Social Entrepreneurship:A Key to Societal Transformation-An Exploratory Study

Abstract

It is widely accepted that Government and the conventional entrepreneurs cannot adequately meet all citizens' social needs especially in developing countries, hence the need for social entrepreneurship to fill this gap. Social entrepreneurs' are persons who create and manage innovative entrepreneurial organizations or ventures whose primary mission is the social change and development. Social entrepreneurship combines the resourcefulness of traditional entrepreneurship with a mission to change society. It offers insights that stimulate ideas for more socially acceptable and sustainable business strategies and organizational forms. This study provides a comparative analysis of five cases of social entrepreneurships that have been widely recognized as successful in India. The paper suggests factors associated with successful social entrepreneurship that leads to significant changes in the social and economic contexts for poor and marginalized groups. In this study propositions about core innovations, leadership qualities, organizational arrangements and scaling up in social entrepreneurship that produces social transformation leverage have been analyzed. The study recognized the differences across the 5 cases in their innovation forms. In addition, capacities for bridging and adaptive leadership appeared to be present in most successful initiatives. Two initiatives SEWA and SPARC were characterized by both high reach and high transformational impacts that were achieved through many organizational arrangements.