Abstract
Socially sustainable development can be driven by individuals, entrepreneurs, growing start-ups, and international companies. As social entrepreneurs, people opt for a form of organization that contributes to social improvement through entrepreneurial means. The question is: How do they do it? The resource dependence approach (RDA) assumes that all decisions and activities of a (social) enterprise are based on information about its environment. Therefore, the four key components of the social enterprise (individual, organization, social innovation, market orientation) must be appropriate. In this chapter, therefore, social enterprises are outlined as active participants and shapers of the economy and society. Since an active improvement with regard to socially sustainable development is focused by the social enterprises in Africa, a description of the social enterprise's environment is also given within the framework of topical focuses. The goal is to derive recommendations about action for social enterprises to achieve their goals.
TopSocial Entrepreneurship
Social enterprises are a kind of organization that are relatively new and can be count as start-ups. From cases in the UK some features are outlined by Social Enterprise UK. Based on research with about 9.000 cases, social enterprises are organizations that have a clear social and/or environmental mission, that are set out in their governing documents, that concentrate where they are most needed, that are business-oriented, that are often younger than three years, that generate most of their income through trade, that reinvest the majority of their profits, that are autonomous from the state, that are controlled by the majority in the interest of the social mission, that are accountable and transparent, that act globally, that have an inclusive and diverse leadership, that employ at least one person who is disadvantaged in the labor market, and that pay fair wages (Social Enterprise UK, 2012, 2018). These characteristics do fairly offer practical insight into inner-organizational aspects such as finances, leadership, and human resources.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Individuals: Are normal people that have the ability to positively contribute to sustainable development by allocating their resources, ideas, decisions and behavior properly.
Social Entrepreneurship: Is a hybrid and new form of organizations to focus on social or ecological challenges and solving them with successful means of business organizations.
Crowds: Are collections of individuals that are able to jointly contribute to an issue they expect to be important without being massively organized, structured or actively, externally controlled.
Sharing Economy: Is an online platform based economic behavior by all kinds of organization to accomplish organizational goals including social, ecological and economic issues. The focus is to enable an easy communication and interaction with costumers and key partners.
Resource Dependence Approach: Is a theoretical perspective about how actors are linked with their environment by purposefully interaction as (re)-action to constant change.
Sustainable Development: Focuses on aspects that ensure fair inter-generation dealing with all resources.
Africa: Is an important continent with a variety of challenges varying between countries but with a potential to learn from about having a smaller ecological footprint.