Business Commons^™

Training Future Hybrid Nonprofit Social Enterprise Leaders: A Research-Based Instructional Needs Analysis, Robert Woodrow Adams

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Nonprofit social enterprises (NSEs) seek to address societal problems through for-profit ventures. Because they pursue social and commercial goals, these organizations have great potential to solve social and environmental issues more efficiently and effectively. Given their unique purpose and challenges, NSEs require a different type of leadership than traditional nonprofit organizations, a distinctive competency model with specialized social work and business management training. Research has shown, however, that finding leaders with this necessary mix for effective management poses a challenge for such organizations. This exploratory study aimed to examine the extent to which MPA (i.e., master’s degree in public administration) …

Organizational Factors That Facilitate Collective Social Entrepreneurship: An Exploratory Study, Kesarwani Nimisha

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This research aims to contribute to the literature on collective social entrepreneurship (CSE) by exploring and examining the organizational factors that facilitate and motivate participation in CSE. Data were collected through an interview with the founder of a cooperative, and a survey, wherein respondents presented their expectations of a collective, their motivation to join, and the resources they deem important.

It was found that organizational factors, initialled as RRSI (relevance, resources, likelihood of success and innovativeness) which if met, have a reasonable chance of attracting participation in organizations pursuing CSE. These organizational factors had different appeal to stakeholders, based on …

Developing Social Entrepreneurial Intention: An Intervention Study In Thailand, Kanyaporn Skutalakul

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Social entrepreneurs are key players that could potentially create new initiatives and long-term solutions for our world to sustain the predicted forthcoming crises of overconsumption. Our world needs both kinds of entrepreneurship, both social and business, to collaboratively stimulate growth in a more balanced manner; however, the creation of social entrepreneurs at a higher rate of success and diffusion remains a challenge. This research proposed a number of new antecedents of social entrepreneurial intention (SEI) that were suggested by an exploratory study. The research was conducted in the context of Thailand and was designed to investigate the effects of different …

What Does Social Entrepreneurship Mean To Change Agents In New Mexico? A Phenomenographic Approach To Understanding Social Entrepreneurship, Audriana Stark

Organization, Information and Learning Sciences ETDs

Social entrepreneurship has been identified as a solution to some of the world’s most pressing problems, including health, education, and environmental issues. Despite the rise in literature about social entrepreneurship, there is still a lack of understanding how place-based social entrepreneurship is being conceived and experienced by practitioners. Therefore, this study uses a phenomenographic approach to understand what social entrepreneurship means to change agents in New Mexico, a place characterized by social and economic challenges, as well as an abundance of natural and cultural resources. The findings revealed five distinct categories of description for social entrepreneurship including: Category 1. No …

Accelerators: Their Fit In The Entrepreneurship Ecosystem And Their Cohort Selection Challenges, Shu Yang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The entrepreneurial financing landscape has drastically evolved over the past two decades with many of the new entrants (e.g., crowdfunders, accelerators, incubators, etc) rapidly rising to prominence (Block et al., 2016). Evolving from the incubator model, startup accelerators have similarly gained traction over the past decade (Pauwels, Clarysse, Wright, & Van Hove, 2016). While the number of published articles focusing on accelerators has been growing, extant research has yet to clearly delineate the accelerator phenomena conceptually and more importantly, empirically examine its selection mechanism. This dissertation addresses this gap and is composed of two parts. In the first part, I …

Social Entrepreneurship: Exploring The Bricolage Model In Nigeria, Michael Ogunleye

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Nigerian entrepreneurs face government barriers and lack the skills and awareness needed for successfully creating and scaling public value in resource-constrained environments. The concept of bricolage, which involves doing business by making do with resources at hand, has been addressed in the literature, but not as it occurs among Nigerian entrepreneurs. This study was conducted with the aim of narrowing this gap in knowledge by exploring how Nigerian entrepreneurs have successfully carried out their businesses. The research question addressed how Nigerian entrepreneurs overcame critical situations to successfully address the challenges of scaling and creating public value, and whether the theory …

An Analysis Of Prosocial Behavior In Customers, Erik Swanson

Honors Theses

Despite all that is known about the good entrepreneurship can do for communities, there is still a gap in the research on how entrepreneurship can directly better communities and the people that live in them through passing on prosocial benefits. This paper proposes “prosocial entrepreneurship” as a means to address this gap. It will address the gap through examining how prosocial entrepreneurship builds communities to pass on a positive impact on these communities. Businesses have both encouraged prosocial behaviors in employees and promoted cooperation and community building for some time. Research was also completed on prosocial behaviors to build a …

Re-Imagining Business Enterprise As A Force For Social Good: Exploring Shared Values And The Future Of A Sustainable World, Regina Bernal

M.A. in Leadership Studies: Capstone Project Papers

The world is at a crossroads when it comes to understanding business models and their impact on the world and the environment. Business enterprise fuels the economy and plays a key role in society. However, business enterprise has also been in the spotlight recently due to the damages it has inflicted on society and the environment. We have finite resources on this earth and “business as usual” will no longer suffice for 21st century business models. Companies and leaders are called to re-imagine different business models that integrate a more holistic view of profit, humanity, and the potential for business …

Identifying Cross-Country Key Drivers Of Social Entrepreneurial Activity, Cris Bravo

Dissertations

Governmental and philanthropic efforts alone are not sufficient to eradicate poverty. The world needs new frameworks that enable sustainable development by integrating the economic, social and environmental dimensions, and social entrepreneurship is of great interest because it has the capacity for facilitating societal change by fostering innovative ways to address social inequality, unemployment, and climate change. Precisely because social entrepreneurship lays at the intersection of the business and nonprofit worlds, it is a complex phenomenon, and there are many unknowns regarding how the convergence of these dimensions can be understood and managed at cross-national levels.

To investigate this phenomenon, this …

Education's Loss Of The Public: An Archival Exploration Of American Public Schools' Diminishing Social Returns And The Emerging Utility Of Social Entrepreneurship, Tia Ha-Quyen Ho

Scripps Senior Theses

The literature presented in the following pages explores the shortcomings of the American public education system in the context of creating long-term, sustainable social change. Using financial illiteracy and its relationship to low quality of life as an entry point, the first section exposes public schools’ shortcomings as agents of social change by delving into the hardships endured by the original public school promoters of the 19^th century, the pitfalls of President George W. Bush’s 2001 enactment of No Child Left Behind, and the shortcomings of the financial literacy programming that found traction in urban schools following the subprime …

The Congruence Of The Social And Conventional Entrepreneur: An Examination Of Goal Split Distribution, Emergence By Age, And Antecedent Model Congruence, Eric M. Korn

Dissertations, 2014-2019

Defined social and conventional entrepreneurs enjoy very different levels of support and educational offerings in the United States and abroad. With the launch of more and more nonprofit organizations being spurred on by the entrepreneur, the extent to which those that seek a distributed bottom line for their intended organization differ from those with economic goals becomes an important line of inquiry.

The study of the entrepreneur began, in many ways, with Schumpeter in that late 1930’s, and the echoes of his economic background remain implicit in the definition of the breed to this day. This work seeks to determine …