the terminology for OSI 2.0 and specify design dimensions for the effective orchestration of collaboration and coordination, and outline key areas for future research. Our objective is to foster dialogue between open- and user-innovation and social-innovation research.
The purpose of this working paper is to conduct a comprehensive review of existing literature that explores the relationship between business organizations and democracy. This review draws from various fields, including management, business ethics, sociology, international law, and other relevant disciplines for this Project and has several objectives. Firstly, it aims to provide insight into prior research on how democratic institutions regulate economic actors and how these actors, particularly large multinational corporations (MNCs), resist such regulation. Additionally, it examines how these economic actors develop behaviors and economic models that pose challenges to democratic governance, such as business-related human rights violations. In the initial part of the review, we delve into the historical and contemporary aspects of the relationship between business and democracy. Furthermore, the report explores how companies can contribute to shaping a more democratic future by addressing gaps in governance, especially in cases where populist governments fail to protect the rights of their citizens. It also considers the development of alternative business models, such as social enterprises and cross-sector partnerships. Moreover, it looks into how businesses can actively engage in democratic governance and promote principles of participation. The final section of the working paper involves a bibliometric analysis, including co authorship, co-citation, and keyword co-occurrence maps. This analysis is based on key references used by team members in their literature reviews and is designed to examine the connections that exist among various strands of research that support the research questions of the Rebalance Project.
Developing innovative, eco-friendlier products that gain traction in the mass market remains a persistent challenge for many firms. To bring consumers to choose “greener” alternatives over conventional products, firms need to overcome prevailing product evaluations that favor traditional solutions. Research on valuation entrepreneurship examines the strategies that actors apply to induce changes in established evaluations. Adding to the emerging literature on valuation entrepreneurship, our study analyzes how the car maker Tesla, Inc. used product design—material artifacts' properties of form and function—to advance the public perception of battery electric vehicles (BEVs). When Tesla entered the market, several firms had tried to promote BEVs as a way of making private mobility more environmentally friendly, but with limited success. In contrast, Tesla produced well-received BEVs that generated enormous consumer interest and led to a more favorable assessment of BEVs as a whole. Drawing on 54 interviews and nearly 2000 pages of archival data, our abductive study identifies three product design strategies that increased the appeal of Tesla's initial models: (1) incorporating discontinuous technological solutions; (2) optimizing the products on traditional evaluation criteria (e.g., driving performance, comfort, space, status); and (3) creating an ecosystem of complementary products. Since some design choices came at the expense of a minimal environmental footprint, they risked attracting blame for compromising on the environmental performance of potentially eco-friendly cars and for committing “greenwashing.” To minimize this risk, Tesla complemented its design strategies by employing three strategies of reputational politics to avoid such blame. After Tesla's initial, lavish models had improved the public perception of electric cars, Tesla and other car makers were able to sell less excessive and more sustainable BEVs in much greater quantities than ever before. Our findings contribute to three literature streams and generate valuable insights for management practice.
To date, management research has paid little attention to dynamics of the sharing economy: how markets for sharing resources emerge and change, and the intended and unintended consequences of resource sharing. We propose a definition of the sharing economy that brings the role of organizations as infrastructure providers to the fore and helps us to assess the culturally rooted pluralism of forms and practices in these organizations. We introduce two perspectives in research on organizational institutionalism that focus on culture and pluralism – institutional complexity and institutional work – and argue that unpacking the pluralism of organizational forms and practices is critical to examine the dynamics of the sharing economy. We propose an agenda for research to capture the dynamics of the sharing economy at the organizational, field, and inter-field level. Such an agenda helps to document and analyze how the sharing economy manifests and evolves across various economic systems and has the potential to refine and recast existing management theory.
