The Practice of Social Entrepreneurship: Theory and the Swedish Experience

The paper outlines a perspective on social entrepreneurship that is based ona Schumpeterian view of entrepreneurship as the creation of new combinationsof resources, and focuses on the nature of actors engaging in thepursuit, and the nature of resources mobilized. So as to highlight less familiaraspects of social entrepreneurship, analysis is primarily illustrated byapplications of a resource-based approach to the study of grassroots enterprisingin Sweden. The presentation proceeds from rudimentary cases (thatare organized around a single process of resource conversion) to morecomplex ones. Social entrepreneurship is viewed as a category of entrepreneurshipthat primarily (1) is engaged in by collective actors, and (2)involves, in a central role in the undertaking’s resource mix, socially embeddedresources. Social entrepreneurship involves the tapping of sociallyembedded resources and their conversion into (market-) convertible resources,and vice-versa. In doing so, it spans the boundaries betweendifferent property-rights regimes that define resources and their utilization.To ensure the undertaking’s (or enterprise’s) survival over time, it wouldalso be expected to contribute to the replenishment of such resources, reconvertingmarket resources into social capital, and reproducing the contextthat makes such transactions possible.