Social Innovation in Brazilian Social Entrepreneurships: A Proposed Scale for its Classification.
| Autor | D'Amario, Edison Quirino |
1 Introduction
Few social phenomena have attracted as much attention since the 2000s as the pursuit to reduce world poverty and improve world health. This is not only a result of economic prosperity but also of governmental and/or non-governmental organizations' actions, which aim to rescue people living in conditions of social vulnerability and insert them into society, ensuring their rights and a dignified life. The term that has been used to refer to these organizations is "social enterprises" (Austin, Stevenson, & Wei-Skillern, 2006; Fischer & Comini, 2012).
Social entrepreneurship, commonly defined as an entrepreneurial activity with a social purpose, has been presented as an important economic phenomenon that has been observed on a global scale (Austin, Stevenson, & Wei-Skillern, 2006; Mair & Marti, 2006). Unlike traditional entrepreneurship, which offers numerous resources for measuring its impact, social entrepreneurship is typically measured qualitatively. In this sense, some studies, for example the one by Comini (2016), have been conducted qualitatively with the purpose of analyzing social innovation generated by social enterprises.
Comini (2016) argues that competition continues to increase, and as a result, all areas should engage more strongly in innovation, both social as well as technological. But, unlike technological innovation, on which there are many studies in the literature, the research on social innovation is still incipient, especially concerning quantitative studies.
Van der Have and Rubalcaba (2016) carried out a bibliometric analysis to trace the content, scope, and relatively short history of modern social innovation research across disciplines. Their analysis suggests that "the social innovation field is grounded in four distinct intellectual communities arising through a somewhat organized diffusion process: community psychology; creativity research; social and societal challenges; and local development" (Van de Have & Rubalcaba, 2016, p. 1).
In this paper we analyze social innovation as social and societal challenges; nevertheless, this study also highlights social entrepreneurship and social innovation as a field of study that still requires better exploration and articulation, as pointed out by Tiskoski, Rosolen, and Comini (2013). The literature has often highlighted that social entrepreneurship and social innovation are tools that meet social challenges and contribute to sustainable development (Pozzebon & Fontenelle, 2018). Thus, researchers and practitioners have paid special attention to and have presented a growing interest in these areas. As Van der Have and Rubalcaba (2016) stated, the interest in social innovation in the area of management and entrepreneurship is very recent in the literature.
Nevertheless, in a systematic literature review regarding quantitative studies to better understand social innovations generated by social entrepreneurships, we noticed a lack of studies aimed at identifying social innovations adopted by social entrepreneurs. Thus, with the objective of contributing to the literature on social innovation and social entrepreneurship, this paper aims to develop and validate a scale to classify perceived social innovations used by social entrepreneurs.
Although social innovation has been studied by several authors, no study was observed in the literature that verifies the types, depths, and coverage of social innovations used or developed by social entrepreneurs. Most of the studies concerning scales to assess social innovation or social entrepreneurship involve evaluating value creation in social entrepreneurships, as can be noted in the study by Christlieb (2012), who developed a quantitative study on social entrepreneurs to assess the value creation achieved by entrepreneurships. Bulut, Eren, and Halac (2013) also developed a valid and reliable instrument to assess social innovations, but at the individual level. This gap in the literature was what motivated us to develop a scale that could assess the types and depths of social innovation from the perspective of the social entrepreneur. The contribution to the understanding lies in the fact that it may stimulate social entrepreneurs or new entrants to better allocate their resources or their attention to certain types of social innovations in order to achieve better results for their entrepreneurships.
The novelty of our study is that it addresses the challenge of understanding how social entrepreneurs perceive the social innovations that their activities utilize to achieve the aim of obtaining a positive social and/or environmental impact. Understanding how they realize the innovations generated by their activities could set up a new lens that reveals the intention of every entrepreneur concerning the impact generated by social innovations, and it could serve as a guide for future entrepreneurs who wish to engage in some kind of activity, whether for profit or not, to provide a positive social impact through social innovations (Dees, Haas, & Haas, 1998). Additionally, for academia, the challenge is to deepen the understanding of social innovation practices so that this could contribute to clarifying the concept, because it is still being formed, as can be observed in the studies by Freeman (1987), Johannessen, Oslan, and Lumpkin (2001), and Rieg and Alves (2003).
In this paper, we first present the theoretical background regarding social entrepreneurship and social innovation. Second, we perform a systematic literature review and establish procedures to investigate research that could identify or measure social innovations. Third, we develop the scale using variables from the literature review. Finally, we present the validated scale using a national sample, as well as the limitations and suggestions for future research.
2 theoretical Background
In this section, we present arguments to support social entrepreneurship as a field of study that is growing in the literature, pointing out the relevance that some authors have been giving to it. We also analyze social innovation as a term that comes from traditional innovation, but which still features some misinterpretation in the current literature, and we propose the conceptual model that will be used to analyze the social innovation constructs.
2.1 Social entrepreneurship
Despite the growing academic interest in social entrepreneurship, the field still lacks a better conceptual understanding of the economic role and logic of the actions of social entrepreneurship (Santos, 2009). Some research typically defines social entrepreneurs as entrepreneurs with a social mission and considers social entrepreneurship as entrepreneurial activities with social purposes (Dees, Haas, & Haas, 1998). Therefore, the definition is derived from the integration of these two concepts: "entrepreneurship" and "social."
Some of the most impressive social enterprises are found in developing countries and involve the deployment of new business models that care about human needs (Seelos & Mair, 2005), such as the provision of low cost cataract surgery to cure visual impairment. However, the phenomenon of social entrepreneurship is also vibrant in developed countries. For example, according to a survey of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, 1.2 million people in the United Kingdom (which represents 3.2% of the working age population) are social entrepreneurs (defined in the survey as people who have been involved in and have performed a social role for less than 42 months). Since the comparable number for traditional entrepreneurship is 6.2%, these data raise the intriguing possibility that social entrepreneurship may be almost as important as the traditional form (Harding, 2006).
This significant percentage is consistent with the fact that social entrepreneurship has become a construct that has been widely discussed since the beginning of the 2000s, as we can verify in the study by Tiskoski, Rosolen, and Comini (2013). It is also observed that the academic work on the "social entrepreneurship" topic is growing, as is reflected in the numbers of available articles in national and international databases, according to a bibliometric study conducted by the authors. This increasing interest in social entrepreneurship is often evidenced by the success stories around the world in various fields (health, education, finance, culture, etc.); the concept has become increasingly evident in commercial markets, academic discourse, and policy-making (Nicholls, 2006).
Concerning its definition, Austin, Stevenson, and Wei-Skillern (2006) point out that social entrepreneurship ranges from a broad to a narrow definition. However, the authors agree that it typically refers to the use of business expertise and market-based skills in the non-profit sector.
Most of the studied cases of social entrepreneurship, although they make use of the market logic to run their businesses, need to adapt to a new way of facing social problems in order to solve them, and make use of social innovations to achieve that goal. The study by Doherty, Haugh, and Lyon (2014) provides a contribution to the understanding of social entrepreneurship by pointing out that it pursues the dual mission of providing both financial sustainability and a social outcome. The authors emphasize that social entrepreneurship does not fit perfectly into the conventional categories of private, public, or non-profit organizations, mainly because it has a social purpose.
Although several authors present definitions of social entrepreneurship, adapting it from the literature on traditional entrepreneurship, its definition is still unclear and imprecise, as pointed out by Groot and Dankbaar (2014), because some authors understand that social entrepreneurship is, by definition, not for profit, but others understand that it can be. The authors offer the example of the internet and Skype. They argue that Skype is a tool that...
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