‘Changing the System’: Compensatory versus Transformative Social Entrepreneurship

ABSTRACT

‘Changing the system’ has long been a part of definitions of social entrepreneurship (SE). This paper focuses on capitalism as a global socio-economic system and understanding the role of SE in relation to this system. A distinction between two types of SE activity is introduced: compensatory and transformative. Compensatory SE compensates for market failures within the global capitalist system. By contrast, transformative SE specifically seeks to change the system of global capitalism. Using the examples of the alter-globalization movement and transition towns, the paper advances a conceptualization of transformative SE which contrasts assumptions with compensatory SE. This distinction aids to make the field of SE more truly global, multidisciplinary, representative and emancipatory.

KEYWORDS:

• Global system
• compensatory social entrepreneurship
• transformative social entrepreneurship
• alter-globalization
• conceptual

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Dr Anna Krzeminska, Dr Paul Spee and Dr Anna Jenkins for their very helpful comments and encouragement.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The alter-globalization movement is also consistent with the many definitions of social entrepreneurship offered in Dacin, Dacin and Matear (2010).

2. Barry and Quilley (2008) note though that the transition town movement does not make the overthrow of global capitalism part of its rhetoric. Rather, change at the local level using ‘peak oil’ discourse is argued by these authors to be Transition Town's communication strategy due to a belief that climate change and global capitalism have not succeeded as narratives for behaviour change.

3. The basic idea of cosmopolitanism is that each person is a citizen of the world and owes a duty above all to the worldwide community of human beings rather than just those within an arbitrary political boundary, ethnicity or class (for a review see Brown and Kime 2010; Nussbaum 1996) (for a critique see Miller 2007).

4. Equal access is an ideal that is not without controversy. Wright (2010) lays out the philosophical problems, for e.g. some talents contribute more than others and so may attract a higher proportion of finite resources thus reducing resource availability for others. Despite these valid concerns, the ideal of social justice here conceptualized as broadly equal access permits comparative assessments of how different social-political-economic systems approximate the ideal.