A comprehensive understanding of Social and Sustainable Entrepreneurship

Citation

Revuelto‐Taboada, L. and Simón‐Moya, V. (2012), "A comprehensive understanding of Social and Sustainable Entrepreneurship", Management Decision, Vol. 50 No. 4, pp. 744-748. https://doi.org/10.1108/00251741211220462

The interest of academics in notions of social and sustainable entrepreneurship has grown massively over recent years in management studies (Neck et al., 2009; Nicholls, 2010). Theories and empirical studies have gradually evolved and remarkable insights have been made to build “social entrepreneurship as a legitimate extension of the main stream concept of entrepreneurship” (p. xii). The book Social and Sustainable Entrepreneurship (2011) by Jerome A. Katz and G.T Lumpkin (Eds.), the 13th volume of the series “Advances in entrepreneurship, firm emergence and growth”, claims successfully this legitimate extension providing an excellent overview of the state of art and current research questions in the field of social and sustainable entrepreneurship. It constitutes a step forward to overcome what has been named by Nicholls(2010, p. 611) the “pre‐paradigmatic” stage of this research area. For that purpose, the book combines theoretical, empirical and case studies over its ten chapters, written by leading researchers from a diverse set of perspectives, thereby enriching our understanding and implications of social and sustainable entrepreneurship.

In chapter 1 Gundry, Kickul, Griffiths and Bacq take an in‐depth look at how social entrepreneurship often arises in highly resource constrained contexts, extending previous empirical research on the innovation ecology and bricolage behaviour (Griffiths et al., 2009; Kickul et al., 2011). And this scarcity is fundamental because it might promote and enhance innovation by forcing entrepreneurs to use, obtain and recombine old and apparently useless resources. This capability of innovation under scarcity is known as “bricolage capability” (Baker and Nelson, 2005, p. 357). The authors note, thanks to this bricolage and taking into account the “innovation ecology”, that it is the “structural supports (a collection of people and institutions) in place that sustain any innovative activity” (p. 3), the social entrepreneur develops a process of “catalytic innovation” (p. 4) providing innovative solutions to social challenges unsupplied by state and market. The model tested by authors establishes a positive relationship between innovation ecology and entrepreneurial bricolage, a positive relationship between entrepreneurial bricolage and catalytic innovation, and in turn a meditational role of entrepreneurial bricolage between innovation ecology and catalytic innovation. Their results show that entrepreneurial bricolage mediates positively and strongly between innovation ecology and catalytic innovation. The tested model's implications are very significant because they provide a strong empirical link between innovation capability under scarcity and the generation of social solutions provided by social entrepreneurs.

In chapter 2, Gras, Mosakowski and Lumpkin focus on the development of a future research agenda in social entrepreneurship, just as Haugh (2005), Austin et al. (2006) and Short et al. (2009) did. They analyse 248 papers (from 1991 to 2010) and identify 327 topics for future research, and using a modified Delphi process, they group topics into 27 research categories. The result is clear and systematic, provides a useful tool for scholars offering a roadmap to some of the most interesting questions and fruitful opportunities in the field from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. The authors point out research categories with more tradition in the social entrepreneurship field such as how can one measure social‐value creation (theme 10, p. 42) but they also outline newer research categories such as the presence or absence of knowledge spillovers in networks of social entrepreneurs (theme 14, p. 42) or the possible change in boards of directors as non‐profits shift towards for‐profit forms (theme 22, p. 43).

Chapter 3 presents a study of social ventures using data from 1,216 ventures in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor database (US data from 2008 to 2009). Moriah Meyskens, Elaine Allen and Candida Brush use the notion of hybrid ventures (which are ventures that emphasize both social and economic goals) from the entrepreneurial venture typology of Neck et al. (2009). The authors deal with the question of how human capital might influence the entrepreneur's choices about what types of venture to promote and what kind of goals to pursue. Their results are particularly interesting in the sense that they show a higher probability of starting hybrid ventures among highly educated and relatively less experienced female entrepreneurs, and in addition, results show a u‐shaped relationship with regard to age and starting hybrid ventures.

In chapter 4, Monica Diochon, Gabrielle Durepos and Alistair Anderson study in a social entrepreneurship context the notion of opportunity process, which is usually understood as the discovery, evaluation and exploitation of opportunities carried out by the entrepreneur (Shane and Venkataraman, 2000). To that end, the authors develop a double approach from a functionalist and interpretivist perspective, contrasting notion of opportunity as discovery or the creation process of the entrepreneur. Paradigm interplay between a functionalist thematic analysis and interpretivist sensemaking is suggested as a way to deepen the understanding of social entrepreneurship. The identification of four points of connection or interplay themes (topography, time‐orientation, nature of applicability and value‐orientation) (p. 96) is especially remarkable, because it provides new refinements to the notion of the opportunity process in a social context and theoretical connections between discovery and creation as notions that characterize this opportunity process, stressing the opportunity process in social entrepreneurship as being profoundly socially constructed (p. 106).

