by Professor Sophie Bacq
For the fourth consecutive year, I co-directed with Dr. Jill Kickul, the Annual Social Entrepreneurship Conference, the largest academic gathering of its kind. This year, the 12th Annual Social Entrepreneurship Conference took place at NYU Stern School of Business on November 4, 5 and 6. Eighty researchers from more than 20 countries around the world presented and discussed their latest research on a variety of topics including microfinance, impact investing, social entrepreneurship at the Base of the Pyramid, innovative business models for social enterprises, to name just a few.
I would like to share and reflect on five take-aways I gained during the course of these two and a half days.
- Social enterprises: hybrid and/or ambidextrous organizations?
Lying on a spectrum going from “pure” forms of nonprofit organizations to traditional corporations, “hybrid organizations” blend elements of the nonprofit world (like the importance of the mission) and for-profit elements, generally the commercialization of goods and services to generate revenues. Conceptualizing social enterprises as hybrid organizations is helpful to understand possible tensions created by the incompatibility of social and commercial logics. Among the many insights shared by Dr. Marya Besharov during her keynote, is the fact that pluralist managers, who embrace these two logics, are the glue to hybrid organizations and one way for social enterprises to deal with these two logics. However, this view of social enterprises as hybrid organizations may be complemented by other theoretical perspectives. One of them is configuration theory, suggest Lehner and Weber, recipients of this year’s Best Paper Award. Configuration theory (e.g., Miller and Mintzberg, 1983; Miles and Snow, 1994), they argue, may help us to reexamine social enterprise performance, and the creation of blended value. Indeed, one of the core assumptions of this theory is that for any situation, there is more than one configuration and that multiple ways can lead to success. Along these lines, social enterprises could be considered as a natural configuration type (i.e., ambidextrous organization) and not as a form of organizing that tries combining antagonistic logics. As such, the authors argue that configuration theory is well equipped to guide organizational inquiries even at times of shifting. Their paper promises to open up to innovative future research avenues on social enterprise organizing.
- The Social Enterprise Law Tracker, a great new tool to track social enterprise legislation!
Launched by two alumni of NYU School of Law, the Social Enterprise Law Tracker provides a visualization tool that traces the evolution of U.S. state legislatures as they authorize new classes of corporations that fall under the umbrella of social enterprises. These include Benefit Corps, L3Cs, Social Purpose Corporations (the new denomination of the former “Flexible Purpose Corporation” in the state of California) and the BLLC. These corporate forms are designed for businesses that seek to create both positive social and environmental impacts and financial returns. This online tool is useful to compare the spreading of social enterprise legislation between states and types of corporate forms and I can envision many ways to use it in the classroom.
- Hard sciences to contribute to social entrepreneurship and sustainability education!
In his keynote, Dr. Kumar Nair, Dean and Director of LM Thapar School of Management in India, offered a very interesting standpoint on social entrepreneurship and sustainability education. Driven by a strong willingness to reduce the highly polluted air in the school’s local environment, LM Thapar School of Management used reframing to engage the local communities (villagers, small businesses, entrepreneurs) and to empower them to reduce their emissions and commit to recycling activities. In addition to this “ecosystemic” view, Nair shared that in his view sustainability education is built on six pillars: ethics, expectancy, energy, economics, environment and… essential materials! Nair argues that educating students to sustainability requires an interdisciplinary approach that sensitizes them to the logics behind hard sciences. Food for thought as we develop our curricula…
- Experiential learning at the forefront
The work we do at Northeastern was not outdone and came up during a panel on experiential learning and social innovation. Professor Sara Minard shared her perspective on the cooperative model of education that distinguishes Northeastern, as well as how the values of experiential learning are carried out in the field in our social entrepreneurship Dialogues of Civilization. One inspiring testimonial was shared by Dr. Vanina Farber, Dean of the Graduate Business School at Universidad del Pacifico in Peru. Dr. Farber stressed the importance of asking ourselves, when conducting fieldwork, what the local populations that we aim to help and support, gain from the experience. Our students often report having “changed” after engaging in one of our Dialogues, be it in South Africa, the Dominican Republic or India. But the key question of course lies in what positive change we can bring to the lives of the people we ought to help. One way to alleviate this concern which we use at SEI is to employ specific and thoughtfully designed impact measurement tools that assess the outcomes of our actions on the quality of life of the people impacted. These can include the implementation of lasting solutions and creation of new social ventures, but also the empowerment of the local populations.
- So, have we moved forward?
A year ago after the conference, I was asked to reflect on the next steps to advance social entrepreneurship research. My observations focused on three main areas: research, community building, and teaching. This 12th annual gathering was the opportunity to advance on all these fronts. In terms of research, notable progress was made on the tenets of impact investing, the definition of social value (Dr. Jeffery McMullen gave an excellent keynote on the topic) and the understanding of ways organizations can deal with two objectives (social and financial) that may conflict at times. In terms of building a community of global scholars, the challenge was taken up as this year we welcome first-time attendees from Australia, Mexico, Peru, Russia, the Philippines, and a cohort of six scholars who flew all the way from New Zealand to share their ideas and experience in social entrepreneurship.
Regarding our teaching of social entrepreneurship, building on the idea of measuring the impact of our field studies, I recently endeavored to study the psychological and attitudinal effects of our programs. In line with the idea that empowering and inspirational teaching will bring the next generation of leaders and thinkers that successful social enterprise ecosystems need, in our study, my co-author Elisa Alt and I explore how empathy, distress and perceived impact influence our students’ intentions to engage in social entrepreneurship. Another question concerns the effect of different types of education (on campus, semester-long courses vs.) on the career paths taken by our students. The preliminary results of the survey will be available soon, so stay tuned!
Let’s continue to advance the field together and join us for our 13th Annual Social Entrepreneurship Conference on November 2–4, 2016!
