Abstract
This chapter presents the fundamental elements related to the success factors of social organizations. The first step was bibliographic research on social entrepreneurship. This research established that social entrepreneurship improves the quality of life of vulnerable communities, which stands out for the social construction of products, services, and processes that allow social inclusion. Social entrepreneurship in Colombian companies has become a topic of analysis; however, it is still a developing area. The second step was to conduct a quantitative and descriptive investigation in the Colombian coffee region, specifically in the departments of Caldas, Risaralda, and Quindío. The sample distribution of the proportions determined the sample. The information was collected from non-profit companies. The results showed that the success factors are to offer quality services, to have committed human talent, and the adequate management of resources that the competitive advantage is the social need they satisfy, and the social benefit is the reduction of poverty.
TopContextualization
Social Entrepreneurship is an alternative for the economic and social development of underserved communities. According to Zahra et al. (2009) and Paul and Uribe (2017), social entrepreneurship is geared towards increasing social welfare based on social and environmental problems building proposals with social value. Social entrepreneurship is a relatively new term and is considered as an emerging discipline. The first publication using this term was in 1889, and it has been increasing its use, as is seen in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Documents published by year
Based on this information, social entrepreneurship has been an area of knowledge for the past 40 years. The first academic publication using social entrepreneurship as a term was in a journal in 1989, stating that social entrepreneurship emerged from the practice done by the new types of organizations and interrelationships developed between the companies themselves (Ganne,1989). In the 21st century, it is showing an increase in the use of this term in different types of academic publications, as it is shown in Table 1. As the graph shows, in 2000, were found two publications only, but by 2019, it has been seen 299 publications so far.
Table 1. | DOCUMENT TYPE | DOCUMENTS | PERCENTAGE |
| Article | 1356 | 63.81 |
| Book Chapter | 318 | 14.96 |
| Conference Paper | 195 | 9.18 |
| Review | 96 | 4.52 |
| Book | 86 | 4.05 |
| Editorial | 20 | 0.94 |
| Note | 15 | 0.71 |
| Erratum | 8 | 0.38 |
| Conference Review | 4 | 0.19 |
| Short Survey | 3 | 0.14 |
| Undefined | 24 | 1.13 |
| DOCUMENTS | 2125 | 100 |
Source: Own Elaboration from Scopus Data, July 2019.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Social Firms: Business for a social cause.
Non-Profit Entities: Mainly foundations, corporations, and cooperatives are defined as being focused on social improvements.
Awareness Programs: Programs aimed at raising awareness among the most vulnerable population so that they change their ways of life to achieve a more economically sustainable life.
Social Value: It is the social importance in quantitative terms of social change.
Cooperatives: Type of organization characterized by collective property and equitable sharing of obligations and costs.
Colombian Coffee Axis: It is a geographical, cultural, economic, and ecological region of Colombia specialized in the production of coffee, and located in the departments of Caldas, Risaralda, Quindío, and Northwest Tolima, the southwest of Antioquia, the north and east of Valle del Cauca, and the capital cities of the first four departments mentioned.
Success Factors: They are the fundamental variables that determine business success.
Social Entrepreneurship: It is an organization that uses business methods to address social problems through innovation and non-profit strategies.