Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship

Full course description

Social entrepreneurship is a new and fast-growing field of academic and policy relevant study that requires academic, practitioner and policy actors’ cooperation, as it lies at the intersection of the fields of entrepreneurship and social change. The course will compare and contrast emerging social enterprises with more “traditional” early stage ventures in the private sector and will draw on experiential knowledge of invited speakers. Students will learn the theory and practice of social entrepreneurship through experiential, interactive, and collaborative classroom sessions. Working individually and in teams, on social issues they care about, students will acquire skills in motivations of social entrepreneurs, their challenges, the legal framework and the entrepreneurial business model design. Students aiming to work in the fields of public administration or business will also benefit from a good understanding of how social entrepreneurship and social enterprises engage with traditional philanthropic, corporate and government organizations.

The first week will cover the definitions and processes of business entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship to highlight their distinctions. It will cover topics such as: the entrepreneurial process in business enterprises vs. social ventures and tensions between the social and entrepreneurial identities of social ventures. Students will examine case studies to study the typology of social entrepreneurs and the social entrepreneurial process.

The second week will cover the practice of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and social entrepreneurship by firms – national and multinational and explore their drivers – whether by own firm vision, societal context, regulation, market failures or policy failures. The topics covered will be, Shareholder Value Theory, Stakeholder Theory and topics that go beyond CSR such as the Bottom of the Pyramid approach and Shared Value approach.

The third week will focus on the legal framework of social enterprises were students will familiarise themselves with corporate and tax law that is relevant for social enterprises. In the tutorials students will study peculiarities of legal forms in different national systems.

The fourth week will focus on social entrepreneurship across the globe. Institutional and cultural contexts shape social entrepreneurship differently. Students will study the roles of culture, socioeconomic development, and governance institutions on the prevalence of social entrepreneurship.

This course overall is designed to provide students a socially relevant academic experience in gaining in-depth insights on economic and social value creation activities of social entrepreneurs and enterprises across a number of sectors.