Are They Really a New Species? Exploring the Emergence of Social Entrepreneurs Through Giddens’s Structuration Theory

Artur Steiner,Izabella Steinerowska-Streb,Jane Farmer,Sarah Jack

doi:10.1177/00076503211053014

Abstract

Using Giddens’s structuration theory and empirical data from a study with social enterprise stakeholders, the article explores how social entrepreneurs and the structure co-create one another. We show that the development of the contemporary significance of social entrepreneurialism lies in a combination of complex context-specific structural forces and the activities of agents who initiate, demand, and impose change. Social entrepreneurs intentionally tackle social challenges, but their actions bring unintentional results, such as the transfer of state responsibilities onto communities. Direct outputs of their activities introduce indirect outcomes, bringing wider changes in culture and policy. The evolving nature of entrepreneurship and a number of factors that interplay in time and space, and enable and constrain social entrepreneurs, confirm the applicability of Giddens’s theory in the field of social entrepreneurship. The originality of this article derives from revealing mechanisms that enable social entrepreneurs to emerge and reasons for structural change. We also build a “co-creation model of structure and agency” that can be used to “engineer” the process of social entrepreneurship.

Highlights

From revealing mechanisms that enable social entrepreneurs to emerge and reasons for structural change
Using Giddens’ structuration theory and empirical data from a range of stakeholders, our findings present evidence that helps answer our research questions; first, we show how social entrepreneurs bring about structural changes and, second, how structure influences the activities of social entrepreneurs
As an answer to imperfections created by capitalism, social entrepreneurship is becoming increasingly popular and contributes to creating a new capitalism—neoliberal capitalism—in which an individual, often described as a “hero” with “magical qualities” (Dees, 2004, p. 18), uses the foundations of a free-market economy as well as their own entrepreneurial and business skills to address what they perceive as a social problem

Summary

Introduction

From revealing mechanisms that enable social entrepreneurs to emerge and reasons for structural change. Over the last 20 years, there has been growing interest in social entrepreneurs, the processes they are immersed in, the activities they are involved in and the ventures they create (Bacq et al, 2016; Dees, 1998; Littlewood & Holt, 2018) The number of those identified as social entrepreneurs has significantly increased in recent years (Bosma et al, 2016; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2017). A growing number of transnational organizations as well as national and regional governments create policies, strategies, support and investment mechanisms, and a variety of incentives to facilitate social entrepreneurship One challenge in this domain is that such documents and interventions are frequently developed without a clear understanding of the emergence of social entrepreneurs. We lay the theoretical foundations for future studies to further develop and/or challenge the findings in the social entrepreneurship field

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion