Social Entrepreneurship and Values Work
Research Paper Title:
“Social entrepreneurship and values work: The role of practices in shaping values and negotiating change”
Authors:
Ira Chatterjee (Department of Management and Organisation, Hanken School of Economics)
Joep Cornelissen (Rotterdam School of Management (RSM), Erasmus University)
Joakim Wincent (Department of Management and Organisation, Hanken School of Economics)
Background:
Social entrepreneurship focuses on resolving societal problems and driving social change. In social entrepreneurship settings, the entrepreneur is often confronted with a paradox: he or she must align organizational values with existing community values to mobilize support for change while simultaneously stimulating the re-evaluation of these very values to trigger progressive, beneficial societal change. Although scholars acknowledge the role and importance of values in the change process, few studies pay attention to processes of managing and actively negotiating values during social change efforts. This study address this gap through a longitudinal case study of Barefoot College, a social enterprise in India that has successfully navigated conflicting social values and effected social change.
Methodology:
Sample: Barefoot College, a social enterprise in India that has successfully navigated conflicting social values and effected social change
Sample Size: 54
Analytical Approach: Longitudinal case study. Data sources came in the form of archival records, artifacts, non-participant observations, and interviews
Proposition:
This study investigates how the performative power of values can be strategically employed to modify values and embed social change. The research stream for this study argues that organizations seeking to motivate change must find common ground between their values and those of the social systems within which they operate to secure trust and garner stakeholder engagement and commitment to change.
Results:
A deliberate and proactive process of instituting practices, that in the first phase anchored social values of the community in the organization through practices of co-opting values, and in the next phase, expanded these very values through practices of clustering and coalescing to accommodate new values, existed.
The researchers saw how Barefoot, rather than attempting to drive change by imposing values antithetical to the community, retained cores social values and brought together practices infused with divergent values, leading to gradual but sustainable change
Conclusion:
The authors aim to develop scholarship on social entrepreneurship and advance practical knowledge for social enterprises engaged in addressing societal challenges. The authors show how purposive practices offer an important mechanism for social entrepreneurs, allowing them to navigate between antithetical values and catalyze deep-level social change. In the author’s value augmentation process model, practices do the work of values and mediate between communally established social values of tradition and modern values of gender equality. Unlike past research, the researchers present a process of social change that works within existing values, suggesting a more robust transformation that is likely to endure, and at the same time, reduces conflict. Future research could extend our findings to examine values-laden practices across organizational levels and between different stakeholder groups.
