Social Entrepreneurship in the Conduct of Responsible Innovation: Analysis Cluster in Mexican SMEs

Abstract

Responsible innovation combines philanthropic and economic aspects and it is common to refer to entrepreneurs who lead it as “social entrepreneurs”. The present study of 100 Mexican small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), provides knowledge of an exploratory nature about what the models of organization are conducive to SMEs in the generation and development of responsible innovations. Through the statistical technique of cluster analysis, this study identified and characterized four models of organization according to the level of social entrepreneurship intentions reached: (1) “The techno-scientific organization”, (2) “The techno-social organization”, (3) “The capitalist-social organization” and (4) “The capitalist organization”. While in Europe the dominant discourse about responsible innovation focuses on the control of the risk of social rejection of the advance of science and technology. In contexts, such as the Mexicans, the phenomenon is configured as the mechanism through which entrepreneurs articulate its technological and scientific capabilities to solve priority and specific problems of the society, however, the social impact does not crucially affect their business initiatives. The techno-scientific organization (50% of studied SMEs) is proposed as the model of organization with greater viability for Mexican entrepreneurs.

How Gender, Age and Education Influence the Entrepreneur’s Social Orientation: The Moderating Effect of Economic Development

“…Social entrepreneurship research, which has been mostly theoretical [8] or qualitative thus far [26], tends to follow these research streams. Specifically, it concentrates on understanding social enterprise boundaries and the attributes of individual social entrepreneurs, focusing on their intentions, goals, identity, and values, or the missions of their associated organizations [27,28]. Previous studies have connected social business to initiatives by single people, though others have argued that these activities may be undertaken by groups of individuals [29].…”

“…Likewise, social entrepreneurship is embedded in the context in which it takes place [26]. For this reason, some papers compare activities across different industries, other authors explore factors assumed to contribute to social impacts within a single sector [27], while others focus on national economies [8], cross-national comparisons [1] or different types of economic developments [18]. Others conceptualize social enterprise in different subjects, such as in biology or the social and behavioral sciences [30].…”

Social entrepreneurship: business models and strategies for their development

“…The study of I. L. Bahena-Álvarez, E. Cordón -Pozo and A. Delgado-Cruz (2019) [13] reveals four models of social entrepreneurship organization (according to achieved level of responsible innovations) on the basis of interviewing of 100 small and middle Mexican enterprises, as well as cluster analysis: «Scientific-technical organization», «Techno-social organization», «Capitalist-public organization», and «Capitalist organization». «Scientific-technical organization» appeared to be the most capable model for Mexican social entrepreneurs.…”

The Role of CSR on Social Entrepreneurship: An International Analysis

“…In the second phase, the conceptual theoretical development of SE was produced, with a shift in focus from an idealistic position to a pragmatic one [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]. In recent years, scholars have focused on impact analyses of the social, cultural, political, and economic contexts of SE [27][28][29][30][31][32][33], as well as determining the societal values and individual attributes of SE [34][35][36][37][38][39]. Some authors claim to push SE research forward in two directions: understanding the specific contextual framework that promotes the rise of SE and the incorporation of cross-national empirical studies due to qualitative and case study methodologies dominating the research [13,40].…”