Scholars in strategy and entrepreneurship have discussed the benefits and difficulties of keeping ventures inside the firm versus separating them through divestitures and the balance between control and autonomy. Using an in-depth analysis of cases of partial divestitures, this study examines the organizational arrangement that arises from divestitures with a retained parent-unit relationship. The emerging framework connects the parent-unit relationship and its modifications along the divestiture's objective – specifically, the exploration carried out by the unit. Partial divestitures are designed as real options, for firms to manage corporate venturing, taking advantage of the flexibility that such arrangement may grant.
This study advances research on organizational efforts to tackle multidimensional, complex, and interlinked societal challenges. We examine how social inequality manifests in small-scale societies, and illustrate how it inheres in entrenched patterns of behavior and interaction. Asking how development programs can be organizing tools to transform these patterns of inequality, we use a program sponsored by an Indian non-governmental organization as our empirical window and leverage data that we collected over a decade. We identify “scaffolding” as a process that enables and organizes the transformation of behavior and interaction patterns. Three interrelated mechanisms make the transformation processes adaptive and emerging alternative social orders robust: (1) mobilizing institutional, social organizational, and economic resources; (2) stabilizing new patterns of interaction that reflect an alternative social order; and (3) concealing goals that are neither anticipated nor desired by some groups. Through this analysis, we move beyond conventional thinking on unintended consequences proposed in classic studies on organizations, complement contemporary research about how organizations effect positive social change by pursuing multiple goals, and develop portable insights for organizational efforts in tackling inequality. This study provides a first link between the study of organizational efforts to alleviate social problems and the transformation of social systems.
This chapter examines the strategic roles of 150 middle managers in different units of a large European financial services firm. The study takes place in the context of a major corporate initiative aimed at creating a more entrepreneurial culture within the firm. Drawing on insights from 40 exploratory interviews, a survey instrument is used to identify four unique middle manager roles in corporate entrepreneurship; leader, broker, businessman, and architect. These roles are interpreted relative to existing literature. Associations between three roles (architect, leader, broker) and organizational performance are highlighted. The chapter adds insight into the roles of middle managers in corporate entrepreneurship initiatives and how these roles connect to organizational performance.
Water is Power
(2017)
This article explores new forms of organizing (and organization creation) in relation to entrepreneurship and social transformation. In particular, in the dialogue that follows in this issue, we initiate a discussion regarding the ways through which social transformation is or can be related to community action and public and/or social entrepreneurship. By focusing on socioeconomic environments in flux, we suggest that emerging alternative initiatives are not simply oppositional, resistance forces, but new organizing assemblages that co-constitute new social realities that urgently need to be actualized. We conclude the article with a number of theoretical propositions, which as we suggest, instigate the study of embedded and socially transformative organizing.
We examine the challenges of governance facing organizations that pursue a social mission through the use of market mechanisms. These hybrid organizations, often referred to as social enterprises, combine aspects of both charity and business at their core. In this paper we distinguish between two ideal types of such hybrids, differentiated and integrated, and we conceptualize two key challenges of governance they face: accountability for dual performance objectives and accountability to multiple principal stakeholders. We revisit the potential and limitations of recently introduced legal forms to address these challenges. We then theorize about the importance of organizational governance and the role of governing boards in particular, in prioritizing and aligning potentially conflicting objectives and interests in order to avoid mission drift and to maintain organizational hybridity in social enterprises. Finally, we discuss future research directions and the implications of this work for rethinking traditional categories of organizations, namely business and charity.
Actors who support dissimilar institutional models can overcome conflict and move toward mutually beneficial coexistence. To see how, we studied the emergence of venture philanthropy, a rationalized approach to organizational philanthropy in Europe. Our analysis leverages multiple sources of data and focuses on field-configuring events as settings for interactions. We show how convening—bringing together dissimilar actors—in different types of events creates relational spaces for negotiation over institutional models, their practices, and their underlying assumptions. Front-stage interactions in public spaces are important in making models accessible to a broad audience, whereas backstage interactions in protected spaces allow models to be deconstructed. Our findings show that the interplay between front stage and backstage enables the reframing of institutional models by refining the constituent practices, which neutralizes opposition and facilitates joint courses of action. Our results contrast with popular accounts of competing institutional logics, advance organizational research on the role of events in field trajectories, and expose the collective rationalization of giving.
