Social Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Development

Archana Singh, Edakkandi Meethal Reji, Archana Singh, Edakkandi Meethal Reji

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780815394686
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000079791
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Entrepreneurship
• Index: Economics

This volume discusses the seminal interface between social entrepreneurship and sustainable development along with their inter-linkages. It traces the role of social entrepreneurship and innovations in societal transformation in creating sustainable societies, especially in developing nations. It explores how social entrepreneurship and enterprise is integral to the promise of fostering opportunities for socially disadvantaged groups (including the poor, women, and young people), as well as in addressing environmental and ecological issues apart from wealth creation.

The book presents key concepts, case studies, and multiple innovative models involving social entrepreneurship, such as green financing, serial social entrepreneurship, sustainable livelihood creation, and well-being, in addition to highlighting global sustainable development goals of the United Nations. The chapters are organised under the broad themes of sustainability of the organisation, sustainability of the community, sustainability of the development, and sustainability of the community–organisation interface. They examine social change, social innovation, social enterprise, small and micro-enterprises, microfinance institutions, inclusive growth, education, productivity, physical health, waste management, energy retention, self-reliance, and corporate social responsibility. They contain emerging research issues in the field as well as critical assessments while bringing together theoretical and practitioners' perspectives.

This book will be useful to scholars and researchers of development studies, social entrepreneurship, sustainable development, environmental studies, public policy, and political sociology. It will also greatly interest professionals from non-profit, corporate, and public sectors, other development practitioners, and international bodies.

PART 1
Sustainability of organisation

The chapters in this section focus on the sustainability of organisations. Sustainability in an organisational context implies the initiatives for enhancing the societal, environmental, and economic systems within which a business operates. It also denotes ‘actions of organising something sustainably’. In this process organisations need to be sustainable. Organisations are increasingly focusing on developing a ‘culture of sustainability’ by recognising the importance of environmental, social, and financial performance (Triple Bottom Line). Sustainability organisations adopt environmentally friendly or green practices and ensure that all the process and products adequately address environmental concerns and still remain profitable. In this sense, their business activities adhere to the most acceptable definitions of sustainable development—a business that meets the needs of the present world without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs. An increasing number of organisations and networks are integrating sustainability into their central goals and contributing to environmentally and socially responsible business. Sustainability organisations are not limited to implementing sustainability strategies which provide environmental and economic benefits. For them, sustainability is an end in itself. Sustainability strategies allow them to generate long-term growth and profitability along with preservation and enhancement of financial, environmental, and social capital.

1
SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Emerging research issues

Archana Singh

Introduction

The concept of sustainable development (SD) has received multidisciplinary attention since it appeared in the 1987 United Nations Brundtland Report (Shao, Li, & Tang, 2011). SD has been defined in many ways. One of the most commonly used definitions of SD is that “sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED, 1987, p. 41). In general, SD encompasses three interrelated fundamental approaches—economic, environmental, and social development—which are complementary (Shao et al., 2011). Hence, SD can be conceived of in terms of increases in the quality of life which are equitable (Qizilbash, 2001). Unfortunately, that did not happen in many of the poorest countries across the globe (Pritchett, 1997; Gottschalk & Smeeding, 1997 mentioned in Seelos & Mair, 2005b) or even in developed countries like the USA, UK, and Australia (Diesendorf, 1999). Despite impressive economic growth since the 1990s, inclusive growth has not been achieved in developing countries (UN, 2017). It is clear that sustainable development, involving improvements to the natural environment and in the social and economic domains, is needed in the ‘rich’ countries as well as in the poor (Diesendorf, 1999). However, a lot of studies (Pandey, Mukherjee, & Kumar, 2009; Dale & Sparkes, 2011; Ashoka, n.d.) witnessed the contribution of social entrepreneurs towards achieving the goal of sustainable development, especially in the poor-country context (Seelos & Mair, 2005a). They contribute to sustainable development by creating innovative organisations and new models for the provision of products and services that cater directly to the social needs underlying sustainable development goals (ibid.). Social entrepreneurship has the potential to address social problems, reduce inequality and poverty, and also tackle environmental challenges (UN, 2017).

