Entrepreneurs and everyday businessmen and women have long engaged in different kinds of civic-minded activities. This study explores ways that urban entrepreneurs and managers engage in civic activities while pursuing business growth. In this preliminary analysis of owners and managers who have participated in a technical assistance program geared for entrepreneurs who are ready to take their existing venture "to the next level", we identify a kind of entrepreneur whose business model incorporates a social mission. These are not "social entrepreneurs" who engage in business practices in order to push their social agenda. Nor are they mimicking businesses that follow a "corporate social responsibility" model because they were shamed into it or believe it will be good for their bottom line. These are people whose ventures must make a profit if their social mission is to be achieved. They run what we call a "civic enterprise". Their behavior reflects a kind of "civic-minded capitalism".
Management scholars can have a major impact on advancing environmental sustainability by focusing on their own home institutions. A “four-type” sustainability action model is presented to foster thinking about how professors can engage and empower students, faculty, and staff to be active environmental change agents on their own campuses and local community. Faculty can assign sustainability class projects, integrate sustainability throughout the Business School’s core curriculum, participate on a campus sustainability committee, and conduct research on sustainability in higher education that flows out of these activities. Some examples of these different types of efforts are offered based on experiences at Edgewood College, a small U.S. Midwestern college. A coordinated effort among faculty engaged in similar activities on other campuses would dramatically advance environmental sustainability.
An exploratory study of urban entrepreneurs participating in a technical assistance program finds that they focus on the bottom line and often have an explicit wish to improve their community. This integrated combination of economic and social values, a kind of civic-minded capitalism, guides their positioning for growth and yields a business that can best be called a “civic enterprise.” A descriptive analysis of qualitative and quantitative research yields propositions for future research on these hybrid business ventures.
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