We extend research on informal economic activity and investigate why organizations adopt informal rules when formal ones exist and how and why patterns of defiance vary across organizations. We build on data from an in-depth study of four organizations operating in the Nigerian movie industry. We identify ambiguity of formal institutions as a major source of organizational defiance. We also find that the organization's domain of embeddedness mediates the relationship between institutional ambiguity and organizational defiance. According to our analysis, the rationale for organizing propelled by the dominant domain of embeddedness affects whether organizations consistently or selectively defy ambiguous formal rules. Our findings highlight the importance of the interplay between institutional and organizational dynamics in understanding informality within an economy.
This study illustrates how entrepreneurship may catalyze prosperity as well as peace in entrenched poverty–conflict zones. We bring to life a conceptualization of transformative entrepreneuring by assessing interrelationships between poverty and conflict indicators from the perspective of rural dwellers in Rwanda's entrepreneurial coffee sector. Our findings suggest that individuals' perceptions of poverty alleviation and conflict reduction are sequentially linked, notably via increased quality of life. This enables us to advance theory on entrepreneuring by unpacking the mechanisms through which entrepreneurial processes may transform the lives of such ‘ordinary’ entrepreneurs in settings where economic and social value creation are desperately needed.
Although most existing literature has focused on the motives and consequences of divestitures, we have little more than anecdotal evidence illustrating their design and implementation. Even less is known about the evolution of divestitures, especially when parent companies retain a relationship with the divested unit. Using a multi-method approach that blends quantitative analysis with insights from field research, this study analyzes how and why companies structure and implement divestitures. The resulting framework provides new insights for strategy scholars on how divestitures can be used to shape corporate strategies and our understanding of multi-business companies.
In this article, we use content and cluster analysis on a global sample of 200 social entrepreneurial organizations to develop a typology of social entrepreneuring models. This typology is based on four possible forms of capital that can be leveraged: social, economic, human, and political. Furthermore, our findings reveal that these four social entrepreneuring models are associated with distinct logics of justification that may explain different ways of organizing across organizations. This study contributes to understanding social entrepreneurship as a field of practice and it describes avenues for theorizing about the different organizational approaches adopted by social entrepreneurs.
Much effort goes into building markets as a tool for economic and social development; those pursuing or promoting market building, however, often overlook that in too many places social exclusion and poverty prevent many, especially women, from participating in and accessing markets. Building on data from rural Bangladesh and analyzing the work of a prominent intermediary organization, we uncover institutional voids as the source of market exclusion and identify two sets of activities—redefining market architecture and legitimating new actors—as critical for building inclusive markets. We expose voids as analytical spaces and illustrate how they result from conflict and contradiction among institutional bits and pieces from local political, community, and religious spheres. Our findings put forward a perspective on market building that highlights the on-the-ground dynamics and attends to the institutions at play, to their consequences, and to a more diverse set of inhabitants of institutions.
The embeddedness of social entrepreneurship: Understanding variation across geographic communities
(2011)
Social enterprise organizations (SEOs) arise from entrepreneurial activities with the aim of achieving social goals. SEOs have been identified as alternative and/or complementary to the actions of governments and international organizations to address poverty and poverty-related social needs. Using a number of illustrative cases, we explore how variation of local institutional mechanisms shapes the local “face of poverty” in different communities and how this relates to variations in the emergence and strategic orientations of SEOs. We develop a model of the productive opportunity space for SEOs as a basis of and an inspiration for further scholarly inquiry.
