Social entrepreneurs and constructive change: The wisdom of circumventing conflict.

Abstract

Ashoka Fellows-social entrepreneurs-often operate in a context of conflict as they challenge critical social problems that are seemingly hopeless and unsolvable. This article presents the strategies they employ, such as building new positive attractors (i.e., social capital) outside the field of influence of the conflict attractors; as a next step, they build a feedback loop between the success of their initiatives and reinforcement of social capital. Through subsequent positive experiences, they introduce constructive change outside of the field of conflict in a manner that modifies the societal balance based on higher levels of trust and tendencies to cooperate. Through this strategy, they make conflict less relevant and less salient. Several case studies are presented as illustrations of this approach, and general principles are identified.Our aim in this article is to compare and contrast two distinct ways of tackling seemingly intractable conflicts. The traditional approach is to Correspondence should be addressed to Ryszard Praszkier, Kopernika 11 m. 25,

Organizational Champions and Their 'Magic Secrets': Transforming Implicit Conflict Mitigation Strategies

“…In keeping with Praszkier's et al (2010) study on Ashoka's social entrepreneurs, organizational champions in a higher education setting will likely demonstrate a similar approach to conflict in their navigation of the institutional terrain. The father of social entrepreneurship education Greg Dees argues that entrepreneurs improve the productive capacity of society and provides the "creative destruction" that propels economic change, and he holds that social entrepreneurs do the same for social change (Bornstein & Davis, 2010).…”

“…Comprehending their conflict application strategies and methods is an unexplored phenomenon that warrants an investigation. Praszkier et al (2010) explores how social entrepreneurs from Ashoka introduce constructive change outside the conflict landscape in a manner that shifts society (groups, communities) toward higher levels of trust and cooperation. Instead of attacking a conflict directly, they channel their efforts to creating cooperative settings "somewhere else" (Praszkier et al, 2010).…”

“…Praszkier et al (2010) explores how social entrepreneurs from Ashoka introduce constructive change outside the conflict landscape in a manner that shifts society (groups, communities) toward higher levels of trust and cooperation. Instead of attacking a conflict directly, they channel their efforts to creating cooperative settings "somewhere else" (Praszkier et al, 2010). This offers an insight that translates in the investigation of the role of the champion in a non-profit organization.…”

“…This offers an insight that translates in the investigation of the role of the champion in a non-profit organization. In the creation of an interdepartmental project, the organizational champion serves as a catalyst to foster collaborative relationships across the organization producing a positive attractor for future exchanges (Praszkier et al, 2010). Like social entrepreneurs, organizational champions dismantle conflict by creating these positive collaborative clusters via interdepartmental work initiatives and ultimately prime the organization for culture shifts.…”

Reviewing Social Entrepreneurship Knowledge

“…A wide range of theoretical approaches have been used in the field of SE. Some of these are institutional theory (Dart 2004;Nicholls 2010;Desa 2011;Ruebottom 2011), structuration theory, social capital (Hasan 2005) and social movements (Mair and Marti 2006), and social network theory (Peredo and Chrisman 2006), communitarian perspective (Ridley-Duff 2007), institutional perspective (Urbano et al 2010), dynamical social psychology (Praszkier et al 2010), bricolage (Zahra et al 2009;Domenico et al 2010), theoretical inspiration from the work of Hayak, Kirzer and Schumpeter (Zahra et al 2009), capability approach (Yujuico 2008), Competency approach (Koc and Yavuz no date), behavioural theory (Zahra et al 2008), entrepreneurship as a process, focusing on opportunity identification (Hockerts 2006), PCDO (the people, the context, the deal and the opportunity) framework (Austin et al 2006a, b), entrepreneurship as a process of creating new organisation (Dorado 2006), rational economic and effectuation theory (Corner and Ho 2010), organisational identity theory (Miller and Wesley 2010;Moss et al 2010), resource scarcity theory and agency theory (Tracey and Jarvis 2007), RBV (Meyskens et al 2010), building legitimacy through rhetoric (Ruebottom 2011). In SE research, the role of embbeddedness has been emphasised (Mair and Marti 2006;Peredo and Chrisman 2006;Kistruck and Beamish 2010).…”