Reframing Social Entrepreneurship Impact: Productive, Unproductive and Destructive Outputs and Outcomes of the Milwaukee School Voucher Programme

Abstract

This paper initially seeks to problematize the common assumption that all social entrepreneurship impact is positive. No matter what social entrepreneurs and other powerful intermediaries subjectively believe or hope, assuming that social entrepreneurship is always productive a priori imposes significant limits on this budding field. In order to overcome this bias it is necessary to reframe how we approach and assess social entrepreneurship impact. Drawing from the economic entrepreneurship literature, this paper outlines a multi-dimensional framework to serve as a useful and preferable starting point for assessing social entrepreneurship. We then make use of this multi-dimensional lens to look closer at the impact of one case of social entrepreneurship, the school voucher programme in Milwaukee.