Creating Good Work

The World's Leading Social Entrepreneurs Show How to Build A Healthy Economy

R. Schultz

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781349350834, 9780230372030
• eBook ISBN: 9781137313522
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Entrepreneurship
• Index: Business

Creating Good Work is a practical guide book, thatrecounts the stories of some of the most successful social entrepreneurial programs operating today, with real life examples of and how they overcame both physical and societal barriers to create a lasting impact on the world they encounter.

Section 1

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LAYING THE THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS FOR SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Chapter 1

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DELIBERATE DISRUPTIVE DESIGN

Craig P. Dunn

Associate Dean of Business,

Western Washington University

While its roots are deep in our past, over the last three decades we have witnessed an explosion of innovation as a growing international community of individuals has experimented with a great variety of approaches to fulfilling one basic idea:

Markets and business, capital and commerce can be harnessed not simply for the creation of individual wealth, but rather the creation of value in its fullest.

—Jed Emerson, Foreword, Social Enterprise Typology

(emphasis in the original)

SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP IS A RAPIDLY shifting field ranging from the work of philosophers to that of economists to that of organizational theorists to that of social scientists to that of philanthropists to perhaps the most vital aspect, the work of ordinary folk seeking simply to leave the world a better place than they found it. The term “social entrepreneurship,” however, fails to adequately capture both the head and the heart of the matter: thoughtful, caring design that is at the same time deliberate and disruptive, to the point of being fundamentally subversive.

Before probing the heart of social entrepreneurship, how might the mounting literature on social entrepreneurship be meaningfully organized? Perhaps it would be best to step back for a moment and consider the grounding for knowledge, which is: What is truth? And, how do we access truth? These are two of the most essential questions facing us as we strive to make sense of the world in which we find ourselves—and answers are particularly vital with respect to emerging topics such as social entrepreneurship.

Those trained at virtually any institution of higher education come to appreciate evidence-based, empirical research conducted against the backdrop of very exacting assumptions. It is assumed, for example, that there exists an objective reality apart from the observer. This reality is there to be discovered, and the process of discovery does not impact the truth itself. Knowledge accumulates in a regimented iterative cycle of conjecture. This leads to the development of a hypothesis, which in turn leads to hypothesis testing, and then to interpretation of the findings, which leads back to modification of the original conjecture and further hypothesis development, testing, and further interpretation of findings, ad infinitum. Through this progression we come to a better understanding of the world in which we live—if not of our place in that world.

We seem naturally driven to reinforce an orderly understanding of the universe. The scientific method just described nets an enormous volume of evidence that needs to be organized in some logical fashion. To that end, we engage in a variety of tactics. One is to draw similarities and distinctions: In what ways is social entrepreneurship similar to traditional entrepreneurship? In what ways is social entrepreneurship dissimilar to traditional entrepreneurship? It has been argued that the centrality of the social mission contributes to the distinction between social entrepreneurship and other forms of entrepreneurship.¹

A second organizational tactic is to categorize: Social entrepreneurship ranges along a continuum of for-profit to not-for-profit enterprise and along a continuum of social goals to commercial exchange. One such approach has been to delineate the salient legal distinctions that differentiate organizational forms, providing within each several examples of social entrepreneurial activity.² However, while theorists and practitioners alike have generally moved well beyond the narrow view that “[s]ocial enterprise refers to non-profits that operate businesses both to raise revenue and to further the social missions of their organizations,”³ a quick literature search uncovers a glut of claims that social entrepreneurship is solidly and exclusively grounded in the not-for-profit sector of the larger economy.

A third is to differentiate individual behavior from organizational behavior: What are the characteristics of a successful social entrepreneur? What are the effective tactics employed by social entrepreneurs? Several successful entrepreneurial methods have been outlined and categorized as harmonizing strategies, deisolating strategies, and leadership strategies.⁴

A fourth is to establish hierarchy: “[S]ocial entrepreneurs are one species in the genus entrepreneur.”⁵ This oft-quoted statement by one of the prominent forces in entrepreneurship implies a subservient role for social entrepreneurship within the broader field in which it is presumed to reside.

A fifth is to expose the antecedents of a process: Is social entrepreneurship a response to market failure? How are intentions to create a social enterprise formed? In a macro sense, “future entrepreneurs will likely be more socially concerned than those of the past—not necessarily as a result of their own value orientations but as a response to an evolution of thought regarding the social responsibility of business activity in general.”⁶ This general statement comes on the heels of numerous more specific claims, such as the one that “social entrepreneurship has a distinct mission: to combat market failures aggravated by disenfranchisement,”⁷ with arguments here situated on mitigating the negative externalities that often attend the operation of unconstrained markets.

