Genesis of social entrepreneurship: an exploration through case studies

The PhD thesis has a research subject and focus attempting to develop a sociological analysis of a form of social action in the shape of social entrepreneurship defined as a problem solving initiative. The thesis explores what kind of situations and circumstances – both external, in terms of institutions and internal, in terms of motivations and drive in a combination propel the social entrepreneur or the group to create social enterprises. The aim of the investigation is to explore and explain how and why certain individuals/groups create/generate innovative responses/ solutions - understood as social entrepreneurship - to social issues/problems. Social entrepreneurship has been conceptualized as innovative initiatives with a social mission to solve social problems. The research questions are: How does social entrepreneurship emerge? What are the triggers? – including a theoretical and empirical framing of the institutional environment including policy and funding provisions offering both facilitation and resistance to entrepreneurial behavior, the personal or group motivations of the social entrepreneur - or a core group - that unfold in the context of a set of stakeholders who have some issues and problems to solve. This has led to the developing of the following prepositions: 1/Social entrepreneurs work towards a clearly expressed social mission, 2/ they create multiple values – social, economic and other types of values for their stakeholders, 3/ they access a mix of resources – grants, donations and revenue streams generated by business activities and 4/ they seldom act alone but work within an organizational context. GK has done a number of English and Danish empirical case studies of different social enterprises and beginning the analyses of these.