Social Entrepreneurship: Ecological Consciousness and Collective Processes

This dissertation develops and tests a theory of social entrepreneurship in an effort to understand how successful social entrepreneurial ventures (SEVs) create systematic, positive, and sustained social change. An important goal of the present research is to uncover the interconnections and interplay between divergent and conflicting interests as well as intentions and objectives that constrain the creation of positive and sustained social change. This research integrates an a priori, hypothetico-deductive methodology with a more open-ended grounded theory perspective and blends the two perspectives into a more integrative, eclectic methodology and theory-development approach. It employs interpretive research methods focusing on the meaning making practices of the actors at the center of this scientific exploration. A total of seven SEVs were sampled from US and India. The findings of this research suggest that an SEV is a collaborative effort that creates a space for collective action which is critical to its success. SEVs result from collective organization, synergy, and deep intra-organizational communication. This research also finds that social entrepreneurship is a process, not a behavior, social role, or personal trait. It involves multiple actors at multiple levels coming together to create new forms of social organization that harnesses social energies, skills, and resources that were previously marginalized to mitigate social problems and enact positive social change. Further, comprehending the social system's structure involves organizational knowledge creation and learning that stems from understanding the ecology of social problems. Organizational knowledge creation and learning requires the appropriate organizational context for the generation of collective wisdom critical for the creation of social change.