Impacting on Society: Exploring Common Ground behind the Power of Individual Initiatives
Somnath Ghosh ()
Additional contact information
Somnath Ghosh: Indian Institute of Management Kashipur
No 3506151, Proceedings of International Academic Conferences from International Institute of Social and Economic Sciences
Abstract:
Social and ecological entrepreneurs take initiatives to set up social enterprises. Some endure, some do not; some reach a scale where questions of sustainability or replication become issues. This paper first seeks to explore if there are some common elements behind all the diverse initiatives. Drawing on primary as well secondary sources, this paper identifies four key elements. The first thing that emerges is a deep awareness bordering on engagement with some problematic aspect of social life in which the native is located. It is only then that the second element - what one may call ?the churning within? ? emerges. This is irrespective of clarity about the nature of change and the desired medium, but have such varying elements as values, restlessness, a missionary zeal to change, questioning life goals, leap of faith or the urge to put in action an executable idea. Interestingly, this ?churning within? is quite different from the usually bandied about ?passion? and ?commitment?. The third element appears to be an alignment of the native?s chosen arena of work with her innate ability (aka KSA). But it is the fourth element - the native?s ability to attract and develop intermediate levels of leadership ? that distinguishes whether a social enterprise will flower or remain diminutive, if not squelch. Once this stage is reached, the entrepreneurial organization has morphed into a business organization, even if the profit motivation is not the determining characteristic.
Keywords: social and ecological entrepreneurs; social life; social entrepreneurs; intermediate leadership (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 1 page
Date: 2016-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme and nep-hpe
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Published in Proceedings of the Proceedings of the 22nd International Academic Conference, Lisbon, Apr 2016, pages 66-66
Downloads: (external link)
https://iises.net/proceedings/22nd-international-a ... =35&iid=018&rid=6151 First version, 2016
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sek:iacpro:3506151
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in Proceedings of International Academic Conferences from International Institute of Social and Economic Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klara Cermakova ().