In chapter 5, “Grapes, dimes, salt, and markets: social entrepreneurship and non‐violent social change”, Jim Kucher posits social entrepreneurship in the context of social change theories. Social entrepreneurship is presented as a step along the evolutionary path of social change (pp. 113‐114). The author makes a concise but excellent review of the literature of social change, paying special attention to studies that lay their focus “on the means and methods in which ideas move and grow and become matters of public policy” (p. 123). Kucher inserts social entrepreneurship into social change study taking as a reference point the study by McCarthy and Zald (1977), which shows a positive relationship between mobilization of resources and the success of social change (pp. 121‐122). In doing so, the author characterizes social entrepreneurship as a non‐violent form of social change that uses market to sustain and provide social benefit in the long term. In this sense, he introduces the notion of market suasion as “the use of private economic activity to facilitate changes in social order or structure or to address inequities within a society” (p. 128).

In chapter 6, Donald Summers and Bruno Dyck develop a two‐part process model of social intrapreneurship in for‐profit organizations (p. 146). On the basis of Lawrence and Suddaby's (2006) study, the authors develop the first part of the model examining key antecedent factors that facilitate deinstitutionalization (disconnecting sanctions/rewards, disassociating moral foundations and undermining assumptions and beliefs). Basing notions on Dyck's (2002) study, the authors develop the second part of the model which shows four phases of process associated with the development and implementation of social intrapreneurship initiatives (socialization, externalization, combination and internalization). The main contribution of the study is that the two‐part model developed by authors for describing social intrapreneurship, utilizes and combines deinstitutional and organizational learning theories in a coherent way, achieving an explanatory model which works effectively when it is applied to the case study of the First Community Bank (p. 150‐167).

In chapter 7, Yaso Thiru deals with the following question: “Social enterprise education: new economics or a platypus?”. With this question the author brings up two possible options to teach social entrepreneurship: through business entrepreneurship and economics or through new theories from diverse fields of study. The author's conclusion is very clear, social entrepreneurship should be studied from diverse knowledge areas, and not just from classical approaches of economics and business entrepreneurship, due to the fact that these two knowledge areas cannot adequately explain the phenomenon of social ventures. In this way, the author relates social entrepreneurship to a platypus, whose genome sequence is composed of genes from different species in the same way that social entrepreneurship should be explained from different disciplines. Thiru draws this conclusion by means of the study of various social entrepreneurship programs offered in different universities around the world, which he classifies as accommodating, integrating and immersion approaches.

Chapter 8 is devoted to the delimitation of the terms social, sustainable and environmental entrepreneurship taking as a starting point a narrow definition of each of these types of entrepreneurship. The differences between these three areas come from the study of the core concepts, the disciplinary roots, the methodologies and the key questions. In doing so, the authors point out that these three types of entrepreneurship should be studied separately. However, the authors also highlight as the common feature of the three types of entrepreneurship social value creation (p. 221) a characteristic that has traditionally been attributed to social entrepreneurship (Arthur et al., 2010; Austin et al., 2006; Zadeck and Thake, 1997). In addition, it must be said that through the conceptual distinction between social and environmental entrepreneurship, the authors are diverging from the GEM concept of social entrepreneurship that states that environmental goals exist within social entrepreneurship (Bosma and Levie, 2009). Nevertheless, this article contributes to the research field of entrepreneurship as a whole, raising the fundamental question of what are the limits to studying the field of social entrepreneurship.

In chapter 9, Lichtenstein points out that sustainable entrepreneurship is the result of diverse environmental actions that sustainable ventures carry out in order to “generate net‐positive environmental and social outcomes through commerce” (p. 233). The author finds that the efforts a venture makes in order to become sustainable are within eight arenas or “ecologies”: individuals, social networks, initiatives and projects, organizational efficiencies, organizational innovations, value chains, industry/sectors and systemic change. Through these ecologies, the author develops a model of entrepreneurial action for sustainability based on the interactions and interdependencies among each of the mentioned arenas. The conclusion of the chapter is that sustainable entrepreneurship is widespread over these eight ecologies contrary to authors like Hart and Milstein (2003) and Porter and Kramer (2006), who emphasize the “core strategy as the prime focus for firm sustainability initiatives” (p. 266).

In the last chapter, Krueger, Hansen, Michl and Welsh draw together several of the topics analysed in previous chapters in the specific context of sustainable entrepreneurship. This chapter emphasizes the role of cognition and emotion in understanding how entrepreneurs think about sustainability. To do so, the authors first explain how people understand the concepts of social, sustainable and traditional entrepreneurship, through the interpretations of Venn Diagrams that people draw about their conceptions of what entrepreneurship means (p. 283). Later the chapter delves into the drivers of entrepreneurship and highlights two fundamental concepts: perceived feasibility and perceived desirability of outcomes, because authors consider that it is impossible to understand what inhibits or facilitates entrepreneurial activity (sustainable entrepreneurship or not) without understanding how intentions toward a prospective course of action are constructed (p. 302). Finally authors offer some interesting prescriptions about what to do to promote perceptions of feasibility and desirability.

Finally we wish to highlight that the value of this book Social and Sustainable Entrepreneurship is beyond question. It brings together different and interesting points of view from different perspectives helping to reinforce this issue as a field of study in its own right. Scholars and students can find an excellent framework and a significant number of research proposals while practitioners can also find some useful recommendations. The book also reveals that a further conceptual delimitation is still needed to overcome a lack of consensus about the nature and limits of social, sustainable and environmental entrepreneurship.