The social entrepreneur's role in creating social change has been emphasized in the literature. These individuals offer new solutions to society's problems and by doing that they transform the existing institutions. However, there is limited information how these change agents generate value and cause a transformation in society. This chapter tries to identify how a social entrepreneur, individually, has a potential to cause social change. In order to give information about the process of value creation an Ashoka Fellow from Turkey has been selected. Gender inequality and violence against women might be one of the important issues that have to be solved in the country. The selected fellow empowers women by creating social value and advancing social change in Turkey.
TopIntroduction
Social entrepreneurship may be considered as a new concept that attracts researchers recently, however the concept has a long history of practice worldwide (Mair & Marti, 2004). Bacq (2011) states that the origins of the field can be traced back to 1983, when Young wrote on innovative nonprofit entrepreneur and she also mentioned Waddock and Post (1991)’s Social Entrepreneurs and Catalytic Change’ study -published in 1991- as one of the early studies.
In the literature, even in this book, it is possible to encounter different definitions of social entrepreneurs. Waddock and Post (1991) define social entrepreneurs as:
private sector citizens who play crucial roles in bringing about catalytic changes in the public sector agenda and the perception of certain social issues.
According to Bornstein (1998:) social entrepreneur is:
a path breaker with a powerful new idea who combines visionary and real world problem solving creativity, has a strong ethical fiber, and is totally possessed by his or her vision for change.
Prabhu (1999) defines social entrepreneurs as people:
who create and manage innovative entrepreneurial organizations or ventures whose primary mission is the social change and development of their client group.
Mair and Noboa (2003) claim that social entrepreneurs mainly motivated by a strong desire to change society. Peredo and McLean (2006) define social entrepreneurship as:
aiming to create social value and pursuing that goal through exploiting opportunities, employing innovation, tolerating risk and declining to accept limitations.
Mair and Marti (2004) define social entrepreneurship as:
a process of creating value by combining resources in new ways… these resource combinations are intended primarily to explore and exploit opportunities to create social value by stimulating social change or meeting social needs.
Nicholls (2006) indicates that:
social entrepreneurship is a set of innovative and effective activities that focus strategically on resolving social market failures and creating new opportunities to add social value systemically by using a range of resources and organizational formats to maximize social impact and bring about change.
All of these definitions highlight the two important aspects of social entrepreneurship: social value and change.
Social entrepreneurs have desire and powerful ideas to improve the conditions however their contribution does not fully understand. As Bornstein (2007) states social entrepreneurs have a profound effect on society, yet their corrective function remains poorly understood and underappreciated. This chapter aims to help understanding the contributions of social entrepreneurs by presenting their stories of the process of finding solutions and generating change in the society. In the following part of the chapter, related literature is going to be reviewed.