The symbiosis of entities in the social engagement network: The role of social ventures

Abstract

Social entrepreneurship is increasingly recognized as a mechanism for creating social and economic value. By applying population ecology, resource dependency and resource-based view perspectives, this paper develops a conceptual model to provide greater insight into how social entrepreneurship ventures collaborate with other organizations in a network to fulfill resource requirements. Through this process social ventures address unmet social needs to create value which leads to the development and growth of individuals, communities, and regions. Using a large city's economic development actors involved in small business promotion as test cases, this exploratory study illustrates that social ventures effectively acquire resources from the primary social engagement network actors: corporations, governments, and other social ventures. The framework introduced in the paper provides a means by which to better understand the context in which relevant social engagement players in a network exist and the synergies that they can develop.

Keywords:

• social entrepreneurship
• social venture
• economic and social value
• network
• partnerships
• corporate social responsibility

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City for their generous contribution to Florida International University, a Kauffman Campus since 2003. The authors are also grateful to Norris Krueger, William D. Schulte, Johanna Mair, Christian Seelos, Rolf Wuestenhagen, Sara Carter, and Michael Russo and two anonymous reviewers for the USASBE conference for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 2007 Academy of Management in Philadelphia, at the 2008 United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship Conference in San Antonio, Texas, and at the 2008 Oikos PhD Summer Academy in Appenzell, Switzerland.