Corporate Social Entrepreneurship: An Effective Dual Strategy?

Introduction

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Corporate Social Entrepreneurship (CSE) are applied in Corporate Ethics to generate social value or, in some cases, the constraint alleviation of self-regulation and legal pressure. Corporate Ethics involve transparency, integrity, and authenticity to increase the trust that is warranted by the company sustainable accountability. Traceability plays a vital role in accountability to track the supply chain and assure the pursuit of the three sustainable pillars: people, the planet, and profits. Sustainability aligned with organizational mission and vision scale up competitive differentiation and make businesses create value beyond benefits.

Company’s values face an economic-oriented world that is led by consumerism; which impact is driven by the cultural collapse of the Anthropocene (human effect on Earth). This cultural collapse places financial motivations over sustainability. The social support lets companies get involved in specific community’s problems. The environmental component enables businesses to change their policies towards ecological production; most companies focus on reducing waste, but very few of them reincorporate waste to their production processes. The economic factor allows enterprises to foster development through inclusive businesses by getting their input locally or internationally in fair conditions in the value chain, making meaningful this partnership for everybody.

There are a considerable variety of CSR programs, but many of them are a short-term and low impact. Even though some CSR programs are long-term, they are still a small impact. Godet (2007) proposed four attitudes towards the future: passive, reactive, preactive, and proactive; and, an integrated approach, strategic prospective or strategic foresight (Godet, 2011). Godet’s contributions are used in this chapter to propose a Corporate Social Responsibility Approach Cycle (CSR-Approach Cycle) (Figure 1). This cycle classifies CSR into five categories: social washing and greenwashing as a passive approach to promote through marketing that companies have or aim to have CSR programs; damage repair as a reactive approach to restore the negative impacts of companies’ processes that are not intended to be changed; responsiveness capacity as a preactive approach to anticipate to detriment by being ready to respond and mend it; prevention as a proactive approach to take short and middle-term tangible CSR actions to predict injury and provoke change; and, sustainable business model as a strategic prospective approach to apply long-term high impact sustainable strategies to change the future and reach Corporate Social Innovation (CSI).

Figure 1.

­

There is an increasing number of companies that are embracing CSE programs, but there is a lack of entrepreneurship culture. Even though some companies are adopting entrepreneurship, these actions are limited to the creation of social incubators as part of their value chain. Social incubators are being created and led to inclusive businesses, either as suppliers, distributors, customers, innovators or as a target of their programs to accomplish CSR goals (Mousiolis, Zaridis, Karamanis, & Rontogianni, 2015). The joint strategy between CSR and entrepreneurship, the effectuation of this entrepreneurial virtual circle, is called CSE; which provokes a positive spillover effect that enhances human development. The CSE spillover effect is linked to people’s knowledge and willingness for social and environmental actions. The demand for these activities, in terms of society’s perspectives, modifies the metrics of sustainable products and services. In the end, entrepreneurship can be the key to success between sustainable (social, environmental, and economic) and financial motivations.