Social entrepreneurship is regarded as being an essential factor in ensuring the success of any social enterprise. It has crucial significance as being a driving force of social innovation that can resolve a diverse range of social problems.
This stud...
Social entrepreneurship is regarded as being an essential factor in ensuring the success of any social enterprise. It has crucial significance as being a driving force of social innovation that can resolve a diverse range of social problems.
This study attempts to explore the core characteristics and dynamics of social entrepreneurship processes in the Korean context. For this study, the author performed qualitative research using the grounded theory approach suggested by Strauss and Corbin (1998). To collect essential data, the author conducted in-depth interviews with 18 social entrepreneurs who are believed to have skillfully practiced true social entrepreneurship. The study derived 117 concepts, 40 subcategories, and 15 categories through open coding. The categories were then analyzed through axial coding using the paradigm model. The core category was developed through selective coding, and also the process analysis was conducted.
The result of this study can be summarized as explained below.
First, social entrepreneurship entails the unique awareness and problem solving skills of social entrepreneurs. All of which are demonstrated in the process of discovering and resolving social issues or problems. Therefore, social entrepreneurship appears in multiple forms when it pertains to interactions with personal or environmental contexts.
Second, the force that puts social entrepreneurship into practice is affected by the internal motives of social entrepreneurs, who desire to take charge of their own life by taking the initiative, as well by as social motives. However, rather than being clearly separated, social motives and internal motives are closely affected by one another. They generate the passion to induce the practice of social entrepreneurship.
Third, the starting and destination points of social entrepreneurship are based on ‘social value,’. The central phenomena of social entrepreneurship was‘connecting social problems to opportunities’ and also the causal conditions and the results were ‘discovery of social problems’ and ‘expansion and diffusion of social values’respectively. Therefore the meaning of ‘social’ in social entrepreneurship is a core concept of social entrepreneurship.
Fourth, innovativeness as an important characteristic of social entrepreneurship, is the driving force to surpass the context-based limits of social enterprises. In other words, innovativeness acts as the driving force for overcoming tension in and outside of an organization. in the process of simultaneously pursuing economic and social values, while also overcoming the limits posed by the vulnerable resources of social enterprises.
Fifth, social entrepreneurship is practiced through the dynamic processes of ‘discovery’, ‘the pursuit of opportunities’, ‘practice’, and ‘value creation’. In the process of social entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurs pursue a balance between ‘social’ and ‘economic’ values. However, the balance between the two values changes dynamically and is influenced by environmental dynamics, such as government policies.
This study, which has attempted to study social entrepreneurship empirically by using qualitative research, is meaningful for the reasons listed below.
First, given that the perception and discourse concerning social enterprises in Korea have been inclined to pursue an alternative model for creating jobs and enhancing social services, this study is consequential in that it has explored social entrepreneurship as an alternative mechanism for developing a market solution for diverse social problems that go beyond the current discourse of welfare and employment.
Second, this study is significant in that it has attempted a more in-depth understanding of social entrepreneurship. The study adopted a deeper approach regarding the areas listed as being social problems by the research participants; how these problems are discovered and through what processes they are actually connected to opportunities; what contexts are affected among them; and what strategies are utilized.
Third, this study attempted to discover diverse characteristics through explorative research, whereas existing studies have focused on measurements that used limited components or elements derived from traditional entrepreneurship research.
Considering that Korea has not yet reached a sufficient consensus on the definition and understanding of social entrepreneurship, the results and theories derived from this study will be useful as they provide diverse perspectives on social entrepreneurship.