Social entrepreneurship is attracting growing amounts of talent, money, and attention. But along with its increasing popularity has come less certainty about what exactly a social entrepreneur is and does. As a result, all sorts of activities are now being called social entrepreneurship. Some say that a more inclusive term is all for the good, but the authors argue that it’s time for a more rigorous definition.
The nascent field of social entrepreneurship is growing rapidly and attracting increased attention from many sectors. The term itself shows up frequently in the media, is referenced by public officials, has become common on university campuses, and informs the strategy of several prominent social sector organizations, including Ashoka and the Schwab and Skoll Foundation foundations.
The reasons behind the popularity of social entrepreneurship are many. On the most basic level, there’s something inherently interesting and appealing about entrepreneurs and the stories of why and how they do what they do. People are attracted to social entrepreneurs like last year’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus for many of the same reasons that they find business entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs so compelling – these extraordinary people come up with brilliant ideas and against all the odds succeed at creating new products and services that dramatically improve people’s lives.
But interest in social entrepreneurship transcends the phenomenon of popularity and fascination with people. Social entrepreneurship signals the imperative to drive social change, and it is that potential payoff, with its lasting, transformational benefit to society, that sets the field and its practitioners apart.
Although the potential benefits offered by social entrepreneurship are clear to many of those promoting and funding these activities, the actual definition of what social entrepreneurs do to produce this order of magnitude return is less clear. In fact, we would argue that the definition of social entrepreneurship today is anything but clear. As a result, social entrepreneurship has become so inclusive that it now has an immense tent into which all manner of socially beneficial activities fit.
In some respects this inclusiveness could be a good thing. If plenty of resources are pouring into the social sector, and if many causes that otherwise would not get sufficient funding now get support because they are regarded as social entrepreneurship, then it may be fine to have a loose definition. We are inclined to argue, however, that this is a flawed assumption and a precarious stance.
Social entrepreneurship is an appealing construct precisely because it holds such high promise. If that promise is not fulfilled because too many “nonentrepreneurial” efforts are included in the definition, then social entrepreneurship will fall into disrepute, and the kernel of true social entrepreneurship will be lost. Because of this danger, we believe that we need a much sharper definition of social entrepreneurship, one that enables us to determine the extent to which an activity is and is not “in the tent.” Our goal is not to make an invidious comparison between the contributions made by traditional social service organizations and the results of social entrepreneurship, but simply to highlight what differentiates them.
If we can achieve a rigorous definition, then those who support social entrepreneurship can focus their resources on building and strengthening a concrete and identifiable field. Absent that discipline, proponents of social entrepreneurship run the risk of giving the skeptics an ever-expanding target to shoot at, and the cynics even more reason to discount social innovation and those who drive it.
Why Should We Care?
Long shunned by economists, whose interests have gravitated toward market-based, price-driven models that submit more readily to data-driven interpretation, entrepreneurship has experienced something of a renaissance of interest in recent years. Building on the foundation laid by Schumpeter, William Baumol and a handful of other scholars have sought to restore the entrepreneur’s rightful place in “production and distribution” theory, demonstrating in that process the seminal role of entrepreneurship.6 According to Carl Schramm, CEO of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, entrepreneurs, “despite being overlooked or explicitly written out of our economic drama,”7 are the free enterprise system’s essential ingredient and absolutely indispensable to market economies.
We are concerned that serious thinkers will also overlook social entrepreneurship, and we fear that the indiscriminate use of the term may undermine its significance and potential importance to those seeking to understand how societies change and progress. Social entrepreneurship, we believe, is as vital to the progress of societies as is entrepreneurship to the progress of economies, and it merits more rigorous, serious attention than it has attracted so far.
Clearly, there is much to be learned and understood about social entrepreneurship, including why its study may not be taken seriously. Our view is that a clearer definition of social entrepreneurship will aid the development of the field. The social entrepreneur should be understood as someone who targets an unfortunate but stable equilibrium that causes the neglect, marginalization, or suffering of a segment of humanity; who brings to bear on this situation his or her inspiration, direct action, creativity, courage, and fortitude; and who aims for and ultimately affects the establishment of a new stable equilibrium that secures permanent benefit for the targeted group and society at large.
This definition helps distinguish social entrepreneurship from social service provision and social activism. That social service providers, social activists, and social entrepreneurs will often adapt one another’s strategies and develop hybrid models is, to our minds, less inherently confusing and more respectful than indiscriminate use of these terms. It’s our hope that our categorization will help clarify the distinctive value each approach brings to society and lead ultimately to a better understanding and more informed decision making among those committed to advancing positive social change.
Source: http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/social_entrepreneurship_the_case_for_definition/
-posted by: Julia Buco 3rd BS/BAF
Recession, Far From Over, Already Setting Records
ReplyDeleteDane Stangler and Bo the Harvard MBA Fishback will never link to this, as their #1 job is to make sure that Carl Schramm’s image is exalted even as the economy crashes after seven years of of Schrammenomics.
