Question 1
a) Read the attached article cited as follows:
Korsgaard Steffen (2011)Opportunity formation in social Entrepreneurship. Journal of Enterprising Communities.Vol 5(4) pp 265 -285. Emerald Publishing PTY LTD .
The author purports to have used the case study research method. However the article does not elaborate on the manner in which issues of validity, reliability and authenticity of the research were addressed. Critically analyse the article for these issues and the manner in which they have been accommodated. (25 marks) 2 pages long at 1.5 spacing
b) Read the attached article cited as follows:
Ghalwash S. et al (2017).What motivates social entrepreneurs to start social ventures? An exploratory study in the context of a developing economy.Social Enterprise Journal Vol 13 (3) pp 268-298. Emerald Publishing. Pty Ltd.
The author used the qualitative approach but has not stated the type of method adopted. Identify and discuss the features of the study that indicate that it is indeed a qualitative study and use the features to categorize it by the type of method. (25 marks) 2 pages long at 1.5 spacing
Date Due: 11 September 2021
400633 265..285 Opportunity formation in social entrepreneurship Steffen Korsgaard Department of Management, Aarhus School of Business, University of Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of opportunity and its role in social entrepreneurship processes. Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents a single-case study of a sustainable community in Denmark. The data include interviews, documents and television programmes. Findings – The case study finds that the opportunity takes a number of different forms in the process. These different forms are the result of a continuous mobilisation of actors. On the basis of these findings a model of social entrepreneurship processes is proposed, where the process is driven by mobilisation and transformation. Research limitations/implications – The findings of the case provide support for a creation view of opportunities and the view that opportunity discovery does not necessarily precede resource mobilisation. The proposed model contributes to the development of the creation view of opportunities as an alternative to the discovery view and to understanding of the role of opportunities in the social entrepreneurship process. Practical implications – The findings suggest that the social entrepreneur is one who actively creates external circumstances rather than responds to opportunities already present therein. This implies a focus on different skills and ways of thinking. Originality/value – The paper presents a model of social entrepreneurship processes grounded in a deep understanding of an empirical setting. The findings and model question the value of the discovery view of opportunities in the field of social entrepreneurship, while contributing to the development of the creation view of opportunities. Keywords Denmark, Entrepreneurialism, Entrepreneurs, Business development, Opportunity, Social entrepreneurship, Process, Sustainability Paper type Case study Introduction In 2002, 13 families moved to a bare corn field outside a small village in Eastern Jutland in Denmark. They moved into small trailers where they would be living as they built their own homes from scratch. Most of them came from ordinary one-family homes with a standard two-income household. But now they were looking for a new way of living. The project Friland offered them the possibility of starting a new life, where they would build their own house from cheap, recycled or unprocessed materials such as straw bales, old bricks or timber. This would allow them to build a home very cheaply and without taking out a mortgage, which in turn would lead to a significantly reduced cost of living. The 13 families moving into trailers marked the culmination of a process that started ten years earlier in Western Jutland where the former organic farmer and folk-school warden Steen Møller started building his own sustainable house, later to be known as “the Sønder Felding House”. This house was Steen’s response to having experienced the pressure of mortgages both as a farmer and folk-school warden; a pressure that The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/1750-6204.htm Opportunity formation 265 Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy Vol. 5 No. 4, 2011 pp. 265-285 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 1750-6204 DOI 10.1108/17506201111177316 ultimately led to a nervous breakdown. To escape these problems he built his own house from cheap or free local unprocessed materials thereby making him dept-free. As such, the house was both financially and environmentally sustainable, and Steen was now free to pursue whatever life and projects he wanted, without having to worry about paying his mortgage. The field of social entrepreneurship is full of anecdotal accounts that rightfully celebrate the efforts of social entrepreneurs such as Steen. Indeed, there is broad agreement that social entrepreneurs such as Steen create social value and make invaluable contributions to community development and provide solutions to social and environmental problems. But the wealth of anecdotal accounts is not equalled by a rich theoretical understanding of the social entrepreneurial process. The contribution of social entrepreneurs has been increasingly recognised by researchers, and academic interest in the phenomenon of social entrepreneurship is increasing. But the social entrepreneurship field has yet to establish a coherent and generally accepted theoretical framework for understanding social entrepreneurship processes (Mair and Marti, 2006). The concept of opportunity has been deployed to understand social entrepreneurial processes by a great number of social entrepreneurship scholars (Austin et al., 2006; Borch et al., 2008; Dorado, 2006; Haugh, 2005; Hockerts, 2006; Mair and Marti, 2006; Monllor and Attaran, 2008; Roberts and Woods, 2005; Shaw and Carter, 2007; Thompson et al., 2000). However, these texts provide only a cursory reflection on the concept of opportunity, and our understanding of their role in social entrepreneurship processes is limited. Both in the fields of (business) entrepreneurship, from whence the opportunity concept was imported, and social entrepreneurship, opportunity is a contested concept (Alvarez and Barney, 2007). Scholars disagree about what an opportunity is (McMullen et al., 2007), whether they are discovered or created (Alvarez and Barney, 2007; Berglund, 2007; Gartner et al., 2003; Short et