Narrow Results

Addressing the need to identify distinctive skills for social entrepreneurs, we conducted an exploratory, qualitative study based on interviews with social entrepreneurs. We identified seven skills, three out of which have not been previously mentioned by entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship scholars. These skills include an ability to induce behavioral change and educate target groups; co-creation with multiple stakeholders; and developing solutions that aim to address the root cause of a social problem. Based on these findings, we provide recommendations for further research, as well as how the identified skills can be taught in experiential learning format.

Amul initiated as an experiment in two villages, collecting 250 kg of milk per day. As the cooperative expanded its branches over the course of its 50-year journey, Amul boasts of more than six million kilograms of milk collection daily.

What had initiated as a process of liberation from the Dairy King, brought a revolutionary transformation across the country. This case provides a vivid example of how a cooperative can become the catalyst for social change and rural development. This case takes us through the journey of Amul, from its dawn period when it was attempting to take root, through its progression along the enterprise life stages and the associated challenges. Insights into the quality of leadership and the farmer/management relationships are its defining characteristic.

The Amul Model narrowed the gap between the producer and the consumer, connecting the dairy farmer to the consumer through its organic network. The success of this model ignited interest across India, where this model was replicated, in essence leading to the White Revolution. The case provides sufficient insights and learnings to develop a framework to comprehend the basic essence of a prosperous social enterprise — factors that make it successful. It is this learning that this case desires to impart to its readership, enhancing interest in this rather lively subject of social enterprises.

Toehold Artisans Collaborative (TAC) is a project launched by the Asian Center for Entrepreneurship Initiatives (ASCENT), a non-profit organization based in Bangalore, to build entrepreneurial capacity in a community of footwear artisans of the small southern Indian town of Athani. Prior to ASCENT's involvement, which began in 1998, the artisans of Athani were making a subsistence wage, which did not even guarantee them two square meals a day. They could not send their children to school and were thus suffering from economic stagnation.

TAC is an established Group Enterprise of 14 women Self Help Groups (SHG). Even though women's SHGs are the direct stakeholders, the men are not left out — they are treated as co-preneurs for all inputs, exposure to international fairs and production purposes. The front end of TAC is a customer-centric business enterprise that has taken the exquisite footwear brand 'ToeHold™' to challenging international mainstream markets. The backend is an artisan-centric social enterprise striving for improvement in the quality of life of about 400 artisans' families. The case documents how TAC was set up and evolved during the 1998–2006 period, the challenges it faced and continues to face, and the impact it has had on the artisan community. It is useful for examining the effective organization and running of social enterprises.

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This study aims to examine the social impact of a community-based enterprise model in Surabaya City. The analysis focuses on grass-root communities and highlights some technical challenges in order to develop a meta-theory with the intention of examining the underlying assumptions of the social return on investment. The social impact analysis is based on a social return on investment (SROI) approach, which involves community participation through focus group discussions. To avoid complexity, this study focuses on one year’s activities, which attributed monetary values to the social impact. It is argued in this study that the green and clean activities provide a return of 1.23 on the investment. This result demonstrates how the community-based social enterprise is feasible in achieving appropriate support. First, this study focuses on the community perspective during the observed time. The communities may experience different levels of capability and resources that contribute to the achievement of the programme. Secondly, there is a lack of literature that could provide financial analysis and there is no common accepted method for measuring the value of the social benefits. Beyond the SROI computation, this study highlights some technical challenges and misconceptions involved in measuring the social return on investment (SROI). Although there is considerable information available about the conceptual framework of SROI, there is great variability in how SROI is applied across interventions. This makes robust and consistent comparisons across social ventures difficult, while rendering the validity of SROI measures vulnerable to being contested.

