Social entrepreneurship: A distinctive domain?

Though 'social entrepreneurship' as a phenomenon that integrates economic and social value creation has had a long presence, it does not seem to have attracted wide scholarly attention. A review of the social science literature found despite spanning a period of nearly 20 years, just 152 journal articles on social entrepreneurship and 10 key areas of future research (Short, Moss and Lumpkin, 2009). Some researchers remain unconvinced about the legitimacy of social entrepreneurship as an independent domain of inquiry (Dacin et al, 2011) and have posited that the proliferation of academic interest in this space is a result of skillfully crafted rhetoric (Pascal Dey, 2006). Further the lack of a consistency and clarity in the boundaries of 'social entrepreneurship' both in theory and practice only aggravates the skepticism.

Does social entrepreneurship represent a distinctive context for research in the organizational behavior domain?

While the prospects of this domain of inquiry remains terra incognita, I must admit that the possibility of a number of research areas and research questions makes it very appealing. Let me clarify that the definition of social entrepreneurship that I subscribe to is that it is a process of combining resources in new ways intended primarily to explore and exploit opportunities for creating social value (Mair and Marti, 2006). It is in the organizational behavioral (OB) context of this process that several questions arise in my mind.

First and foremost, I am curious to understand whether social entrepreneurship represents a distinctive context for research in OB. Reflecting on my experience in working with social enterprises there seems to be several distinguishing features as compared to other organizations. For one, as compared to those in other organizational types, the leaders of NGOs and social enterprises seem to have distinctive ideologies and innate attributes. Two, owing to distinctive nature of problem scope and opportunities pursued, the work group behavior seems to reflect a different set of norms. Third, the organization dynamics seems to be shaped by more divergent interests from stakeholders and dual forces of social and financial impact. Lastly, the process of influencing the followers or rather the psychological contracts that exist in such organizations seem different at the outset.

In the social entrepreneurship context, I would also like to understand the concept of organizational effectiveness, indicators reflecting this, and the conceptual linkage between the broad indicators of organizational performance and social impact.

Lastly, I am keen to understand where the organization boundaries could be drawn in the continuum of social value creation.

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