Existing literature argues that divested units are unwanted and poor performers – yet evidence suggests that companies do divest well performing units, and often retain a relationship with them, especially in the quest for innovation. This article presents an exploratory case study to examine how a company structures the divestiture of an innovative unit and how it can benefit from the innovation the unit generates. The analysis focuses on how an established company can use divestiture as a strategy to enhance the innovation of its units, and capture its value, by structuring, maintaining and nurturing a special relationship with the unbundled unit. Under new organizational arrangement, resources can be transferred from the parent to the unit, while the parent retains access to the innovation developed within the unit. This study proposes a framework that offers corporate change agents and strategists a new perspective on how to integrate innovation and corporate strategy.
Organizational closure competencies and scaling: A realist approach to theorizing social enterprise
(2014)
Purpose
Social entrepreneurs create novel approaches to social problems such as poverty. But scaling these approaches to the dimension of the problem can be a difficult task. In the social enterprise sector, the subject of scaling has become a key dimension of organizational performance. This chapter advances the scholarly literature on the scaling of social enterprises, a literature which is currently in an embryonic stage and characterized by conceptual ambiguity and fragmented perspectives.
Methodology/Approach
We engage realist philosophy of science to develop mechanism-based causal explanations of the scaling performance of social enterprises. We also develop a coding scheme to guide systematic empirical analysis and highlight the explanatory power of counterfactuals. Counterfactuals have been largely neglected in empirical research as they represent mechanisms that are enabled but remain unobservable – in a state of suppression or neutralization of their effects.
Findings
We question the ability of organizations to “socially engineer” desired outcomes and introduce a new construct – organizational closure competence. Anchored in realism, this construct provides a basis for productive approaches to social engineering. We elaborate on the importance of organizational closure competencies for scaling, derive a series of propositions, and develop ideas for future research and for practice.
Research, Practical and Social Implications
Applying a realist lens allows us to add empirical rigor to research on social enterprises and scaling. Our approach constitutes a move from rich narratives to causal models and informs the way we design and evaluate efforts to address important societal challenges.
Originality/Value of Chapter
This chapter demonstrates how to operationalize realist philosophy of science for causal explanations of complex social phenomena and better utilize its theoretical and practical value.
Over the past two decades, social entrepreneurship as a phenomenon has gained increased momentum and is widely recognized for its potential to address social needs or problems that too often fall through the gaps of our market and governance systems. This article presents social entrepreneurship as a powerful tool to shape and change institutions and ultimately to inspire the commercial and public sectors. It is conceptualized as a process involving innovation on two levels: (i) the innovation of a new type of product, service, or structure that is created to fulfil unmet needs; and (ii) the innovation of envisioning and enacting alternative institutional arrangements. We contend that the dual nature of this type of innovation is what makes social entrepreneurship more effective than existing solutions and distinguishes it from conventional entrepreneurship. Two case studies are examined to show how social entrepreneurs kick start change by challenging taken for granted ways of doing things and demonstrating how new strategies can make a real impact. They illustrate that more sustainable solutions are possible and often provide “proof of concept” leading to the creation of new markets, new policies, and even new behaviors and attitudes.
Innovation and Scaling for Impact forces us to reassess how social sector organizations create value. Drawing on a decade of research, Christian Seelos and Johanna Mair transcend widely held misconceptions, getting to the core of what a sound impact strategy entails in the nonprofit world. They reveal an overlooked nexus between investments that might not pan out (innovation) and expansion based on existing strengths (scaling). In the process, it becomes clear that managing this tension is a difficult balancing act that fundamentally defines an organization and its impact.
The authors examine innovation pathologies that can derail organizations by thwarting their efforts to juggle these imperatives. Then, through four rich case studies, they detail innovation archetypes that effectively sidestep these pathologies and blend innovation with scaling. Readers will come away with conceptual models to drive progress in the social sector and tools for defining the future of their organizations.
