Utilizing Social Networks in Social Entrepreneurship

This chapter focuses on the linkage between social networks and social entrepreneurship and argues that social networks are crucial in social entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurs rely on different compositions of social networks in different stages of the entrepreneurial process. Drawing from network approach in entrepreneurship, this chapter continues by exploring the theoretical framework including conceptualizations of social entrepreneurship and social networks. It then introduces evolution of social networks in comply with organizational growth process. As a result, the chapter discusses utilizing social networks in social entrepreneurship. The conclusion reflects on possible characteristics of network usage and composition through the life cycle of social enterprises.

Performance Measurement in Social Enterprises

This chapter begins with the notion of performance management and then focuses on the concept of social impact in order to deeply examine the measurement of performance in social enterprises. The chapter argues the importance of measuring social impact which is the crucial process in social investment and discusses which measurement method to choose. It then introduces the classification of methods in various forms based on the related literature. The chapter continues by explaining the most frequently used social impact measurement methods including cost effectiveness and cost benefit analyses, social accounting and auditing, SROI, balanced scorecard, SIMPLE, benefit-cost ratio, BACO ratio, expected return metric, cost per impact, and blended value. Finally, the conclusion focuses on the overall perspective of the subject, critical areas to pay attention to, and limitations.

Lean Approach to Social Entrepreneurship

This chapter proposes an alternate view to social entrepreneurship emphasizing that for-profit and non-profit entrepreneurship are in essence indifferent. It then discusses the latest trends in commercial entrepreneurship world together with implications on social entrepreneurship. In doing so, the lean startup phenomenon and closely related concepts, namely customer development philosophy, business model innovation, value proposition design, and jobs-to-be-done theory are explored with implications on social entrepreneurship.

Value Creation Through Social Change

The social entrepreneur's role in creating social change has been emphasized in the literature. These individuals offer new solutions to society's problems and by doing that they transform the existing institutions. However, there is limited information how these change agents generate value and cause a transformation in society. This chapter tries to identify how a social entrepreneur, individually, has a potential to cause social change. In order to give information about the process of value creation an Ashoka Fellow from Turkey has been selected. Gender inequality and violence against women might be one of the important issues that have to be solved in the country. The selected fellow empowers women by creating social value and advancing social change in Turkey.

Social Entrepreneurship

Social entrepreneurship attracts attention to the science world as a conceptual field of social benefit based on business activities. Social entrepreneurs are the actors who drive innovation with commercial tolerance and uncertainty tolerance in order to raise social welfare and find solutions to social problems. Especially the injustices and inadequacies in transferring public support to social problems have increased the importance of social entrepreneurship. In addition to the conceptual projection of social entrepreneurship, this research has raised fundamental problems that have hampered social entrepreneurship and prevented further development, and a number of solution proposals have been developed in order to get rid of these problems. This concept, which has been separated from traditional entrepreneurship and is in the process of building its own literature, has many parts to inspire next research. It is hoped that this study, which includes proposals for next research, will contribute to the scientific world. It is thought that this study created by the method of literature review will have more specific conceptual contribution to the investigation of various researches from different disciplines and their unique character in terms of their synthesis.

Social Entrepreneurial Leadership for a Better World

This chapter introduces the concept of entrepreneurial leadership and argues that it offers potential contributions to economic and social wealth. A theoretical framework of social entrepreneurial leadership and the characteristics of social entrepreneurial leaders is then posited. The similarities between social entrepreneurialism and other leadership styles such as ethical, transformative, authentic, sustainable, and servant leadership are explored. The conclusion reflects on the various understandings of social entrepreneurial leadership and how social entrepreneurial leaders can be characterized as the primary actors for a better world.

The Individual and Behavioral Factors of Social Entrepreneurs

This chapter introduces the concept of social entrepreneurs and claims that some individual and behavioral factors contribute to social entrepreneurship. In this point of view, the purpose of this study is to highlight the leading individual and behavioral factors of the social entrepreneur. While exploring the theoretical framework, the theoretical foundations of social entrepreneurship and leading personality and behavioral characteristics have been investigated. The research is based on in-depth interviews with four participants to get a better understanding of the individual and behavioral factors of social entrepreneurs. As a result, the in-depth interviews showed that the social entrepreneurial potential encompass entrepreneurial motivations and psychological, social, managerial competencies. These dimensions contain self-motivation, self-efficacy, risk-taking, purposeful and success-oriented, strategic planning capacity, innovation capacity, social capital capacity, leadership capacity, resilience, resistance to uncertainty, conflict management capacity, and political maneuver capacity.

The Social Entrepreneur

Although social entrepreneurs have some common characteristics with business or commercial entrepreneurs, undoubtedly they differ in many ways. In this chapter, social entrepreneurs are highlighted with their core personality traits and motivation factors that are different from the other entrepreneurs. In the beginning, the definitions of social entrepreneurs put forward by different authorities were presented. Immediately after these definitions, the three main typologies—social bricoleurs, social constructionists, social engineers—and their characteristics were examined. By its nature and purpose, a social enterprise needs some specific entrepreneurial traits and driving factors. In the last section of this chapter, these personality traits and motivation factors were discussed.

Towards Cooperative With Competitive Alliance

The advantage of competitive atmosphere in business has a significant role in helping to enhance productivity. It is necessary to empower competitive awareness with cooperative engagement to give clear understanding for core guideline and insightful view on promoting social entrepreneurship. This chapter attempts to explore the initiated engagement between cooperative and competitive concern paid attention in the particular way among the firms along with increasing popularity to achieve certain objectives like growing the business with entrepreneurship. The finding reveals that attracting growing amounts of cooperative and competitive alliance should be strengthened to gain the feedback and insights into performance value in social entrepreneurship where this is eventually integrated with the entrepreneurship in a way that underlies the value to run the potential business. This chapter is supposed to contribute significant insights into exploring the key role of strategies to give the beneficial feedback to perform continuous improvement in social entrepreneurship.

Social Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Economic Growth

The purpose of this study is to explore the link between social entrepreneurship and economic growth. For nations' economic development there are several influencing factors that can be listed. Entrepreneurship has been an interest to academics and practitioners for a few decades and accepted as one of the important factors that are playing an essential role in advancing economic development. Social entrepreneurship (SE) is a new area of entrepreneurship, which focuses on creating social value initially for individuals. Thus, it is possible to say that social entrepreneurship should improve the wellbeing of individuals by generating social value. Hence, satisfying social needs embraces both social and economic aspects, which will also affect economic wellbeing in a positive manner. The argument of this research is social entrepreneurship is an important catalyzer of economic wellbeing and economic growth.