Hi Louise,

It is well worth looking at the international network of Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability (DESIS) labs. http://www.desisnetwork.org/ This network collects examples of cases of social innovation where Design has been one of the driving disciplines for the change. It would be a good source of case material and the co-design approaches described encourage creative (and sometimes radical) solutions that can be owned by their communities/stakeholders. That community ownership is usually the hard part, but there is some evidence that co-design processes help.

The UK Design Council has also done some very ambitious work in Social Entrepreneurship through their Design of The Times (DoTT) programmes and is worth looking at for more case material and some evaluation of impact: http://dottcornwall.s3.amazonaws.com/big_society_by_design_b6753e123b189d6e.pdf

Good luck

Dear Louise

Being a researcher and a social entrepreneur at the same time, I believe that the issue of conciliating the social and the economic sides and sustaining the initial social vocation of the business when it become a large business are important issues in social entrepreneurship.

Best,

Wajdi

There are some recent interesting critical perspectives on social entrepreneurship. Karen Berglund and Daniel Hjorth spring to mind, for instance see:

Berglund, K. (2017). Social entrepreneurs: precious and precarious. In C. Essers, P. Dey, D. Tedmanson, & K. Verduyn (Eds.), Critical Perspectives on Entrepreneurship: Challenging Dominant Discourses (pp. 17-36). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge

Hjorth, D. (2013). Public entrepreneurship: desiring social change, creating sociality. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 25(1/2), 34-51. doi:10.1080/08985626.2012.746883

As well, I have read some recent views that challenge social entrepreneurship as a flawed solution to neoliberalism and NPM in public service - that seems like a line for further exploration. The challenge seems to focus on the idea that social entrepreneurship is constrained by the need to generate income to survive and the fact that the decision makers are not elected (yet act to solve social problems typically falling within the democratic institutional realm). This line is interesting in considering the idea of social entrepreneurship as an alternative form of democratic action, on the one hand potentially responding to a loss of faith in bureaucratic and political institutions (e.g. "you didn't fix the problem so we will take action ourselves" kind of thing) and on the other hand replacing a democratic institution with non-democratic one. I think this reactionary aspect is interesting as it possibly represents a wider social change. But unfortunately, I can't recall a good reference on that just now (sorry)!

Hi,

Thank you for this interesting question. But, can you clarify this: what do mean by "social entrepreneurship leadership"? you mean it for research field or for practice?

Wassim

Louise:

That question is truly a subjective preference question. I have always thought that Carroll and Buchholtz wrote the best book on the topic.

Here is a paper that addresses a new ethical perspective that may be of interest to you. Verl Anderson and I have written several papers about this Transformative Ethics model. The attached is a working draft of a chapter that explains the model.

CC

Hi Louise,

I´m currently doing a couse in this subject.

So for this I can recommend the references of key authors and organizations of the course.

They are:

- Alter, K. (2007) Social Enterprise Typology, Virtue Venture

- AUSTIN, J, STEVENSON,H. and WEI-SKILLERN, J. (2006) Social and Commercial Entrepreurship: same, different or both? Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice

- BARKI, E.; COMINI, G.; CUNLIFFE, A.; HART, S.; RAI, S. (2015) Social Entrepreneurship and Social Business: Retrospective and Prospective Research. RAE-Revista de Administração de Empresas, v. 55, n. 4, p. 380–384, 2015. Available at: http://rae.fgv.br/rae/vol55-num4-2015/social-entrepreneurship-and-social-businessretrospective-and-prospective-resear

- BATTILANA, J.; LEE, M. (2014) Advancing Research on Hybrid Organizing – Insights from the Study of Social Enterprises. The Academy of Management Annals, v. 8, n. 1, p. 397– 441, Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19416520.2014.893615

- COMINI, G., FISCHER, R.M., SBRAGIA, R. Social enterprises and social innovation: a portrait of brazilian experiences. Paper submitted to PICMET Conference: "Managing Technological Entrepreneurship: The Engine for Economic Growth", 2018

- COMINI, G.; BARKI, E.; AGUIAR, L. T. De. (2012) A three-pronged approach to social business: a Brazilian multi-case analysis social businesses. Revista de Administração (RAUSP), v. 47, n. 3, p. 385–397, 2012. Avaliable at: http://www.rausp.usp.br/busca/artigo.asp?num_artigo=1481

- FISCHER, R.M.; COMINI, G. (2012) Sustainable development: from responsibility to social entrepreneurship. RAUSP, vol 47. jul/ago/set, 2012. p. 363-369. Available at: http://200.232.30.99/busca/artigo.asp?num_artigo=1481

- GONIN, M., BESHAROV, M., SMITH, W., & GACHET, N. (2013). Managing socialbusiness tensions: A review and research agenda for social enterprise. Business Ethics Quarterly, 23(3), 407-442. doi:10.5840/beq201323327.