The great challenge of sustainability is addressed by firms with varying levels of social and environmental responsibility and performance. Though traditionally, firms sought a balance, we argue that this is not enough. Rather, we advocate that the natural environment be the foundation on which society resides and the economy operates. Sustainable, ethical, entrepreneurial (SEE) enterprises are moving in this direction, seeking to regenerate the environment and drive positive societal changes rather than only minimizing harm. We also note that sustainability is justified and motivated by ethical considerations and pioneered by entrepreneurial engagement. The eight articles included in this Special Issue draw from cross-disciplinary scholarship to elaborate how SEE enterprises approach sustainability through new organizational forms, business models and innovation, and new governance mechanisms. They also emphasize the roles of institutional forces and logics, government policies and social movements for promoting or impeding sustainable practices. Collectively, they reveal new and compelling insights while spotlighting the great questions for SEE enterprise that await study.
Academic and practitioner interest in how market-based organizations can drive positive social change (PSC) is steadily growing. This paper helps to recast how organizations relate to society. It integrates research on projects stimulating PSC—the transformational processes to advance societal well-being—that is fragmented across different streams of research in management and related disciplines. Focusing on the mechanisms at play in how organizations and their projects affect change in targets outside of organizational boundaries, we (1) clarify the nature of PSC as a process, (2) develop an integrative framework that specifies two distinct PSC strategies, (3) take stock of and offer a categorization scheme for change mechanisms and enabling organizational practices, and (4) outline opportunities for future research. Our conceptual framework differentiates between surface- and deep-level PSC strategies understood as distinct combinations of change mechanisms and enabling organizational practices. These strategies differ in the nature and speed of transformation experienced by the targets of change projects and the resulting quality (pervasiveness and durability), timing, and reach of social impact. Our findings provide a solid base for integrating and advancing knowledge across the largely disparate streams of management research on corporate social responsibility, social entrepreneurship, and base of the pyramid and open up important new avenues for future research on organizing for PSC and on unpacking PSC processes.
We investigate how an intermediary organization, PRADAN, introduces and promotes market-based activities in tribal villages as a means to improve the social and economic conditions of rural women and their families in two districts in India. We draw from the literature on institutional logics and focus on the strategies and activities of PRADAN – an NGO working in poor rural areas in Northern India – to show how PRADAN instrumentally used a market logic and a community logic to develop new social structures in these rural communities. Moreover, we show what effect this had on beneficiaries and their families and how difficult it has been to convince rural communities and gain their trust. On the basis of these findings we show how logics can be deployed as a means to alter institutional arrangements. We find that the simultaneous enactment of both community and market logics was critical in the development of new social structures (Self-Help Groups). Finally, we show how the introduction of market-based activities by PRADAN is best understood as an ongoing and staged process that strongly builds on a continuous interplay of multiple logics.
In many developing countries those living in poverty are unable to participate in markets due to the weakness or complete absence of supportive institutions. This study examines in microcosm such institutional voids and illustrates the activities of an entrepreneurial actor in rural Bangladesh aimed at addressing them. The findings enable us to better understand why institutional voids originate and to unpack institutional processes in a setting characterized by extreme resource constraints and an institutional fabric that is rich but often at odds with market development. We depict the crafting of new institutional arrangements as an ongoing process of bricolage and unveil its political nature as well as its potentially negative consequences.
Divestitures, understood as the parent company’s disposal and sale of assets, facilities, product lines, subsidiaries, divisions and business units, are emerging as a central topic of research in several areas. Yet our understanding of these operations is still limited. For
example, it is still not clear whether divestitures are merely a reflection of the economic cycle, a means to correct or reverse previous strategic decisions, or a proactive strategic option. Integrating literature in finance, strategy, and organizational behavior, this paper
offers a comprehensive picture of divesting modes, antecedents, mechanisms and outcomes of divestitures. It integrates empirical findings and theoretical contributions into a researchable whole, in order to identify common themes and gaps in existing research. The final objective of this analysis and review is to propose meaningful avenues for future research to improve knowledge on divestitures.
Prior research has emphasized middle managers' important role in the strategy process and the benefits of their involvement, but little is known about their role in medium-sized firms and their participation in the internationalization strategy process (ISP). This article aims to fill these gaps.
