Achieving sustainable development goals through digitalising creative works: some evidence from social enterprises in Indonesia

Abstract

This article aims to examine how businesses support the SDGs by exploring the role of social enterprises in supporting creative workers by adopting digital economic activities. This study adopts the inductive qualitative approach by observing the creative industry, conducting focus group discussions, and interviewing the main stakeholders to arrive at four findings. The findings indicate that social enterprises (1) encourage the creative workers to embrace their cultural identities by providing a digital platform, (2) support the creative workers to deal with customers by exploiting resourceful social networks, (3) promote inclusive community governance by adopting the crowdfunding platform, and (4) help the creative workers gain support from donors by showing their excellent pilot projects. The article extends the debate between neoclassical economics with profit-oriented goals and social enterprise approaches by highlighting the role of stakeholder, triple bottom line, and identity theories.