- MOURA, A.M.; COMINI, G.; TEODÓSIO, A.S.S. The international growth of a social business: a case study. RAE-Revista de Administração de Empresas, v. 55, n. 4, p. 444– 46, 0, 2015 Retrieved from: http://rae.fgv.br/sites/rae.fgv.br/files/the_international_growth_of_a_social_business_a_case_study_0.pdf

- RAWHOUSER, H., CUMMINGS, M., & NEWBERT, S. L. (2017). Social Impact

Measurement: Current Approaches and Future Directions for Social Entrepreneurship Research. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 104225871772771 http://doi.org/10.1177/1042258717727718

- SEKN, Effective Management of Social Enterprises, Harvard Univerty, 2006.

Also reach for:

- Center for Social Entrepreneurship and Administration in the Third Sector (CEATS) from the University of São Paulo

- SEKN

Hope it helps.

Kind regards,

Ana Luisa Ares

Hi Louise,

My research aims to understand the dynamics of social entrepreneurship and tourism for sustainable community development. Based on my preliminary literature review, most works on SE research are social entrepreneur-centred. My personal favourites are:

Shockley, G. E., & Frank, P. M. (2011). Schumpeter, Kirzner, and the field of social entrepreneurship. Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, 2(1), 6-26. https://doi.org/10.1080/19420676.2010.544924

Morrison, C., Ramsey, E., & Bond, D. (2017). The role of social entrepreneurs in developing community resilience in remote areas. Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy, 11(1), 95-112. https://doi.org/doi:10.1108/JEC-02-2015-0020

In the context of rural tourism development, social entrepreneurs roles have been also theorised:

Mottiar, Z., Boluk, K., & Kline, C. (2018). The roles of social entrepreneurs in rural destination development. Annals of Tourism Research, 68, 77–88. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2017.12.001

In terms publication titles, I follow the: Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, Social Enterprise Journal, Journal of Enterprising Communities, VOLUNTAS, and Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice.

I am about to finish data collection from host communities in the Philippines. Based on the insights that I have gathered so far, my initial inferences resonate with the criticisms on SE as cited by Stuart. It can be argued that social entrepreneurs somewhat follows a neoliberal approach when aiming to fulfill their social missions. In the case studies that I aim to publish in due time, evidences of bottom-up community development strategies have been undertaken at the beginning. Yet issues on the democratisation of SE emerges later on, partly due to social enterprise ownership schemes which in my case are usually privately owned (i.e. social entrepreneur). Community development initiatives are also power-charged, even within a tiny geographical settlement of 30 families. My analysis lead me to exploring how social entrepreneurs use their leadership in negotiating with these power dynamics in order to achieve their social missions.

Best regards,

Richard

Hi folks: sorry just coming to this question now and appreciate that it’s been up for a while.

My friend and colleague Brad Jackson (whose work you will be aware of if you are a leadership scholar), along with his student Matthew Nicoll and I published a paper last year on leadership in Social Enterprise Journal which attempted to provide an overview of the state of the art on this topic, and a future research agenda. So I hope this is what you’re looking for:

https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/SEJ-03-2017-0016

The full text is on ReserchGate if you have trouble downloading it from the link above. Best of luck!

Hi Heather, while ostensibly I agree with you, social enterprise is both a verb and a noun and we can’t take the intentions of the actors for granted. The terminology being used at the time will, of course, depend upon such random factors as which actors are encouraging and promoting at any given time, which term happens to be popular with policymakers and funders, and which term the actors decide they wish to use for whatever reason. Defourny and Nyssens cover this pretty well. There has not only been a divergence, but a convergence too in both usage and understanding. It’s not up to us as social scientists to impose our understandings about implementation and practice onto a given context just because of the terminology being used at a given time, context, place, or whatever.

Reflecting the contested nature of the field, and the terminological ambiguity and complexity of the terms in question, many aspects of the ‘social entrepreneurship’ school of thought (the heroic social entrepreneur figure, for example) are covered in the paper. Cheers.