Our analysis of interviews conducted with the complete layer of middle managers at a medium-sized firm is intended to shed light on these issues by examining the extent and effect of middle managers' involvement in the strategy formulation phase of the ISP. The medium-sized Italian firm chosen for our sample was going through a period of radical change as it expanded its international activities beyond its cultural boundaries.
We found that not all the firm's middle managers perceived themselves to be involved in formulating the internationalization strategy. The perception of involvement was dependent on ownership of the outcome of internationalization. Middle managers with revenue accountability perceived themselves to be involved in strategy formulation. Furthermore, this perception of increased involvement was tightly linked to a more opportunity-oriented attitude toward internationalization.
We suggest that medium-sized firms can actively manage middle managers' attitudes and behavior toward internationalization by managing perceptions.
As of September 2005, the co-founders of Waste Concern, an organisation dedicated to improving waste recycling in Bangladesh, are considering making a change to their model in order to get approval from the municipal government for a large-scale composting site. Since its inception in 1995, Waste Concern has followed a decentralised composting model whereby each composting site is a small-scale operation processing 3 tons of organic waste per day. In this model, they have relied on land and waste supply from the Dhaka City Council (DCC) municipal government. Now, they are working with Dutch-based World Wide Recycling BV (WWR) to set up a 700-ton per day composting plant, which will enable them to earn tradable certificates for US$11 per ton of reduced methane gas, making it the first in the world to garner credits through composting waste under the United Nations Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). To launch the composting site, they face the hurdle of getting DCC's approval. They have three alternatives: (1) follow through with the original plan whereby the municipality would supply both the land and waste, which entails waiting for DCC's approval; (2) purchase the land for the composting site and rely on the municipality for a waste supply; or, (3) purchase the land and take on the responsibility of waste collection themselves. In their considerations, they need to weigh the financial and social aspects and determine an appropriate structure for their organisation.
Profitable business models and market creation in the context of deep poverty: A strategic view
(2007)
The bottom of the pyramid (BOP) in the global distribution of income has been promoted as a significant opportunity for companies to grow profitably. Under the BOP approach, poor people are identified as potential customers who can be served if companies learn to fundamentally rethink their existing strategies and business models. This involves acquiring and building new resources and capabilities and forging a multitude of local partnerships. However, current BOP literature remains relatively silent about how to actually implement such a step into the unknown. We use two BOP cases to illustrate a strategic framework that reduces managerial complexity. In our view, existing capabilities and existing local BOP models can be leveraged to build new markets that include the poor and generate sufficient financial returns for companies to justify investments.
The article discusses how institutional voids can be spaces of opportunity for companies. Institutional void refers to the absence of supporting institutions in certain economy. Institutions are shared conceptions and constraints that shape human interaction. They constitute the rules of the game, for doing business, for social interaction, and for human behavior in general. For motivated entrepreneurs, institutional voids is perceived as opportunities. Two examples are presented to illustrate the nature of institutional voids in Bangladesh and India.
Purpose – In many developing countries those living in poverty are unable to participate in markets due to the weakness or complete absence of supportive institutions. This study aims to examine, in microcosm, such an institutional void and to illustrate the strategy and activities employed by an entrepreneurial actor in rural Bangladesh in addressing it.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on an in-depth case study. Data were gathered
over two years from field interviews, archives, and secondary sources.
Findings – The data illustrate how market access for the poorest of the poor is facilitated through the creation of platforms for participation in the economy and broader society. The authors conceptualize this process as the crafting of new institutional arrangements and as resource and institutional bricolage occurring in parallel.
Practical implications – The study offers insights for development agencies, policy makers and
companies on how to combat poverty, fight corruption, and stimulate social and economic change.
Originality/value – The paper enriches current thinking on institutions and entrepreneurship as well as strategies for social impact.
Purpose
– Social entrepreneurial organizations have gained in awareness and interest among researchers, yet we know relatively little about how these organizations are able to create social and economic value. This paper seeks to understand how such organizations have managed to achieve scale and sustainability in developing economies – often lacking the institutions, networks and resources required to support their growth – whilst also maintaining their focus on a social mission.