A sixth is to evaluate the performance of social entrepreneurial ventures: How should one assess organizational effectiveness? Nonempiricists suggest that performance measurement needs to rely on more than qualitative, case-based research, and advocate for employing the rigors of double-bottom-line or triple-bottom-line analysis.⁸

But something beyond developing categorization schemes is needed in order to understand the underlying social entrepreneurship construct. Three methods extend existing knowledge to draw conclusions or construct explanations: inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning, and abductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning maintains we know social entrepreneurship when we see it, and that its general principles can be inferred from observation of cases describing specific instances of social entrepreneurship. Much of the current manuscript offers the reader the opportunity to draw conclusions about social entrepreneurship writ large from rich description of particular exemplars. Although such inductive inferences are not logical necessities, they nonetheless amplify knowledge. Alternatively, deductive reasoning was employed earlier in the chapter to show how empirical literature, related to social entrepreneurship, was analytically organized. The reader will now be invited to engage in a thought experiment serving to deconstruct the term “social entrepreneurship,” which will prove an exercise in abductive reasoning, “characterized by a lack of completeness, either in evidence, or in the explanation, or both”—a process that can be creative, intuitive, or even revolutionary.⁹

JARRING JUXTAPOSITIONS

So much critical research for such a young field! But the question that arises is: Is “social entrepreneurship” even the right term to describe the topic under investigation? Or alternatively framed: Is the head sufficient to frame the field of social entrepreneurship, or is the heart necessary as well? In order to answer this question, let’s begin with Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative, summarized as the universal requirement that natural persons be treated as something other than mere means to some further end. Kant’s demand is grounded in a fundamental commitment to the inherent dignity and liberty of the individual.

But Kant’s categorical imperative is consistently and unreflectively violated in the dogged usage of certain common business expressions. Consider the phrase “human resource management.” If one pays even cursory attention to this conjoining of words, one cannot escape the exclusive focus placed on prizing persons only for their utility, rather than for their intrinsic value. Humans—as with land and capital in the economist’s parlance—are on this turn of phrase valued merely for what they can produce. To the extent humans are valued only for their productive capacity, however, they are undervalued. And while this usage has worked its way into the very fabric of virtually every business organization, the damage done does not stop here: many are now unabashedly fond of referring to real, living, purpose-driven individuals as “human assets” and “human capital.”

What is striking about each of these phrases is that they share in common a fusing of the sacred and the economic. Humanity itself is a sacred idea, capturing as it does fundamental notions of nobility and purpose and choice. Economics, on the other hand, has been referred to as the “dismal science” for over a century and a half now.

There persist other—and better—examples of what should be recognized as jarring juxtapositions, but that are accepted as if they actually mean something. Consider the practice of exchanging gifts. Really? What can that possibly mean? The idea of exchange is the cornerstone of economic theory and references the act of giving something with every expectation of getting in return something of equal or greater value—else why would one engage in the exchange? The idea of gift is sacred and indicates the act of giving something with no expectation of getting something in return. There is a difference between exchange and gift, and we know it. If a gift is given, and the gift-giver awaits a gift in return, then the alleged act of gift-giving was not that at all. And if the hoped-for reciprocity never materializes, the gift-giver should not cling to the claim that the act was gift; rather, an honest assessment would have this act considered an unfulfilled exchange. Conversely, if the impulse of a gift-receiver is to reciprocate with a gift out of some sense of felt obligation to generate cosmic fairness, the recipient has diminished the sacred quality of the gift by seeking to convert it into an exchange.

What does this have to do with social entrepreneurship? Here is the rub. The idea of being social is sacred. To a great extent our core personal identities are formed and understood in relation to the other, while what it means to be moral is summed up by how we treat others. On the other hand, the idea of entrepreneurship has existed for over two centuries and has always referenced innovative market-based activity carried out against the backdrop of economic—particularly capitalistic—ideals and principles. There you have it: the confounding of the sacred and the economic. To return to the abbreviated literature review mentioned earlier, the purely scientific study of social enterprise depends entirely on the reasonableness of uniting the sacred and the economic. Furthermore, such analytic inquiry privileges the head over the heart—and the spirit.

AN ALTERNATE CONCEPTUALIZATION

As considered earlier, the scientific method seems at the same time objective, rational, and rigorous. Inquiry into the sociology of science calls into question such assumptions, oftentimes going so far as to suggest that “the construction of facts . . . is a collective process”—with the accompanying implication that truth is a social construction of reality rather than objective reality.¹⁰

In the process of truth discovery, it is easy to work from what we know and modify that knowledge as we go along. We know something about entrepreneurship; we can bring considerations of social justice to this construct and end up with some understanding of social entrepreneurship. This approach has produced findings that are consistent with the demands of science, and at the same time are expedient. But accurate? What if the construct called for is entirely new, rather than a modification to or extension of existing knowledge?

There are at least three dimensions of what has come to be known as social entrepreneurship that ought to be given attention. First the activity is deliberate. We are familiar with the notion that evolution takes place as random variations in nature are retained due to their improved environmental fit. Part of what is distinctive about human activity is our ability to engage in deliberate rather than random choice and behavior. Considered adaptive shifts in response to system changes support the view that “social enterprise is an algorithm rather than a particular kind of organization, with a specific set of traits or a prescribed mission.”¹¹ This intentionality is essential to the activity that has come to be known as social entrepreneurship.

The second dimension is disruption, as understood in contrast to incremental change. At least three perspectives have been referenced within discussions of disruptive innovation: radical product, technology, and business-model development.¹² It has been argued that each of these disruptions arises in a different way, posing different competitive advantages, and requiring disparate responses from its incumbents. Whatever form it takes, such disruption is essential to social entrepreneurship.

The final dimension is design—not as a “downstream step in the development process” but rather as innovative systems thinking serving to unite inspiration, ideation, and i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Section 1   Laying the Theoretical Foundations for Social Entrepreneurship
• Section 2   Application and Practice
• Appendix: Applied Wisdom and Lessons Learned
• Notes on Contributors
• Contributors’ Websites
• Index