The Social Entrepreneurship Public Policy Nexus

Full course description

The recent 2015 report by Social Enterprise UK - Think Global Trade Social - argues that social entrepreneurship can play a key role in the achievement of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Considering 17 SDGs, this course will concentrate on the interactions between societal, corporate, and governmental social entrepreneurship and public policy. This course builds upon the first one by delving deeper into the interrelationships between public policy and social entrepreneurship.

In the first week, we will analyse the traditional public policy view that policy can stimulates all forms of entrepreneurship, including social entrepreneurship, and evaluate the effectiveness of public policy to drive entrepreneurs to solve societal policy issues by using science, technology, and varieties of innovation. Then we will discuss different types of entrepreneurship activity that are vital for inclusive, sustainable, economic growth, and their implications for public policy (e.g. mission-oriented policies, entrepreneurship policy). We will finalize the week by scrutinizing the evaluation of the Dutch Topsector policy and experiences with its cross-sectoral approach, which are valuable for solving social challenges.

In the second week, we will showcase how societal, corporate, and governmental social entrepreneurship create value for citizens, industry experts, policymakers through evidence-based advocacy in policy (issue) networks, advocacy coalition networks, and multiple streams. Legal forms that social enterprises take will be scrutinized this week. We will explore how social entrepreneurs engage in policy networks as a new mode of governance and how such engagement strategies exert influence on public policy. Finally, two to three local social enterprises and/or civil society advocacy groups will present a problem to students for a change in public policy.

In the third week, we will concentrate on how bottom-up social entrepreneurship initiatives by societal, corporate, and governmental leaders influences public policy using evidence-based advocacy. We will scrutinize this by analysing social entrepreneurial engagement in different stages of a policy cycle (e.g. from agenda setting and design to implementation and delivery, and to monitoring and evaluation). We will study how in multiple streams, they contribute to opening up new window of opportunities for policy and social change with their professional and societal communities.

In the final week, we will provide a skills development component (use of appropriate research methods and argumentation). Students will apply evidence-based argumentation and critical analysis of public policy to build an advocacy case for the invited guests of the second week. The advocacy cases developed by the students will be presented to the invited advocacy groups/social enterprises for feedback. In this manner, students will get a hands-on experience in critical thinking, formulation, and evaluation of advocacy cases.