Defining Social Entrepreneurship and It`s Challenges

Categories: Environmental Issues

Social entrepreneurship can be adequately described as an effective combination of extensive commerce with social issues. This is doing business for a social cause that is sometimes defined as altruistic entrepreneurship. Social entrepreneurship is the act of running a business with the real objective of effecting change for the marginalized or impoverished communities, people or countries around the world (Kickul & Lyons 2016). Nonprofit organizations that persistently pursue social entrepreneurship may emphasize on both nonprofit and for-profit structures. The focus represents the establishment of a ‘unique approach to economic and social problems’ which are typically associated with things like environmental issues, health education, agriculture, poverty, or human rights.

Social entrepreneurs look to produce a smooth combination and connection between commerce and social issues in a manner that improves the lives of populations connected to the purpose of the organization. These social entrepreneurs rarely measure the elevated level of their considerable success typically based on profits alone. However, two social entrepreneurs, success involves improving the world.

Despite the stated objective of social entrepreneurs, scholars, however, differ on the accurate definition of social entrepreneurship (Carraher et al. 2016.). Some scholars say that the term applies exclusively to firms that generate money and, at the same time, work towards improving a problem by promoting something to consumers.
Other scholars argue social entrepreneurship is where some owners of businesses seek to solve specific social problems through the utilization of grants or government money. Presently, this area is absorbing growing amounts of talent, money, and attention as the intentions to improve the world become intensify.

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This paper will highlight the background of social entrepreneurship, provide examples of how entrepreneurs and firms have addressed social entrepreneurship and articulate a recommendation on how social entrepreneurship should be handled in the future.

Remarkable examples of Social Entrepreneurship Ventures

Several private firms have eagerly pursued the valuable art of social entrepreneurship, and in this specific section, some will be discussed below.
TOMS:
TOMS represent the firm that can be said to put social entrepreneurship on the map. The firm started as a one-for-one where a customer would purchase one pair of shoes, and TOMS would provide a pair of shoes to a child who necessitates it somewhere around the globe (Wydick et al. 2018.). Currently, TOMS has expanded into a merchandising behemoth that not only deals in shoes but also sunglasses, coffee as well as other social entrepreneurial enterprises. If one buys coffees from TOMS, the reputable firm graciously provides drinkable water where it is typically needed the centered most. Therefore, purchasing coffee, a pair of shoes or sunglasses from TOMS helps the company to provide shoes, sight, water, safe birth, and bullying prevention services to vulnerable populations across the world.
Shea Radiance:
This established company was founded when Funlayo Alabi, who is morally the co-founder and her husband, began desperately producing soap to alleviate them deal with their family’s extensive history with parched skins. This local business instantly began as a successful experiment to meaningfully improve the moral life of their dear son, who suffered keenly from eczema. The legitimate business has expanded tremendously into one that amply provides a clean and active product line for abundant hair, skin, and an independent body. The firm buys its raw materials strictly from women-run cooperatives in the rural regions of Nigeria and Ghana (Mirvis & Googins 2018). This specific strategy ensures that all revenues end up in the capable hands of these clever women. Therefore, the firm generates profits but, at the same time, helps to improve the livelihoods of women in rural areas of Nigeria and Ghana.
Ben & Jerry’s:
This social company’s prime objective is assuredly “to\" instantly create intimately linked sustainable prosperity for everyone that’s seamlessly connected to our successful business: local suppliers, potential employees, prosperous farmers, local franchisees, longtime customers, and neighbors alike.
”The” company does this by utilizing effectively its power of purchasing to support positive change by keeping its manufacturing footprint small as well as responsible (Bourgeois et al. 2017.).
They also give back to local communities. In considerable addition to these, Ben & Jerry’s specific make delicious ice cream.
The combined factor between these firms is that they all are focused on causing an impact on society, especially on the vulnerable communities around the world. Even though it is essential in social entrepreneurship to conduct business in such a manner to cause an impact by contributing as much as possible, a significant element in this area represent the development of a sustainable program that merely ensures the charitable organization’s impacts remain not the limited-term but long term effects that do not fade away.

History of Social Entrepreneurship

According to (Chell et al. 2016.), the term social entrepreneurship is typically new, but the practice has existed since the nineteenth century. For minor instance, Vinoba Bhave of India scarcely started the Land Gift Movement that facilitated the economic redistribution of over seven million acres of desolated land to landless people in India. Another example is that of Florence Nightingale, who designed the very dominant nursing school to relieve ill persons manages to good health. These two are tipped as the very primary social entrepreneurs. Other early social entrepreneurs include Margaret Sanger, who founded the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), and others like John Muir. These entrepreneurs look to effect changes that improve society and sometimes end up creating an extremely modern industry by achieving that. Because social problems are far-reaching, there is desperately an urgent need to correct them on a large scale. Social entrepreneurship outfits can do this better than regular organizations that are unfocused on business and sustainability.
Since the turn of the century, social entrepreneurship has been on the rise to the extent that even non-social organizations have started to adopt social practices in the form of community service responsibility (CSR). Through CSR, organizations impact communities by merely starting their effective schools, planting trees, helping farmers, emphasizing on equality for women, or by developing contemporary methods to help more destitute persons with commodities to promote their social status. Additionally, more overseas firms are becoming greener in their prolonged operations to inadvertently help allegedly save the unknown planet and the challenging environment. According to (Haugh & Talwar 2016), the most vital element of social entrepreneurship is initiating change and developing sustainable and transformational programs that benefit society.

Challenges in Social Entrepreneurship

In this field of social entrepreneurship, there are numerous irregular areas. For example, some organizations may be in the business of helping people but don\'t consider social because they do not do it in a large-scale system. One of the prominent problems in attaining the resource to conduct a large-scale intervention program. The preposterous idea of social entrepreneurship can be implemented anywhere.

