29-04-2013, 03:39 PM
Social entrepreneurship
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INTRODUCTION
Social entrepreneurship is the recognition of a social problem and the uses of entrepreneurial principles to organise, create and manage a social venture to achieve a desired social change. While a business entrepreneur typically measures performance in profit and return, a social entrepreneur also measures positive returns to society. Thus, the main aim of social entrepreneurship is to further broaden social, cultural, and environmental goals. Social entrepreneurs are commonly associated with the voluntary and not-for-profit sectors,[1] but this need not preclude making a profit. Social entrepreneurship practised with a world view or international context is called international social entrepreneurship
History
The terms social entrepreneur and social entrepreneurship were used first in the literature on social change in the 1960s and 1970s.[3] The terms came into widespread use in the 1980s and 1990s, promoted by Bill Drayton the founder of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public,[4] and others such as Charles Leadbeater.[5] From the 1950s to the 1990s Michael Young was a leading promoter of social enterprise and in the 1980s was described by Professor Daniel Bell at Harvard as 'the world's most successful entrepreneur of social enterprises' because of his role in creating more than sixty new organizations worldwide, including the School for Social Entrepreneurs (SSE) which exists in the UK, Australia and Canada and which supports individuals to realise their potential and to establish, scale and sustain, social enterprises and social businesses. Another British social entrepreneur is Lord Mawson OBE. Andrew Mawson was given a peerage in 2007 because of his pioneering regeneration work. This includes the creation of the renowned Bromley by Bow Centre in East London. He has recorded these experiences in his book "The Social Entrepreneur: Making Communities Work"[6] and currently runs Andrew Mawson Partnerships to help promote his regeneration work.[7] The National Center for Social Entrepreneurs was founded in 1985 by Judson Bemis[8] and Robert M. Price;[9] Jerr Boschee served as its president and CEO from 1991 to 1999.
Current practice
One well-known contemporary social entrepreneur is Muhammad Yunus, founder and manager of Grameen Bank and its growing family of social venture businesses, who was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.[10] The work of Yunus and Grameen echoes a theme among modern day social entrepreneurs that emphasizes the enormous synergies and benefits when business principles are unified with social ventures.[11] In some countries - including Bangladesh and to a lesser extent, the USA - social entrepreneurs have filled the spaces left by a relatively small state. In other countries - particularly in Europe and South America - they have tended to work more closely with public
organizations at both the national and local level.
In India, a social entrepreneur can be a person, who is the founder, co-founder or a chief functionary (may be president, secretary, treasurer, chief executive officer (CEO), or chairman) of a social enterprise, or a Non Profit, which raises funds through some services (often fund raising events and community activities) and occasionally products. Examples of some of the India based social entrepreneurs are Ramji Raghavan,[12] Founder and Chairman, Agastya International Foundation, Harish Hande, Founder Selco India, Rippan Kapur, Child Rights and You and Jyotindra Nath of Youth United, Founder Upendra Agrawal and Jiten Agrawal conserving environment by leveraging the power of internet to plant trees on each individual online click at click2plant.com and so on.
What does not constitute social entrepreneurship?
Philanthropists
• A successful business man or woman who, upon retirement, has decided to help the less privileged in society and “give back”. To do so, s/he endows a foundation to support early childhood education and to set up hospitals in poor countries.
• Such a person is a philanthropist who has set up a charity.
• Philanthropists are critically important in society – and many of them support social entrepreneurial activities. But don’t confuse philanthropic largesse with social entrepreneurship.
Activists
• A passionate animal rights activist, who at an early age volunteered in an NGO to lobby the government to ban whale hunting. Subsequently, s/he worked to boycott garment companies using the fur of baby seals to make winter coats. As a young adult, s/he founded Bambi to raise money to lobby governments to protect the rights of laboratory animals.
• This person an activist working to bring pressure on policy makers and the public to stop a specific practice. No alternative options are proposed.
• We need activists – but they are not social entrepreneurs.
Companies with a Foundation
• Foodmart is a global discount grocery & household products chain that has been rated by the International Better Business Bureau as one of the top companies to work for in the world. The World Health Organisation has designated Foodmart as a “Healthy Workplace” for worker safety and wellbeing. The company encourages its staff to engage in community activities and provides them with company time to do so. The company established the Foodmart Foundation to support activities in maternal and child nutrition.
• Foodmart is a socially responsible global business that has incorporated corporate citizenship and social responsibility into its core business practice.
• We would love more companies like Foodmart – but their priority is to make money for their shareholders. It is not an example of social entrepreneurship practice, which subsumed value appropriation at the service of transforming social and environmental conditions.