Individual Task 3
Topic: Should academics differentiate Social Entrepreneurship from Entrepreneurship?
The concept of Social Entrepreneurship (SE) has been emerging in both profit and non-profit sectors. However, there is no literature has provided the exclusive definition. This paper will examine some viewpoints of SE and Entrepreneurship to prove that SE should be differentiated from Entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurs are one who discover change, respond to it, and exploit it (Dees, 1998) as opportunities for the creation of personal wealth (Sundin, 2011). Starting a new business is not the essence of entrepreneurship (Dees, 1998). Not every new business represents entrepreneurship as well as not every entrepreneur is a business owner. Since the last century, scholars and businesses have deliberated on whether business should consider social norms and expectation (Dacin et. al., 2010) and many organizations with social purpose have existed for many years. However, the concept of SE has recently received growing attention from society, policy level (Haugh, 2005) due to its contribution to increasing social capability, responding to unmet needs and creating employment. Social entrepreneurship encompasses activities with the perception of opportunities to enhance social wealth by creating new ventures in an innovative manner (Dacin et. al, 2010).
Like any entrepreneurial businesses, SE also uses innovation to discover gaps and opportunities in order to create a new venture to serve existing need in the “market”. The distinctive features between SE and Entrepreneurship are that SE combines “entrepreneurial” strategy with “social” purpose (Haugh, 2005). While SE can be either profit or none-profit form, entrepreneurs are obligated of generating profit (Dacin et.al., 2010). Social entrepreneurs aim to be self-financing from their business profit and not reliant on donations or philanthropy (Haugh, 2005), which is different from NGOs, in order to tackle social...