Design/methodology/approach
– The paper presents a comparative case analysis of three social entrepreneurial organizations based in Bangladesh, Egypt and Spain that have been widely recognized as successful. It utilizes an explorative research approach with data gathered from many sources including published and unpublished articles, existing case studies, personal interviews and internet sources.
Findings
– Analysis of these three business models reveals common patterns in the use of strategic resources, in their value networks, and in customer interface. The findings suggest that successful social entrepreneurial organizations: proactively create their own value networks of companies that share their social vision; develop resource strategies as an integral part of the business model; and integrate their target groups into the social value network.
Research limitations/implications
– There are limitations in the sampling and data analysis approach, however, this study provides a first step towards a more inclusive empirical research agenda in the future.
Practical implications
– The paper offers interesting insights for existing for‐profit multi‐business companies to rethink their business models, particularly for developing country contexts.
Originality/value
– This paper encourages managers to think beyond the creation of economic value and demonstrates how social entrepreneurs achieve sustainable growth based on building complementary networks of stakeholders and resources integrated into the value chain. It provides propositions regarding the business models of successful social entrepreneurial organizations and hopes to stimulate managerial interest in alternative business models and future empirical research which builds on these qualitative findings.
Digital democracy
(2006)
Comite para Democratizacao da Informatica (CDI) is a non-political, non-profit, and non-governmental organization founded in Brazil in 1995. It aims to promote the social inclusion of less-privileged people, using information and communication technologies to teach them the basic concepts of self-esteem, citizenship and their rights as individuals. CDI executive director and founder Rodrigo Baggio's first step was to launch a campaign called "Computers for All", where companies were contacted and asked to donate used computers to the favelas. The next step was to create computer schools in the slums. In response to demand for new schools in other Brazilian states and beyond, CDI designed a "social franchise" model. The idea was to set up regional CDI offices to create new schools. Students are motivated to develop ideas that generate income and give them better employment prospects. The challenge now is for Baggio and his team to manage growth without losing the original vision of CDI.
Social entrepreneurship, as a practice and a field for scholarly investigation, provides a unique opportunity to challenge, question, and rethink concepts and assumptions from different fields of management and business research. This article puts forward a view of social entrepreneurship as a process that catalyzes social change and addresses important social needs in a way that is not dominated by direct financial benefits for the entrepreneurs. Social entrepreneurship is seen as differing from other forms of entrepreneurship in the relatively higher priority given to promoting social value and development versus capturing economic value. To stimulate future research the authors introduce the concept of embeddedness as a nexus between theoretical perspectives for the study of social entrepreneurship.
Social entrepreneurship. The contribution of individual entrepreneurs to sustainable development
(2004)
Social entrepreneurship is a phenomenon that has resisted attempts to establish a clear definition. A focus on organizational structures and/or what constitutes a worthy social cause has created a diverse set of terminology. Observing the positive social impact of entrepreneurs catering to basic needs, this paper recognizes their unique role in efficiently contributing to the achievement of sustainable development goals. From this perspective, the term social can be much better defined. The frameworks proposed in this paper should guide much-needed further research and facilitate decision making about more focused support from a financial as well as a learning perspective.
This article sets out to identify the origins of performance differences between units within the same organizational and industry context. Building on and reconciling diverse research streams, it empirically tests the effect of strategic, individual, and context factors on performance over time. The study complements traditional research in strategy by advancing a middle manager perspective. More specifically, it highlights the importance of middlemanagers' actions aligned with strategy, their demographic characteristics, and their immediate competitive environment in stimulating performance. Data on 119 managers and units of a European financial services firm suggest that how middle managers enact strategy, who they are, and where they are significantly affect profit growth in their units.