al., 2010), and the role they play in entrepreneurial processes (Sarasvathy, 2001). The purpose of this paper is therefore to examine the following questions concerning opportunities and the entrepreneurial process: . What is a social entrepreneurial opportunity? . What is the role of opportunities in the social entrepreneurship process? The exploration of these questions will contribute to the understanding of social entrepreneurship processes. The questions are examined through a case study of Friland. The deep insight into a singular empirical phenomenon provides a rich insight into the role of the opportunity in the entrepreneurial process. The paper first presents the theoretical background of social entrepreneurship and the concept of opportunities before introducing the method and case story. In the analysis, the findings concerning the forms of the opportunity, the actors involved and the role of the opportunity are presented. The analysis is concluded with the presentation of the model of mobilisation and transformation. The paper concludes with a discussion of the contribution of the findings and the model to important debates in the fields of entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship, followed by implications for practice. Theoretical framework Social entrepreneurship From the outset entrepreneurship studies have been concerned with change. Schumpeter (1961) set the stage for the field when conceptualising the entrepreneur JEC 5,4 266 as the catalyst for revolutionary economic change. The focus has thus traditionally been economic change (Hebert and Link, 1988; Landström, 1999). Within the last decade the entrepreneurship concept has been applied to change in numerous other settings including social change (Alvord et al., 2004), community development ( Johannisson, 1990) and the development of environmentally sustainable practices (Mair et al., 2005). Social entrepreneurship has been suggested as a promising and increasingly important activity, as public funding for many social areas is declining and more and more social tasks are being taken over by market functions. Notable successes in terms of addressing social problems in new and innovative ways, such as the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh (Sarasvathy, 2008; Yunus and Jolis, 1998) have raised awareness of the potential and need for social entrepreneurship. While there is broad agreement among social entrepreneurship scholars that the field is concerned with social change or the creation of social value (Austin et al., 2006; Mair and Marti, 2006), an actual definition of the phenomena and a unifying theoretical framework have not yet been developed. Indeed, the field of social entrepreneurship is largely phenomenon driven (Mair and Marti, 2006) and short on theory (Roberts and Woods, 2005). In their review of the social entrepreneurship literature Shaw and Carter (2007), identify three main issues that have been taken up by the literature: the extent of the phenomenon, defining social entrepreneurship and defining the social entrepreneur. The extent of social entrepreneurship. Researchers have been sought to determine the extent of the phenomenon. Shaw and Carter (2007) state that efforts to determine the extent of social entrepreneurship are frustrated by the diversity of the phenomenon and a lack of a generally agreed definition. Despite this, the different estimates seem to indicate that the phenomenon is increasing in extent and importance. Defining social entrepreneurship. In regard to the definition of social entrepreneurship Mair and Marti (2006) identify three basic perspectives: (1) not for profit initiatives aiming to create social value (Austin et al., 2006); (2) socially responsible practices of existing business ventures (Hockerts, 2006); and (3) a catalyst for social transformation and providing solutions to social problems (Alvord et al., 2004). The first perspective emphasises that the activity’s purpose is to create social value for the public good, as opposed to business entrepreneurship, which aims at generating profit (Austin et al., 2006). The second perspective emphasises social agendas of business ventures operating in a commercial setting and addresses such issues as corporate social responsibility, while referring to well-known examples such as the body shop (Hockerts, 2006). The third perspective focuses on social transformation and is less interested in whether profit is being made or not. Defining the social entrepreneur. Scholars have sought to define the social entrepreneur (Shaw and Carter, 2007). Primarily interest has been in comparing the social entrepreneur with their counterparts in business entrepreneurship (Shaw and Carter, 2007; Thompson et al., 2000), although alternative approaches have been pursued, investigating, e.g. the construction of social entrepreneurial identity ( Jones et al., 2008). Opportunity formation 267 The social entrepreneurship process and the concept of opportunity There exists a limited number of empirical (Borch et al., 2008; Dorado, 2006; Shaw and Carter, 2007; Spear, 2006) as well as theoretical contributions (Guclu et al., 2002; Haugh, 2005) on the topic of social entrepreneurship processes. In the attempt to understand and conceptualise the social entrepreneurship process, scholars have often turned to the (business) entrepreneurship field for theoretical resources (Dorado, 2006; Parkinson and Howorth, 2008). Among the popular concepts imported is the notion of entrepreneurial opportunity. This concept has been applied in both theoretical (Austin et al., 2006; Haugh, 2005; Hockerts, 2006; Mair and Marti, 2006; Roberts and Woods, 2005; Thompson et al., 2000) and empirical studies of the social entrepreneurship processes (Borch et al., 2008; Dorado, 2006; Monllor and Attaran, 2008; Shaw and Carter, 2007). Most if not all of these studies have explicitly or implicitly used the so-called discovery view of opportunities (Shane and Venkataraman, 2000), which is not surprising given that this view is dominant in the field of (business) entrepreneurship (Alvarez and Barney, 2007; Short et al., 2010). Exceptions include Monllor and Attaran (2008), who suggest a creativity model and Roberts and Woods (2005), who argue that social entrepreneurship opportunities are constructed rather than discovered. The discovery view of opportunities has its roots in Austrian Economics and most significantly the work of Kirzner (1973, 1985, 1997). Kirzner proposes a disequilibrium theory of the market, claiming that opportunities arise from imperfect knowledge and