The scholars see social enterprise (SE) as an enterprise with a purpose that helps a large number of people in a positive way, and while doing so, it may or may not earn surpluses (Sriram, 2011). For the purpose of this chapter, the organisation created by a social entrepreneur to create social change and social impact is termed as ‘social enterprise’. However, it is important to emphasise here that unlike traditional entrepreneurs, the motivation of social entrepreneurs is not the creation of an organisation, but the creation of a path defined so that participants can alleviate a complex social problem (Dorado, 2006). So, they may or may not create an organisation, because creating social change is the most important goal for them. From the perspective of the value creation model in social entrepreneurship, social activism is also a form of social entrepreneurship. Martin and Osberg (2007) mentioned, “social activists may or may not create ventures or organisations to advance the changes they seek” (p. 38).

Social entrepreneurs follow an entrepreneurial approach or activities to meet social goals (Nicholls, 2006), and for sustainable entrepreneurship towards meeting societal goals and changing market contexts, sustainability innovation is emphasised (Schaltegger & Wagner, 2010). ‘Sustainable entrepreneurship’ focuses on the preservation of nature, life support, and community in the pursuit of perceived opportunities to bring into existence future products, processes, and services for gain, where gain is broadly construed to include economic and non-economic gains to individuals, the economy, and society (ibid.). Haldar (2019) studied how social enterprises generated innovations aimed at sustainability. In this context, sustainability of the social enterprises or the process of creating social value and bringing about social change (i.e. social entrepreneurship) becomes significant to attain its social and environmental goals in order to contribute towards sustainable development. How can one achieve the goal of sustainable development through social entrepreneurship without having sustainability in their approach? Thus, ‘sustainability’ becomes an essential part of the practical process of working towards sustainable development. Foster, Kim, and Christiansen (2009) also mentioned that most of the time, even donors want to partner with and invest in sustainable projects rather than simply give money to the needy organisations.

Thus, recognising the importance of ‘sustainability’ of social enterprises for them to play a role in sustainable development, and also due to my awareness that social entrepreneurship can emerge across all the sectors—non-profits (including charitable), public, for-profit, and cross-sector partnerships (Nicholls, 2006)—with the condition of its primary focus on social mission, the concept of ‘sustainability’ in the context of social enterprises or social entrepreneurship caught my attention. When, I looked at the definition of SD mentioned in the Brundtland Report for clarity on ‘sustainability’, I found that it gives little interpretation of the concept of ‘sustainability’ in the context of the process of achieving sustainable development goals. Diesendorf (1999) clearly mentioned that this definition only emphasises the long-term aspect of the concept of sustainability and introduces the ethical principle of achieving equity between the present and future generations. Although, other SD literature discussed sustainability by focusing on what is to be sustained, namely, nature, life support systems, and community, and what is to be developed, namely, individuals, the economy, and society (Shepherd & Patzelt, 2011), but that too does not give any clear interpretation of sustainability in the context of efforts of social enterprises to attain the goal of sustainable development.

Sustainability is about an organisation’s capacity to endure over time (Burkett, n.d., p. 1). In the context of social enterprises, sustainability has two sides: first, an enterprise needs to be able to survive and endure financially over time, and second, it needs to maintain or deepen its impact over time. Impact and financial sustainability cannot be separated in social enterprises (Burkett, n.d.). Moddie (n.d.) further clarified the concept of ‘sustainability’ in the context of social entrepreneur-ship and social enterprises. She mentioned four critical elements for sustainability in the change-making process: a) benefit sustainability (activities continue to be felt by beneficiaries), b) organisational sustainability (enabling environment inside the project), c) financial sustainability, and d) community sustainability (capacity to sustain itself).

Using this conceptual understanding, this chapter explores sustainability in different types of social enterprises supporting sustainable development goals. Despite my belief in the social value creation model of social entrepreneurship, not in the enterprise model, I have purposely restricted the discussion of sustainability to enterprise models only for better clarity and understanding. The multiple case studies provided context to discuss this issue. This chapter aims to bring to the forefront emerging research issues in this context. I suggest several research issues related to sustainability in the efforts of social entrepreneurs to attain the goal of sustainable development, which emerged from the grounded data of multiple case studies of social entrepreneurship. I believe it will help future scholars to explore sustainability in-depth in the context of social entrepreneurship to contribute towards sustainable development in the real sense.

