Social Entrepreneurship: Comparative Analysis

Mission. The fundamental purpose of social entrepreneurship is creating social value for the public good, whereas commercial entrepreneurship aims at creating profitable operations resulting in private gain. This contrast is, of course, overstated. Commercial entrepreneurship does benefit society in the form of new and valuable goods, services, and jobs, and can have transformative social impacts. Such transformations can even be a driving motivation for some commercial entrepreneurs. Nonetheless, the differences in purpose and reward are useful for our comparative analysis. Our proposition is: Differences in mission will be a fundamental distinguishing feature between social and commercial entrepreneurship that will manifest itself in multiple

Stakeholder perceptions of legitimacy may also arise when the mission strategy becomes commercialised (Dart, 2004). The rising institutional demands of creating dual mission logics can therefore be problematic for SE’s (Pache and Santos 2010); for the different regulatory, social and cultural environments in which they operate bring with conflicting challenges. Specifically, one of two potential outcomes arise; stakeholders agreeing to the mission, but disagreeing on the means, or, where stakeholders disagree with the mission (Pache and Santos,

For an enterprise to continue and scale their activities, these resources need to generate sufficient income (Haugh, 2007), and therefore sustain their operations (Austin et al, 2006). Austin et al (2006) justify the inclusion of financial importance within their framework by maintaining that “the non-distributive restriction on surpluses generated by for-profit organizations and the embedded social purpose of non-profit or hybrid forms of social enterprise limits social entrepreneurs from tapping into the same capital markets as commercial entrepreneurs”. It is therefore necessary to analyse the potential opportunities, barriers and tensions, both internally and externally, SE’s might face in light of simultaneously creating income while managing the social value and numerous revenue streams