Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Platforms as Rising Social Entrepreneurs

Educational social entrepreneurs which offer massive open online courses (MOOCs) create social value through removing inequality in terms of reaching educational resources to develop new skills required by the business world through offering free or low cost, high quality online courses to anyone anywhere and removing the barriers of traditional education cost, location, and access. The negative effects of COVID-19 pandemic on unemployment levels and new graduates' expectations about finding a job are apparent. As known, there has also been a long-standing debate over the insufficiency of traditional education models in terms of satisfying human resources qualifications needed by contemporary business world. After the pandemic, new jobs and new business models requiring new employee skills are also expected to occur. As a result, the understanding behind the MOOCs and the importance of social entrepreneurs which offer MOOCs increased. For these reasons, the purpose of this chapter is to examine MOOCs platforms and their actions to create social value during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Effects of Digitalization on Social Entrepreneurship and Social Value

The intense competition and change by globalization and digitalization in the 21st century have made organizations and people face opportunities, threats, and uncertainty. Digitalization allows new and original business models and thus, presenting changes as a service or benefit to the consumer has become more important. A network is the most powerful instrument of social entrepreneurs or other employees to adapt to the new order. A very important tool of the new order is the blockchain technology which allows more secure, efficient, and trustworthy social enterprises. Social entrepreneurship is the process of establishing social enterprises to create social benefits and the relevant social value is general non-financial effects of programs, organizations, and interferences that include the wellbeing of people and communities, social capital, and the environment. This study tries to define and theorize that the results of digitalization can be managed by increasing social entrepreneurship and the resulting social impact and networking have an easing effect on this method.

The Role of Societal Culture in Social Innovation

Being at a development stage, the social innovation literature needs further contributions that would help to comprehensively find out the enablers of social innovation especially within macro level. Since the nature of social innovation is cumulative as well as interactive, the micro level practices of individual social innovation initiatives add up to the general patterns at the macro-level. On account of the fact that shared values among members of a society bring about similar expectations, perceptions, and behavioral patterns, it is essential to explore how various societal cultural attributes contribute to social innovation capacities of countries. This study aims to explore an evidence of the influence of societal culture on social innovation, specifically by shaping the perceptions of social entrepreneurs for social value creation. By discussing the relationship between societal culture and social innovation in a conceptual manner along with developing research propositions, this study offers a new direction for future research.

Social Enterprises as Hybrid Organisations

Social enterprises are organizations that seek to achieve social goals through innovative and social value-creating activities. However, besides their social objectives, they are confronting financial and resource-based challenges in the markets to provide their sustainability. The tension between these dual objectives leads organizations to focus on one of the strategies value-creating or value capture. However, in recent years, hybrid organizing is seen as an alternative way of balancing dual objectives. Thus this study aims to understand how hybrid social enterprises perform well and create social impact. A qualitative descriptive single case study approach will be used to analyze a hybrid organization and its consequences.

When Music Changes, so Does the Dance

This chapter examines the role of social enterprises/entrepreneurs from the perspective of the COVID-19 outbreak and discussed the importance of social entrepreneurship. In this context, answers to the following questions are sought: Did social enterprises/entrepreneurs stand out during the COVID-19 era, particularly the social value they created? Do social enterprises/entrepreneurs perform studies especially for groups experiencing social exclusion during the COVID-19 era? The study based on qualitative research reveals that by producing innovative, fast, and effective solutions social initiatives have won the approval of society. The headlines of leading media outlets published between December 2019 and June 2020 and discourses from social actors confirm the rising critical value of social entrepreneurs.

Creating Shared Value and Social Innovation

This multiple case study of nine entrepreneurial ventures with social emphasis operating in Colombia, Peru, and Chile identifies vital elements that make these firms impactful in three dimensions: economic, environmental, and social. The results found that the founder's proximity to the social/ecological problem is a trigger to start up a business. The “purpose” is a motivational factor to both start up a business and keep the business during hard times, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose is the fuel, but it does not guarantee the success of the company. The value proposition is the critical factor for success. These companies are continually re-inventing and changing their value proposition while keeping the purpose of the organization as a keystone. The authors shed light on a model for social entrepreneurship in South America.

From Social Sustainability to Social Entrepreneurship

Despite the discussion of social sustainability, which has been a crucial component of sustainable development for decades, unfortunately, the desired successful outcomes have not been realized in practice. This failure caused the need to examine the concept of social sustainability differently than ever before. Social entrepreneurship is a valuable tool to meet this need. Concordantly, this chapter purposes to evaluate the relations between social sustainability and social entrepreneurship by comprehensively analyzing them. Discussing this relationship and proposing a new perspective will support overcome theoretical dilemmas and practical struggles. Therefore, the concept of sustainability was explained in detail through a wide literature review, and then the concept of social entrepreneurship was examined, and links, similarities, and gaps were revealed between the two concepts. As a result, the effective implementation of social sustainability policies depends on the social impact and value created by social entrepreneurship.

Dynamic of the Evaluation of Social Entrepreneurship Concept

Research on social entrepreneurship has increased especially in the last 10 years. The reason for this is the contribution of social entrepreneurship to both social and economic development. The purpose of this research is to perform a bibliometric analysis of a total of 926 social entrepreneurship articles in the WoS (Web of Science) database. These data reveal the most prestigious authors, countries, journals, and articles in the field of social entrepreneurship. In addition, other concepts related to social entrepreneurship were visualized with co-word analysis. As a result of the analysis, the chapter is presented with ideas to show how scientific research progresses in the field and for future studies. At the same time, it explains the recent form in Turkish studies using the TR-Index database.

Smart Specialization Based on the Concept of Creating Shared Value for the Development and Revitalization of an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

This research aims to make a methodological and theoretical contribution to smart and sustainable regional development that includes the shared value approach and also aims to create innovative strategies that use a smart specialization strategy methodology to invigorate an entrepreneurial ecosystem. From a conceptual standpoint, the authors established the implementation guidelines for strategies to allow to resolving existing development problems in society and support regional entrepreneurial ecosystems as a way to help their sustainable growth and development. As a result of this research, they propose a smart specialization strategy that allows the development of shared value strategies that contribute to the implementation of procedures and practices that improve the conditions of traditionally excluded populations, while generating a positive economic and environmental impact on entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Crowdfunding as a Financial Tool for Social Enterprises

Nevertheless, scholarly knowledge on crowdfunding has been accumulating, and the number of studies on the role of crowdfunding in financing social entrepreneurs is limited and results are mixed. This calls for a need to uncover the underlying dynamics of funding success for socially and environmentally oriented projects. To analyze these dynamics, the authors analyze the funding performance of campaigns tagged by the Kickstarter platform as ‘public benefit', ‘environmental', or ‘LGBTQIA'. Results show that projects with these tags are more likely to be successful compared to projects without tags after controlling for other factors that are shown to affect project success in the literature. These findings provide guidelines to social entrepreneurs looking to fund their projects on crowdfunding platforms and open up the path for future research on the relationship between framing for social and environmental orientation and funding success.