Theoretical underpinning

This chapter is guided by the theoretical framework of social entrepreneurship and sustainable development (Seelos & Mair, 2004, 2005b): “Social entrepreneurs find new and efficient ways to create products and services that directly cater to social needs that remain unsatisfied by current economic and social institutions” (Seelos & Mair, 2004, p. 4). Observing the positive social impact of entrepreneurs catering to basic needs, the framework recognised their unique role in efficiently contributing to the achievement of sustainable development goals (refer to Figure 1.1). To contribute to sustainable development is defined as the purpose of social entrepreneurship. The notion of SD is divided into three distinct sets of activities, aimed at: 1) satisfying basic human needs; 2) creating communities that establish norms, rights, and collaborative behaviour as a prerequisite for participating in social and economic development; and 3) translating the more abstract needs of future generations into action today (Seelos & Mair, 2005b). In other words, entrepreneurial efforts are targeted at three different levels—basic social needs of individuals, large communities’ or whole societies’ needs for structures and capacity to build sustainable communities, and the need for future generations to inherit a minimum of constraints (e.g. polluted environment that demands high levels of investment for clean-up), so as to maximise the choices they have to fulfil their own needs and desires (Seelos & Mair, 2004). Social entrepreneurs contributed to sustainable development by creating innovative organisations and service provision models and by catering to various levels of needs—the basic needs of the individuals, the institutional needs of the communities, and the needs of the future generations. They created social and economic development in a poor-country context (Seelos and Mair, 2005b). Thus, they suggested that development processes need to consider the link between social and economic development.

FIGURE 1.1 Model of the contribution of social entrepreneurship (SE) to sustainable development (SD)

Source: Seelos and Mair (2005b)

Methodology

Social entrepreneurship (SE) is a context-based phenomenon: “The case-study is a method of choice, when the phenomenon under study is not readily distinguished from its context” (Yin, 1993, p. 3). Social entrepreneurial ventures can emerge in a variety of structures—non-profit, the public sector, for-profit sector, and a combination of these three sectors (Christie & Honig, 2006). Thus, in order to identify the research issues in all types of social entrepreneurial ventures, a ‘multiple-case study’ approach (Yin, 2003) was used in the study, and social entrepreneur was the unit of analysis. Due to strong linkages of three sectors—health, education, and livelihood in fighting poverty—nine social entrepreneurs as cases were selected. Only Ashoka¹ Fellows were selected, as Ashoka has pioneered the term ‘social entrepreneurship’ during the 1980s, and till the mid to late 1990s that several other organisations adopted a similar terminology (Grenier, 2006). They select only those social entrepreneurs as Ashoka Fellows who have created great social impact with their efforts. As the purpose was to explore sustainability in different types of social enterprises engaged in achieving the goal of sustainable development, samples were selected from three types of organisations: 1) charitable; 2) self-sustainable organisations of the not-for-profit sector or sustainable with mixed income, i.e. donation and generated income; and 3) ‘for-profit’ social enterprises. Thus, a theoretical sampling was used for sample selection. Filtering all of the boundaries, the final list of selected samples is given in Table 1.1.

TABLE 1.1 Selected sample cases for the study

Sector	Non-profit social enterprises depended on external funding such as charity, donations, and also grants and subsidies from the government	Sustainable non-profit social enterprises with combined income of charity, grant, and own generated income; not-for-profit self-sustainable social enterprise, or hybrid social enterprise	For-profit social enterprises (social enterprises registered as private limited companies, but their primary mission is solving a social problem, creating social value, and bringing social change)
Health	SNEHA: Society for Nutrition, Education and Health Action, Mumbai (Dr. Armida Fernandez, Founder) SNEHA’s initiatives target both care seekers and care providers in order to improve urban health standards. On the one hand, SNEHA worked at the community level to empower women and slum communities to be catalysts of change in their own right. On the other hand, SNEHA collaborated with existing public systems and care providers to create sustainable improvements in urban health.The head office of SNEHA is located in Dharavi, Mumbai (Maharashtra).	Narayana Hrudyalaya Pvt. Ltd.,Bengaluru (Dr. Devi Shetty, Founder) In order to achieve his aim of providing affordable and accessible health care delivery for the masses worldwide, Dr Shetty is following a hybrid model and relying on economies of scale. He has three types of packages for the patients: general, charitable, and patients insured under govt’s micro health insurance programmes. However, the quality of services was the same across all types of patients in all the network hospitals of NH.The headquarter of Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospitals is in Bengaluru.	Vaatsalya Healthcare Solutions Pvt. Ltd, Bengaluru (Dr. Ashwin Naik, Founder) Started in 2005 as India’s first hospital network focused on tier-two and tier-three towns, Vaatsal...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• CONTENTS
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Foreword
• List of contributors
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• PART 1 Sustainability of organisation
• PART 2 SUSTAINABILITY OF COMMUNITY
• PART 3 SUSTAINABILITY OF DEVELOPMENT
• PART 4 SUSTAINABILITY OF COMMUNITY AND ORGANISATION INTERFACE
• Glossary
• Index