A conceptual model of critical success factors for Indian social enterprises

Abstract

Purpose There have been global upsurge in the social enterprise research & practice considering social enterprise as a rapidly growing thought worldwide. The renewed significance of social enterprises (SE’s) has arisen primarily on account of their assumed potential in solving a range of social problems. The evidences supporting the budding role of SE’s in fostering sustained socio-economic development of regions & communities across globe are evolving continuously. Even though, social entrepreneurship & SE’s have remained central thought provoking domain in the realm of scholarly investigation for a past couple of decades, the emerging literature on SE’s & their role in economic development is riddled with theoretical inconsistencies & definitional controversies. Thus, very little is known about functioning & management of SE’s. For the sake of advancing the field, the purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze the critical success factors (CSF’s) of SE’s operating in different social settings in India. Further, a conceptual model is developed incorporating different factors of social enterprise operation in an integrated framework. Design/methodology/approach Based on the review of the extant literature, three categories of success factors comprising a total of 38 success factors for SE’s were initially identified. Under each category, the success factors were then classified and reduced to appropriate numbers based upon their importance to SE’s and their repeated manifestations in the literature, making a total of 13 CSF’s under all 3 categories. Based on these 3 categories of CSF’s, a conceptual model was developed. Findings The study determines thirteen critical factors as contributing to the success of social enterprises: (1) Business planning skills (2) entrepreneurship orientation; (3) leadership; (4) networking; (5) Innovative financing (6) triple bottom line planning; (7) social enterprise marketing; (8) community engagement; (9) human capital; (10) organizational culture; (11) Social Impact Evaluation (12) Frugal innovation & (13) Government support. Originality/value The paper presents a theoretical research model incorporating factors and determinants of social enterprise success to direct a future research agenda. The paper can further be used by researchers to empirically test critical success factors of social enterprises. Moreover, practitioners can also gain benefits from the conceptual framework & promote social entrepreneurship.

Social Entrepreneurship as a Path for Social Change and Driver of Sustainable Development: A Systematic Review and Research Agenda

“…Innovation-led growth is increasingly place-based where entrepreneurial spirit and social innovation come together Social entrepreneurs create institutions to actualize their mission of social transformation and to carry the innovative solutions forward. The major challenge faced by social entrepreneurs includes the challenge of creating a new product or a service, creating demand for the product or even assessing the inputs or assessing the markets [91]. Social entrepreneurs need to be innovative while framing their objectives in order to maintain a balance between their social and economic objectives with limited resources [92].…”

On the social and conceptual structure of the 50-year research landscape in entrepreneurial finance

“…Social entrepreneurship refers to businesses aiming to create social value through recognizing opportunities, employing innovation, tolerating risk, and declining to accept insufficient resources (Peredo and McLean 2006 ). The financing issues of social entrepreneurs in India attract substantial interest from researchers (Satar and John 2016 ; Tasavori et al 2016 ; Verma 2017 ). The topic of microfinancing for poverty alleviation is also included in this domain (Alawattage et al 2019 ; Hussain et al 2019 ; Price 2019 ).…”

Innovation in Public Sector: A Study of Land Record Modernization Programme in India

“…The innovation thus rightly enables an organisation to be more adept at identifying and exploiting the opportunities through the process of knowledge generation, idea selection, idea implementation and idea diffusion. Despite acknowledging the need and importance of driving innovation, the public sector comparatively has witnessed incremental improvements only (Satar and John, 2016). Nevertheless, the importance of innovation in public sector can't be overlooked.…”