Empowerment is one of the most important social value creation activities performed by social enterprises (SEs). Despite the burgeoning research on SEs, there is limited research on the meaning and aspects of empowerment from the SE perspective, or the so-called SE-as-Empowerment research. In light of this research gap, we employed the Gioia’s methodology and data triangulation to analyze a renowned Hong Kong’s SE that focuses on youth empowerment. This study contributes to the SE-as-Empowerment literature by revealing five types of empowerment — building social awareness, meaningful participation, social connections, building entrepreneurial skills, and power sharing between youths and adults — which can be broadly categorized into social-capacity empowerment and entrepreneurial-capacity empowerment. This study makes novel contributions to the SE-as-Empowerment literature by proposing new concepts including multi-directional (internally and externally oriented) aspect of empowerment, the pluralistic notion of agency, and power sharing between youths and adults as important elements of youth empowerment in SE. Finally, we discuss the implications of this study for the SE practitioners, educators, and policy makers and propose avenues for future research.

This paper introduces the maximization of installed capacity instead of profit maximization, as an element that allows for understanding the economic behavior of Informal Social Enterprise (ISE) in the market. The reconsideration of the theoretical framework that explains the competitive behavior of this type of firm, according to the Social Business Type 2 (SB2) Yunus proposal or necessity-driven entrepreneurship, is important because they are recognized as a mechanism to mitigate the poverty effects of recessionary period faults in the distribution of wealth. The results obtained through the contrast between theoretical evidence and the essential assumptions of industrial organization theory suggests that ISEs have a Cournot competition behavior.

This study aims to understand performance of social enterprises and assess the most influential factors affecting this performance based on a Systematic Literature Review (SLR). The study extracted data (articles) from three prominent databases (Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar). Four main determinant groups of performance are identified, namely, technology and innovation, investment considerations, overall organization orientation and a general category of other influential factors. The results indicate that fiscal, environmental, social contexts, creative methods and employee contributions have a major influence on the performance of social enterprises. It was also revealed that strategic and business orientation has proven to be a significant contributor as well. The findings contribute to social entrepreneurship literature in terms of performance improvement of hybrid enterprises. Future research suggestions are provided based on the findings.

This chapter discusses the Social Enterprise Challenge (SEC), an innovative pedagogical activity adopted by a university in Brazil. This teaching and learning initiative connects university and society, academics and practitioners, scientific and managerial knowledge, and community and traditional knowledge. The SEC advances an experiential program of social innovation in undergraduate management disciplines which aims to propose ideas and projects capable of generating social and environmental value and providing alternatives to mining activity dependencies — the so-called Minério-Dependência — in Brumadinho city, Minas Gerais state, Brazil. The SEC was designed as a response to the socio-environmental catastrophe and corporate crime of January 2019, when a large dam owned and operated by Vale, a multinational mining company, collapsed. The ruptured tailings dam killed hundreds of people and its release of mining waste created an environmental disaster.

A prominent emphasis of the SEC is the promotion of non-hegemonic teaching practices, which involve the decentralization and dehierarchization of knowledge through a combination of academic and non-academic contributions to achieve goals that go beyond traditional models of pedagogy and learning. By applying these principles toward collaboration and dialogue between university and society, 43 social enterprise proposals have been developed for the sustainable local development of Brumadinho. Proposals targeted thematic areas of agriculture, ecology, environment, green technology, social finance, health, entertainment, culture, and handicrafts, as well as other areas relevant to the city of Brumadinho and the state of Minas Gerais. Most of the solutions from these proposed social enterprises have highlighted social innovations, or tecnologias sociais, as main products or services.

The SEC advances the United Nations (UN) 2030 Agenda by supporting Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4: Quality Education. It is closely aligned with SDG4 through the innovation and transformation of management education in pursuit of sustainable development. The SEC’s educational practice of non-hegemonic dialog and collaboration promotes the emergence of sustainable development alternatives in local community contexts that benefit future generations by improving welfare and quality of life, enhancing an appreciation of community diversity and knowledge, and validating and strengthening the local cultural resource base. This educational initiative also directly supports SDG11, Sustainable Cities and Communities, as well as SDG17, Partnerships. It further advances a number of additional SDGs due to the functional nature of proposed enterprises that focus on long-term solutions for social and environmental problems. Overall, the SEC supports the sustainable development of a more egalitarian and pluralist market through collaborative innovation that harnesses economic activity in service to human and environmental well-being.

