Social Networking for Social Entrepreneurship

Abstract

Abstract Even if social entrepreneurship is a young term in social science and still lacks a consistent theory to define it, being seen as “a large tent” (Martin et al., 2007) for all kind of activities, the social phenomenon of social entrepreneurship is becoming wider and stronger as ever before. The same is happening with social media and social networking. Although social entrepreneurship and social networking, in terms of theory, have nothing in common, social entrepreneurship can strongly benefit from a wise use of social media and social network and networking. This article is a case study about how a Rotary club from Romania succeeded to generate trust through social media and social networking in order to reach its social entrepreneurship objective: changing perspective about education into the local community. The Rotary organization, established in 1905, is well known in world as the largest philanthropic organization, being involved in huge projects like eradication of polio, water supply or education. Even if Rotary members are mainly leaders from communities, including business leaders and entrepreneurs in a vast percentage, acting as a social entrepreneurship organization is also something new for Rotary. While the project was addressing a large community, the challenge was, first to, increase the social capital of the club, in order to act lately as a lubricant and generate low transactional cost ( Fukuyama, 1996 ).