The Social Entrepreneurship Public Policy Nexus

Full course description

In the first week, we will analyse the traditional public policy view that policy can stimulate 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, policy mixes; e.g. 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 can create value for citizens, industry experts, policymakers through evidence -based advocacy in policy (issue) networks, advocacy coalition networks, and multiple streams. Different 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. Meanwhile, social entrepreneurs may also present a policy problem related to their domain of activity 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 influence 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 can 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 component (for the use of appropriate policy design/analysis type, research method and argumentation). Students will apply evidence-based argumentation and critical analysis for a public policy design to build a social entrepreneurial policy plan and programme, which will be presented. In this manner, students will get a hands-on experience in critical thinking and analysis, formulation, and evaluation of social entrepreneurial cases and/or social entrepreneurial policy plan/programme.