Social entrepreneurship in underdeveloped institutional environments: insights from West Africa

Abstract

In recent times, there have been widespread calls for reforms in our economic system as necessary to achieve sustainability. The underlying argument has been that traditional business models in the realm of business and commerce limit firms’ capability to deliver the social and environmental sustainability that our planet is currently in dire need of. Consequently, social entrepreneurship (SEship) has been touted as a promising and viable business model for achieving social and environmental sustainability. Since its emergence and subsequent development, social entrepreneurship has increasingly been regarded as the effective remedy to the numerous social/environmental problems that bedevil most societies especially in less developed nations. This is because they (SEs) arguably offer a promising sustainable alternative to traditional business for creating both economic and social/environmental value. Acknowledgement of its significance in addressing the complex social ills of society has been manifested in the growing interest in social enterprises in the past two and half decades in public, private, and academic circles. Academically, recognition of the importance of and interest in social entrepreneurship is evidenced by the increasing rate at which research in social entrepreneurial ventures is gaining relevance as a field of study in business and management schools. However, due to their peculiar nature (hybridity), it is imperative for us to have a better understanding of the conditions under which they can successfully sustain their hybridity over time and create both social and economic value. Yet we lack comprehensive understanding of the challenges that these organisations face in their effort to deliver sustainability goals. While scholarly interest in social enterprise has progressed from the early focus on definitions to cover a variety of themes such as players in social entrepreneurship, antecedents of social entrepreneurship, constraints and barriers social entrepreneurs encounter, contexts, etc there is currently a dearth of research into micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) whilst African organisations have remained largely a missing link. While SE has received increasing attention by researchers in Africa in the last decade, it’s still in an embryonic stage and fragmented as an academic field. Using a qualitative research design, this thesis explores social entrepreneurship in Ghana and Ivory Coast by focusing on two increasingly critical challenges that pose a danger to the success and sustainability of these ventures: tensions between economic and social/environmental goals and institutional voids, and how those challenges are being addressed. This is imperative because if social enterprises in Ghana and Ivory Coast, and Africa more generally are to grow and to achieve the levels of success and sustainability achieved by some of the most prominent social enterprises in developed countries there is a need for a better understanding of the challenges and the strategies that these ventures need to adopt in order blend the dual missions successfully. The thesis includes three individual research papers that, though based on different streams of research, in aggregate terms explore the important ways through which social enterprises can sustain their hybrid nature.