Over the last few years many business schools have been active in developing courses on social entrepreneurship. The case studies used are typically based on non-profit initiatives aimed at alleviating social problems in the community. Yet social entrepreneurship is not limited in scope and structure. It is neither geographically nor culturally centered. To avoid the dilemma of defining what social entrepreneurship is or what it is not, we argue that the most fruitful approach is to adopt a specific perspective that illuminates the role and the unique contribution of social entrepreneurship. The perspective we propose is 'sustainable development'. This approach also permits the positioning of social entrepreneurship alongside existing organizations that participate in the global efforts to achieve sustainable development. We describe initiatives by social entrepreneurs and established corporations, highlight the social, economic and environmental impact, and draw out commonalities from the examples given.
Social entrepreneurship can be a powerful tool for corporations to gain entry and build loyalty in developing markets. While economic growth has led to tremendous improvements in personal freedoms and well-being for people in industrialised societies, it has left too many behind. The images of hunger, disease and human misery refuse to disappear from our television screens. How can growth be made more sustainable while at the same time including and benefiting all of society? The paradox is painful: while traditional markets are saturated, billions of people are desperately waiting for companies to cater to their most basic needs and wants. Social entrepreneurs act as change agents that enable the poor to participate in economic life. Entrepreneurs invent business models that can be scaled up and possibly repeated elsewhere: the Grameen Bank model has been replicated all over the world, with huge success. Social entrepreneurship initiatives also constitute local resources that lend themselves to new configurations for novel forms of value creation.
The term “social entrepreneurship” (SE) is used to refer to the rapidly growing number of organizations that have created models for efficiently catering to basic human needs that existing markets and institutions have failed to satisfy. Social entrepreneurship combines the resourcefulness of traditional entrepreneurship with a mission to change society. One social entrepreneur, Ibrahim Abouleish, recently received the “Alternative Nobel Prize” for his Sekem initiative; in 2004, e-Bay founder Jeff Skoll donated 4.4 million pounds to set up a social entrepreneurship research center; and many social entrepreneurs have mingled with their business counterparts at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Social entrepreneurship offers insights that may stimulate ideas for more socially acceptable and sustainable business strategies and organizational forms. Because it contributes directly to internationally recognized sustainable development (SD) goals, social entrepreneurship may also encourage established corporations to take on greater social responsibility.
Social Entrepreneurship
(2006)
Social Entrepreneurship is a global phenomenon that impacts the lives of citizens by using innovative approaches to solving social problems. This book offers a comprehensive examination of this growing area of research and provides an excellent introduction to social entrepreneurship theory and a framework for future research.
The powerful imagery of entrepreneurship as a means to induce and explain institutional change is gaining momentum (Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006; Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006). In response to criticisms that institutional theory was chiefly being used to explain homogeneity and persistence, important efforts have been devoted to restoring human agency in explanations of endogenous institutional change (DiMaggio, 1988; Sewell, 1992; Emirbayer & Mische, 1998). However, the image of the entrepreneur as institutional change agent has also been a source of controversy among institutional theorists, especially when accompanied by voluntarist, un-embedded conceptions of individual action (Holm, 1995; Leca & Naccache, 2006). As a result we observe vivid scholarly discussions on how to solve the “paradox of embedded agency”– i.e. on explaining how institutional change is possible if actors are fully conditioned by the institutions that they wish to change (Holm, 1995; Seo & Creed, 2002; Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006). The current debate is important and we welcome more agent-oriented views on institutions. The purpose of this chapter is to advance institutional theory by rethinking various aspects of institutional work (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006; DiMaggio, 1988) and thereby to contribute new insights into the paradox of embedded agency. We do so by challenging and breaking dominant patterns in current empirical research. While previous research on institutional entrepreneurship has predominantly looked at elite and/or powerful actors (DiMaggio, 1988; Fligstein & Mara-Drita, 1996) who assume either peripheral (Leblebici, Salancik, Copay & King, 1991) or central (Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006) positions, we focus instead on institutional work carried out by actors with limited power and very few resources.