The Search for Social Entrepreneurship

7. Drawing Conclusions

196 This study challenges and confirms much of the conventional wisdom about socially entrepreneurial activity and social entrepreneurship. The study may be exploratory in nature, but it does yield strong insights about the nature of socially entrepreneurial activity, especially as it occurs among high-performing social benefit organizations. As readers have been warned repeatedly, this study contains both biases and caveats. I cannot claim to have read the entire literature on either business or social entrepreneurship, for example, and clearly I missed important work that might have changed the discussion of the four components of social entrepreneurship, as well as the underlying assumptions embedded in the covering definition of social entrepreneurship . Nor can I claim that the surveys in 2001 and 2006 represent a valid sample of socially entrepreneurial organizations generally, or even high performing socially entrepreneurial organizations specifically. The most I can claim is that the study reflects an effort to explore potential differences among the highly, moderately, and not-too entrepreneurial organizations that emerged from my sample of reputed highperforming social benefit organizations in 2001. This study does not deal with J. Gregory Dees and Beth Battle Anderson’s notion of sector bending nor the growing amount of socially entrepreneurial activity that occurs among and between social benefit organizations, businesses, and governments. CHAPTER SEVEN DRAWING CONCLUSIONS 07 5211-0 ch7 7/13/08 6:54 PM Page 196 197 DRAWING CONCLUSIONS Nevertheless, there is grist for further research embedded in this study, not the least of which is the relatively large amount of socially entrepreneurial activity that appears to exist among high-performing social benefit organizations. Given the limitations cited above, this study cannot prove that a quarter of all high-performing social benefit organizations are highly socially entrepreneurial, nor can it prove that another third are moderately so. But the study does suggest that there may be significant opportunities to expand socially entrepreneurial activity in the social benefit sector and that such activity can change the social equilibrium , given adequate resources. It can also ask whether this socially entrepreneurial activity might be enhanced through the spin-off of programs and units from their moderately entrepreneurial hosts or through scale-up to much greater organizational engagement. However, the key question is not how much socially entrepreneurial activity exists, but how it can be expanded to maximum impact. Given the promise involved in the general movement toward altering a persistent and resistant social equilibrium, the field needs to be much more supportive in helping social entrepreneurs achieve their goals, whether it should be through organizational development, capacity-building infrastructure , more aggressive research and development, stronger networks of other social entrepreneurs and socially entrepreneurial organizations, or further encouragement and funding of management improvements. This help must involve careful research, however, not hunch. FINDINGS The key findings of this study rest on the interviews of senior executives at 131 high-performing social benefit organizations as well as a detailed literature review across the fields of business and social entrepreneurship. The survey respondents shared little common ground on the definition of social entrepreneurship, which in turn may have led to the very high estimates of the level of socially entrepreneurial activity in the organizations that were coded as less entrepreneurial by my research team. Nonetheless , the surveys do provide conditional insights on how highly socially entrepreneurial organizations differ from their less entrepreneurial peers, provided, of course, that the initial coding of the organizations was accurate . Although the surveys showed high levels of similarity among the different groups of organizations, thereby confirming the ability of highly 07 5211-0 ch7 7/13/08 6:54 PM Page 197 socially entrepreneurial organizations to achieve and maintain high performance (or at least live up to their reputation thereof), it also revealed significant differences among the three groups of organizations. Entrepreneurs This study confirms the important role of entrepreneurs in stimulating socially entrepreneurial activity. Indeed, the most important difference in the 2006 survey may well involve the significant engagement of the original founders in their organizations. Fully one in five of the highly socially entrepreneurial organizations were still headed by their original founder, while another three out of five still engaged their founder in some meaningful way. One can only assume that they are holding fast to their mission, helping their organizations maintain a clear focus on social change. This continued engagement may help explain the role of commitment to vision as the most...