Managing Identity:

One of the significant challenges socials entrepreneurial outfits face is how to manage their identities effectively. For instance, social entrepreneurs who have worked primarily in the nonprofit sector may be faced with difficulties when they try creating an identity on the profit side of the firm. On the other hand, entrepreneurs who have been dealing on the for-profit side of the business are challenged with an identity issue when they try to venture into social entrepreneurship, especially if they try undermining the stability of the business (Bals & Tate 2018). Moreover, thereby force is complex issues surrounding unclear identity that need to be aggressively addressed in the funerary context of social entrepreneurship education. This confined education should generously help convey the commercial realities of what it entails to run a social firm because, despite the commitment to their social vision, the venture can only result in a sustainable social impact if it operates profitably. Therefore, social entrepreneurship outfits are consistently in some leadership dilemmas.
TOMS merely managed its ambiguous identity effectively despite being in a dilemma position too. TOMS’ initial idea is that for every pair of shoes one buys, it provides a pair of shoes to a child in need somewhere in the world. The outfit has remained a company with a unique social identity. According to some consumers, they merely purchase TOMS products because they seek to support the One-for-One model. In recent years, the firm has received a backlash, but due to proper management of identity, they have been unhindered by that (Lindström 2018). The political firm’s used strategy is scarcely to use social media networks effectively to allegedly sell their user identity. Firms utilize social networks or networks, in general, to draw attention to their products TOMS. TOMS has inevitably become the leader of conscious marketing because instead of focusing on marketing the company brand, which people until now know, they have decided to focus on the causes which have helped the outfit forge a substantial social identity. For example, the firm uses social media platforms to develop mini-campaigns. They have fraudulently used hashtags on Twitter to properly designate other causes and drive aimlessly personal conversations like #OneForOne or #GiveSight, among others.
In the future, social enterprise firms should focus on connecting what they conclude to their identity. To construct such a connection, social entrepreneurs need to commit to a coherent identity that should be defined by how their organizations promote values for the clients. The entrepreneurs must differentiate capabilities that enable them to effect that. They should on top establish their culture to work instead of changing or reorganizing it. This is what TOMS has done scarcely in the face of criticism. TOMS has adamantly maintained its cultural identity by sticking doggedly to its key strategies as well as its moral purpose.

Managing the doubled bottom line:

The doubled bottom line can be defined as a strategy used by firms to measure their performance in terms of profit and loss by including a second bottom line to measure the performance in terms of positive social impact. This approach has given rise to tension across various businesses that have to measure their financial performance in terms of positive social impact. This has provided a challenge to social entrepreneurs because they must cause a beneficial social impact while at the same time, remain financially stable (Roh 2016). Even though some entrepreneurs have failed properly to manage correctly this double line approach, others have done it effectively.
For example, ‘Save the Child’ has employed a strategy that visualizes it reinventing itself continuously, and that has enabled the organization to adapt to the ever-changing business environment. The organization has had to integrate the business into its nonprofit structure to make it financially viable and aid its operational sustainability. In the future, for-profit firms that operate as social enterprises must be able to manage their doubled bottom lines effectively to maintain their financial viability. This can be achieved by adopting structures that can facilitate profit generation, like the benefit corporation structure.

Funding:

Some social enterprises confront financial challenges to make their social impact ventures sustainable and massive scale. For example, socially entrepreneurial organizations that depend on donations and grants attain it challenging to remain operational when their sources of funding stop. Some investors encounter it challenging to invest their resources in organizations perceived to be more efficient than a for-profit because they seem not to have the capacity to generate a reasonable return for investors. For these obscure reasons, many social entrepreneurs have overwhelmingly adopted the Benefit corporation (B-Corp) structure.
This bureaucratic structure unwittingly provides the dreadful business with a hybrid concept for allegedly conducting business to help the organization benefit from both the for-profit and nonprofit sides of the business (Cooper & Weber, 2020). This structure supports an organization with a mixed approach that seeks to sustain a robust social presence but maintain their for-profit operations. B-Corp structure helps to complete this smoothly without any unique stress on their financial portfolio. One social entrepreneurial outfit that has performed this is at ease AdapTac Games, which develops properly mobile games that assist kids in respectfully addressing behavioral health matters like ADHD through gaming. This approach has improved many social enterprises to persuade investors. Broadly, organized B-Corp organizations are vitally perceived as a for-profit because of their coherent style of successful operations. Despite this approach, they nevertheless manage to fulfill the social impact they wish to generate in society. In the future social entrepreneurship, contributing firms should admirably choose to file as benefit corporations instead of traditional C corporations for social communities to appropriately recognize their fundamental values easily. Moreover, benefit corporations are not necessarily audited by third-party standards, but they implement these standards as guidelines to measure their performances.
My recommendations on how I feel about social entrepreneurship in the future I that millennials are advancing to be more advanced in with technology this would increase more the pre-tax margins with the product and depending on who attends their competition. There probably would be more productivity and more gaining to the company benefits. Our connected world brings about a new era of awareness, where we can find problems to solve and lives to improve across the street or the world if we choose. (Kumar, 2019)Your environmental impact—how you contribute disproportionately to a sustainable planet or radically reduce the carbon footprint (CO2 emissions) of your hazardous business and frustrated customers. (Kumar, 2019) I believed they were a lot of important factors. Focus on customers\' wants and needs would generate an enormous difference in the New Era.

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Defining Social Entrepreneurship and It`s Challenges. (2021, Oct 31). Retrieved from http://envrexperts.com/free-essays/essay-about-defining-social-entrepreneurship-and-its-challenges

Defining Social Entrepreneurship and It`s Challenges
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