The role of social enterprises, in combating climate change by providing decentralized energy to rural communities in transitioning economies, is an emerging field of research. Social enterprises can play an important role in meeting Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), suggesting that they are effective conduits for developing climate change policy on adoption and mitigation strategies. Interviews with social enterprises that are providers of sustainable energy solutions, like SELCO Solar Light Pvt. Ltd. (SELCO), in transitioning economies like India, show how they can improve the quality of life of rural communities and their livelihoods. This chapter looks at the role played by SELCO in dealing with climate change policy adoption and mitigation, and how it has played an important role in enhancing the quality of life of rural households and livelihoods through sustainable energy solutions and services. The chapter provides insights into the role of the social enterprise in shaping climate change policies in transitioning economies.

Absence of effective waste management measures leads to multidimensional consequences like environmental pollution, spreading of epidemics and land degradation. Along with an increase in waste generation, there is no corresponding increase in waste management measures in India. Innovative methodologies are required for addressing waste management and related issues. This chapter intends to develop an innovative waste management model for India. The authors reviewed the literature on waste management models across the globe with a focus to devise a waste management model suitable for India. The authors proffer a six-level Social Enterprise–Government–Private (SEGP) partnership for municipal solid waste (MSW) management. The focuses of various levels of the model are the reduction of plastic use and waste minimization, helping the poor, waste sorting at source and transferring it to colored waste bins, development of waste collection infrastructure, revenue generation from waste and development of waste management infrastructure. The revenue generated from the SEGP model will overcome the funds’ deficiency-related problems of the government for waste management. The model intends to address the core objective of MSW management with a focus on solving a set of social challenges, such as poverty alleviation, unemployment, pollution and contamination of rivers and oceans.

Social enterprises are not-for-profit or for-profit organizations that work for the development of the community in different ways and are sustainable through their products or services. One such initiative of social enterprises is supporting and promoting agriculture and agricultural products. This chapter focuses on two social enterprises, Uravu and Buffalo Back, which work with farm products and their role in promoting sustainable agriculture practices. The primary data are collected through personal interviews with top-level managers, and secondary data are collected from websites and other published documents. This study looks at the concept of sustainability in terms of finitude, fragility and fairness. These two case studies explain how social enterprises promote the development of agriculture. The former organization ensures the community’s livelihood through farming support, upgrading local knowledge, technologies, skill development and marketing their commodities. The latter focuses on promoting farmers to focus on sustainable organic farming techniques and selling their products to customers. This study can help future entrepreneurs understand different models they can use to develop the agricultural sector through their social actions.

This chapter delves into a detailed exploration of the crucial interplay between social enterprises and economic growth. The primary aim is to conduct a thorough investigation of the multifaceted relationship between these entities. The authors analyse the challenges and advantages inherent in this relationship and propose strategies for policymakers to harness the profound impact that social enterprises can exert on both societal and economic progress. To achieve a comprehensive understanding of this subject, qualitative research methods have been employed throughout this chapter. The research methodology involves an extensive literature review, which serves as a foundation for gathering insights and knowledge pertaining to social enterprises and their intricate ties with economic growth. Recognising social enterprises as catalysts for economic expansion necessitates the formulation of a comprehensive policy framework. Consequently, it becomes imperative to address these challenges. This approach is not only crucial for ensuring the growth and sustainability of social enterprises but also for fostering a form of economic growth that embodies inclusivity, equity, and sustainability. The recommendations presented in this chapter advocate for the establishment of an enabling environment where social enterprises can thrive and make substantial contributions to economic development, all while addressing urgent social and environmental challenges.