The economy is in Schrambles, as Bo Fishnback and Dane Stangler come up with new buzzwords to shout as they fly over America in first class, celebrating their massive salaries from the once venerable Kauffman Foundation (now dominated by tyrannical, failed schrammenomics) which have also allowed Carl Schramm to buy himself a George Eastman Kodak Medal and fund a vanity press devoted entirely to displacing the intellectual giants and Nobel Laureate economists who could save the eccnomy–Ludwig Von Mises and F.A. Hayke. schrammenomics is all about dumbing down the economy so as to make Schramm look good, as his insipid, dull, anti-intellectual book GOOD CAPITALISM (SCHRAMMENOMICS/BO FISHBACK MBA BUZZWORDS) BAD CAPITALISM (HAYEK & MISES) left out both Mises and Hayek.
Regarding Carl Schramm’s Recession, The New York Times reports:
The two areas in which this is already the worst recession since 1960 are employment and industrial production. The number of jobs in the country has fallen by 3.9 percent, exceeding the 3.2 percent decline in the 1981-82 recession. Economists generally expect those numbers to get worse before they stabilize.
The 15.4 percent fall in industrial production, while worse than in previous recessions, is better than in some countries. The worldwide recession has slashed both production and international trade, and the impact is being felt most in export-driven economies in Asia.
The fourth category used in the coincident indicators is manufacturing and trade sales, a broad picture of total transactions in the economy. Adjusted for inflation, that has fallen 10.8 percent since the peak, a bit more than the decline in 1981-82 but not yet close to the 14.8 percent decline in the 1970s recession.
And yet Schramm continues flying around congratulaing his Statist friends:
F.A. Hayek warned us about Carl Schramm’s Tyranny: Mises Warned us of Carl Shramm’s/Dane Stangler’s Post Office
April 24, 2009 by entrepreneurshipeconomist
“[Socialists] promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office.”” –Ludwig Von Mises predicting what the Kauffman Foundation would become after seven years of tryannical, corporate-CEO, personal-profiteering, anti-intellectual, anti-entrepreneurial Schrammenomics.
“Those fighting for free enterprise and free competition do not defend the interests of those rich today. They want a free hand left to unknown men who will be the entrepreneurs of tomorrow…” –Ludwig Von Mises talking about why Carm Schramm goes to the $ 3,995.00/head Milken Institute to address his fellow corporate-statists on Kauffman’s dime, instead of funding innovators, true academics, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship, and inventors who are losing their homes and businesses as the eocnomy withers after seven lonmg years of Schrammenomics and Schramm funnels himself and his growthology buzzword-bloggers millions from the Kauffman endowment (which was meant to go to entrepreneurs, true academics who are not afraid to quote Hayek and Mises, and innovators), while pretending to serve the innovators and entrepreneurs Schramm opposes in his characterless actions and by saying one thing while doing another.
I sit on a man’s back, choking him, and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by any means possible, except getting off his back. –Tolstoy Writings on Civil Disobedience and Nonviolence (1886)
F.A. Hayek/Mises warned us about Carl Schramm et al.’s Temporal Tyranny, where he hires thug deputies such as Dane Stangler to backdate research and make it look like Schrammenomics embraces the Austrains, when, in fact, he compeletly ignores them in word, deeed, spirit, and action.
Because Schramm has hijacked the $2.5 billion Kauffman foundation, he runs it as a top-down dictarorial CEO would, with every action motivated by self-preservation as the Nobel in economics slips further and further beyond his intellectually-inept reach. Sycophantic lockstepping lawyers such as Dane Stangler will never call Schramm out, as thier salary depends on supporting Statist Schrammenomics above truth, beauty, and reason, and they will go so far as to backdate Kauffman research to serve their master.
Carl Schramm did not build Kauffman, and it is time for him to step down.
Carl Schramm is not Kauffman, and it is time for Carl Schramm to step down.
Carl Schramm does not own Kauffman, and it is time for Carl Schramm to step down.
Kauffman did not will for his vast welath to become a Schrammenomics vanity press, and it is time for Schramm to step down.
Kauffman did not will for Schramm to use a $2.5 billion warchest to pen and promote insipid, self-serving books lauding Schrammenomics while completely ignoring intellectual diants such as L.V. Mises and F.A. Hayek, and it is time for Carl Schramm to setp down.
Nowhere in the foundation’s charter did it stipulate that Carl Schramm was to lord over the Kauffman Foundation for all of entirety as the economy withered, crashed, and died; and the netrprnuerial spirit was replaced with Schrammenomics
The most important elements in entrepreneurship are character and integrity. The most important elements for Statists/Schrammeconomist are the lack of character and integrity and the ability to use words to mislead and deceive while laying claim to a dead entrepreneur’s estate. While Hayek and Mises used words for truth, Schramm uses words for mere personal profit, and then when his lackluster, anti-intellectual, unscholarly works fall short, he has to try and put all better economists out of business by leveraging his $2.5 billion warchest. Imagine if Hayek and Mises had used a $2.5 billion warchest to put their competitors out of business. They would never do this. For they had character and integrity, which Schramm the self-serving tyrant/Statist completely lacks.
–http://entrepreneurshipeconomist.wordpress.com/