Predicting the Relative Values of attributes in social entrepreneurial opportunities

Predicting the Relative Values of attributes in social entrepreneurial opportunities….from the perspective of social entrepreneur.

… an application in conjoint analysis

‘Social entrepreneurship is a term used to describe innovative approaches to solve social problems’ ( Desa, Geoffrey, ISERC, 2007).

Recently, this topic has gained increased attention in conferences, case research and funding agencies interested in the topic. Researchers such as Drayton, founder of Asoka organization, one of the biggest organizations to promote social entrepreneurship in today’s world, described this topic as a body of innovative approaches to solve social problems. Subsequent research has further described social entrepreneurship as a process where the individual, the social entrepreneur, plays a significant role looking at attributes of the social entrepreneurship opportunity, evaluating them and then deciding whether to adopt these opportunities and turn it around to a real life enterprise.

According to Morato (2006) a social entrepreneur is someone who creates and operationalizes an organization which is sustainable on one hand and , on the other hand ,promotes livlihood opportunities for a community of people who need them . In other words the characteristics of a social enterprise will be distinctly different from traditional business enterprise in terms of primary stakeholders or beneficiaries , objectives and enterprise philosophies (Dacanay ). In traditional business enterprise the primary stakeholders and beneficiaries are its stockholders like the owners and people who have invested in the business. In social enterprise however, the primary beneficiaries could be a community or group of people who may not own the enterprise at all. Again the primary objective in a traditional business enterprise has profit bottom line. A social enterprise on the other hand strives to improve the quality of life for a community or works towards empowerment of a group. Not that financial sustainability is not required in a social enterprise but it is not the reason for its existence .

In terms of enterprise philosophy traditional business enterprise accumulates wealth for its owners whereas in social enterprise wealth generated is distributed back to the community.

The distinction between a social enterprise and a regular enterprise is not always clearly definable. In fact there are various stages between purely social to purely economic enterprises, where at each stage an enterprise has a component of social and a component of economic or commercial values.

The field of entrepreneurship is relatively new as compared to many other fields on Management .However, in the recent few years there has been some significant research in the field , where many researchers have focused on to exploring what makes this field distinctive from the other fields of enquiry. In the earlier years research also tried to differentiate entrepreneurs from other individuals in the population. They were looked upon as having special personality features , capable on innovation , attitude/ endurance towards risk, leadership potentials and strong business acumen which enabled them to sense an opportunity even where it might not be apparent.

These features it was thought ,would make an individual emerge as an entrepreneur creating and leading ones own enterprise.

However, many such research efforts were relatively unsuccessful in trying to explain entrepreneurship ( Gartner, 1990 )

Traditionally there is also quite an extensive research on what kind of entrepreneurial opportunities are perceived as attractive , which lead individuals to become entrepreneurs. In fact it is hypothesized that entrepreneurial opportunities are often objective in nature , available to everyone , but perceived in different lights depending upon the personality traits on the potential entrepreneur who looks at them. Such entrepreneurial opportunities start as what are called ‘third party opportunities’

( McMuller and Shepherd, 2006 ) which refer to opportunities which do not look like opportunities for anyone and everyone in the market but with individuals with right qualities they unravel their potential. These third party opportunities become first party opportunities if they emerge as specially appealing or stimulating to a particular individual and the opportunity becomes real and ultimately gets transformed to the start of an enterprise.

In analyzing entrepreneurial opportunities which are considered or are available to the prospective entrepreneurs research does not often include the social attributes on entrepreneurial opportunities. However, there is a relatively small body of research who have considered social entrepreneurship initiatives of entrepreneurs in different social and commercial context.

Traditionally entrepreneurs are motivated by both economic and non-economic factors. For instance many entrepreneurs start their own venture even when they believe it would result in lower economic gain than some other career options.( Amit, MacCrimmon et al. 2000) . Also self respect , achievement of personal and professional ideals may be more valued by entrepreneurs than making money ( Guerrier and MacMillan 1981, Corman, Perles et al. 1988). Then there are other entrepreneurs who are community focused because of their motives around welfare issues of the community .

Whatever definition one adopts for social entrepreneurship the main concept still implies that social entrepreneurship is any form of entrepreneurship that has more than singular goal of profit maximization. Rather than attaining economic gain, social entrepreneurship represents centering on identifying, addressing and solving a wide variety of social problems ( Drayton, 2002 ). This concept also relates to opportunities for reducing negative impact of business and creating social improvement in the process (Mair and Marti 2006; Zahra, Gedajlovic et al. 2006).

Having discussed the concepts leading social enterprise and also a social entrepreneur , one acknowledges in any case that for a social enterprise to exist and survive , it still needs to be economically feasible, sustainable and contain growth potential. The factor which differentiates it is whether the economic goals are the only goals in the enterprise or whether there are some other goals beyond economics, which drive the enterprise.

Along with defining social enterprises and thereafter social entrepreneurs, research has further considered characteristics, values, attitudes and personality traits of enterprising individuals who take up the prime mover seat in a social enterprise. For instance, past experiences, many of them early in life, distinguish a social entrepreneur from others (Barendsen and Gardner, 2004). Social ideals (Sims and Robonson, 2005 ) personal credibility in the form of past record of success which lead to the entrepreneur’s ability/ aptitude to mobilize and access resources (Sparie and Lerner ,2006, Thompson 2002) etc. all make up a social entrepreneur.

All the same, though there is a widespread approach in social entrepreneurship research focusing on person-centric perspective distinguishing a social entrepreneur from other persons in the population, another approach to social entrepreneurship research also exists, moving away from individual to looking at the role of characteristics in opportunities that represent potential for profit making in setting up commercial enterprise or social change in the case of social enterprise (Shane, Locke et al).

These opportunities possess attributes to address either the economic motives of the potential entrepreneur or social missions of the potential social entrepreneur.

It would be interesting to identify and evaluate the relative values of these attributes to the potential entrepreneur which eventually provide the ‘tipping point’ to lead the individual actually becoming an entrepreneur… either a commercial entrepreneur generating economic growth or social entrepreneur bringing in social change.

In this paper on social entrepreneurship it would be our objective to specifically identify and evaluate relative values of the characteristics in entrepreneurial opportunities which lead or are found attractive enough by individual to becoming a social entrepreneur.