"Just" Business and Often Personal: The Incidents That Social Entrepreneurs Identify as Critical to Leading Their Enterprises

1. “JUST” BUSINESS
AND OFTEN
PERSONAL:
THE INCIDENTS THAT SOCIAL
ENTREPRENEURS IDENTIFY AS
CRITICAL TO LEADING THEIR
ENTERPRISESDissertation Defense
Presentation
Antioch Jerrid P. Kalakay

2.  Mitch Kusy, Ph.D., Chair
 Harriet Schwartz, Ph.D., Methodologist
 Elizabeth Holloway, Ph.D., Committee
Member
 Mary Conway Dato-on, Ph.D.,
Committee Member
 G. Thomas Lumpkin, Ph.D., External
Reader
Committee Introductions

3. Outline
 My Background
 Introduce the Topic
 Working Definitions
 Literature Review
 Dissertation Question
 Purpose of Research
 Methodology
 Participants
 Findings
 Implications for
Leadership and Change

4. Researcher’s Background
 Higher Education Professional/Faculty
Member
 Service-Learning
 Leadership Education and Development
 Social Entrepreneurship Education
 Co-Founded Leadership and Organizational
Development Practice

5. My Disorientating Dilemma
 Service-Learning Trip
 Volunteerism and Community Service
Realization
 Immediate Needs vs. Sustainable Change
 Fundamental misunderstanding of a “Successful
life”
 Search for a sustainable solution

6. Social Entrepreneurship
 Practice has existed for hundreds of years.
 Scholarship has come into being over the past
30 years.
 “Doing well, while doing good” (Embley, 1993).

7. Working Definitions
 Social Entrepreneurship
 Process of pursuing innovative solutions to social problems
 Mission to create and sustain social value
 Draws upon business and nonprofit worlds (Dees, 1998)
 Social Entrepreneur
 Plays the role of a change agent
 Adopts a mission to create and sustain social value
 Recognizes and relentlessly pursues new opportunities
(Dees, 1998)

8. Working Definitions Continued
 Social Value Creation
 Little to do with profits
 Fulfillment of basic and long-standing needs (Certo
and Miller, 2008)
 Strategic Leadership
 Management of an overall enterprise
 Substantive decision-making responsibilities
(Finkelstein and Hambrick, 1996).

9. Literature Review
 Social Entrepreneurs
 Values
 Tensions (Diochon & Anderson, 2010)
 Salient Identity: Activist or Entrepreneur (Simms &
Robinson, 2009)
 Strategic Leadership
 Evolution of Concept (Barnard, 1938)
 Application on Social Enterprises

10. Literature Review Continued
 Social Value Creation
 Measurement
 Roberts Enterprise Development Fund’s Social Return
on Investment (SROI)
 Role as a Goal (Acs, Boardman, & McNeely,
2013; Audretsch & Keilbach, 2004)

11. What Incidents Do Social Entrepreneurs
Identify As Critical To Leading Their
Enterprises?
Dissertation Question

12. Purpose of Research
 Field to continue to mature beyond its infancy
 Utilize established constructs and theories
from other disciplines.
 Better understand the probable uniqueness in
the processes, decisions, and operational
factors involved in social entrepreneurship
(Certo & Miller, 2008).

13. Importance of Research
 Little known about the experiences social
entrepreneurs have in leading their enterprises
 Gain insights into the experiences of leading
social enterprises
 Inform the education and development of
current and potential social entrepreneurs

14. Methodology
 Qualitative Constructivist Approach
 Knowledge is socially constructed through the
vantage point of the social entrepreneur (Chell &
Pittaway, 1998).
 Critical Incident Technique (CIT)
 Critical importance to the interviewee
 History in organizational science (Chell & Pittaway,
1998)
 Recent applications in entrepreneurship (Cope &
Watts, 2000; Kaulio, 2003)

15. Critical Incident Technique
 John Flanagan (1954) – U.S. Air force on Pilot
Performance
 Established the general guidelines and structures for
the research method.
 Most cited article by I/O psychologists over the past
40 years (Anderson & Wilson, 1997)
 Focus on critical events and data collection is
through interviews
 Data analysis is conducted by determining frame
of reference, form emerging categories, narrative
form of categories with operational definitions and
self descriptive titles (Butterfield et al., 2005)

16. CIT Reporting Framework
Antecedents
(Social Entrepreneur
Reported)
Incident
(Social Entrepreneur
Reported)
Outcome
(Social Entrepreneur
Reported)
FIGURE 3. CONCEPTUAL REPORTING FRAMEWORK OF STUDY

17. Social Entrepreneurs
(Participants)
 Social Entrepreneurs
 19 United States Ashoka Fellows
 English-speaking founders of the social
enterprises
 With 1 or more years of experience
 Purposeful Sampling & Snowball Sampling
 Confidentiality (demographic information only)

18. Incidents and Interviews
 Incidents
 Sought to reach saturation
 Same type of information
 116 incidents
 Interviews
 Were semi-structured
 Phone or Skype
 Recorded for transcription and analysis
 Professional transcription service
 Cross-referenced transcripts to recordings

19. Analyzing, Interpreting, and Reporting the
Data
 Dedoose Qualitative Research Data Analysis
software
 Emergent Thematic coding approach and a
constant comparative method of analysis
(Holloway & Schwartz, 2014)
 Coding Partner

20. Findings
 Critical Areas
 Social Entrepreneurial
Mindset
 Experiencing
Beneficial
Relationships
 Experiencing Difficult
Relationships
 Recalibration of
Enterprise
 Leadership Transition
 Founding of
Enterprise
 Experience of Losing
Funding
 Experience of
Obtaining Funding
 Recognition

21. Social Entrepreneurial Mindset
 Described incidents with a novel positivity
 Atypical area
 Unacknowledged or unseen domain

23. Experiencing Beneficial
Relationships
 Positive impacts on the social entrepreneurs
and their enterprises.
 Expansion of operations
 Financial support
 Becoming partners

24. Experiencing Difficult
Relationships
 Negative impacts on the social entrepreneurs
and their enterprises.
 Embarrassment at major events
 Workplace unease
 Theft of intellectual property

25. Recalibration of Enterprise
 A realignment, restructure, or a refocusing of
the core mission and operations of the
enterprise.
 Refocused energies and resources
 Decreased the number of people served to focus
on quality of service
 Greater satisfaction and confidence in services
provided

26. Leadership Transition
 Realizations leading to transition
 Experience of leadership transition
 Outcomes
 Within six months there will be a new CEO
 National spokesperson for enterprise

27. Implications for Leadership and
Change
 Relational Leadership
 Coordination of others through a process of social
influence (Uhl-Bien, 2006).
 Social Change Leadership
 Multi-frame perspectives
 Power dynamics
 Building the capacities to produce social change
 (Ospina and Foldy, 2005; Crosby and Bryson, 2005; Slesky
and Smith, 1994).
 Leadership for the Common Good (Crosby and
Bryson, 2005)

28. “When I look back on it all, like that’s where I
can say, ‘okay, it’s definitely not a failure. It’s
not what I thought it would be in many ways,
and it had some weird twists and turns along
the way, but I can definitely say that we have
made a difference and we have built an
economically viable organization”
(Art, personal communications, November 13,
2014).
Quote

29. THANK YOU
Questions? *References in
Dissertation
Antioch University
My greatest hope is that this
work provides even just one
person the motivation to get
started or continue their journey
in creating positive social
change.