The Creation of Social Enterprises: Some Lessons from Lebanon

Abstract

The article presents a field study of seven social enterprises operating in Lebanon, looking back at the process of their creation. The results are discussed against the growing body of literature on nascent social entrepreneurship. The study proposes a theoretical refinement of the notion of social bricoleur to include the activist/entrepreneur distinction and the issue/value type of opportunity identified and it supports seven general conclusions on social entrepreneurship at large, as well as some implications for practice and for future research.

Key Words:

• Social entrepreneurship
• nascent entrepreneurship
• enterprise creation
• start-up

Acknowledgements

Two anonymous reviewers of this journal made several insightful comments, which helped improve this article throughout. The usual disclaimer applies.

The author wishes to express gratitude to arcenciel and to BRD for sharing the materials on the social enterprise incubator nabad, employed in this article.

Potential Conflict of Interest Disclosure

At the time of data collection, the author served as a pro bono member of the Advisory Board of nabad.

Notes

1. See Davidsson (2006) for a comprehensive review of the literature on nascent entrepreneurship.

2. See Lehner and Kaniskas (2012) for a review of the literature on opportunity recognition in social entrepreneurship.

3. The other two types are ‘social constructionists’, who identify social needs in market and government failures at any level and in any location (e.g., Acumen), and ‘social engineers’, who challenge the status quo and organize vast responses to bring about revolutionary changes (e.g., Grameen Bank), much in the fashion of the hero entrepreneurs who change the world.

4. 455,000 refugees from Palestine (UNRWA 2009) and 776,000 from Syria (UNHCR 2013) are currently estimated to be in the country, or about one-third of the permanent population.

5. Only 22.3% of working-age women engage in the labour market compared to 71.5% of men (UNDP 2011, 140).

6. The human development index, which is .739, drops to .570 after inequality-adjustment (UNDP 2011, 136).

7. Lebanon scores 57.9 on the Environmental Performance Index, much lower than the average (63.5) for countries with a high level of human development (UNDP 2011, 147).

8. Implications for SEs are avoided to minimize the problem of causal performativity (Lanteri 2014).

9. Katre and Salipante (2012) do not investigate human or social capital directly. So they do not report the background information of their NSEs that would be necessary to investigate this issue.