Social entrepreneurship today

Depending upon the way in which we choose to view it, the strengths or weaknesses of the concept of social entrepreneurship lie in the fact that most of its applications are in the form of a hybrid between private, non-profit and public sectors. As described, one such hybrid is found in non-profit organisations with an entrepreneurial offshoot that generates revenue for the organisation’s social objectives. With greater emphasis on the private, for-profit sector, a hybrid model is emerging whereby businesses lend money and expertise to non-profits. Increasingly, this latter model is linked to public pressure for businesses to demonstrate a measure of social responsibility.

The most realistic and desirable way for any business to be socially responsible is through what is called ‘‘strategic philanthropy’’ - selected giving in areas tied directly to the company’s interests and in arenas that the company can justly claim to have knowledge and a direct stake. The use of the term clearly suggests an indirect financial return on the philanthropic investment. Indeed, the exercise of traditional philanthropy does not make good business sense as it does not provide a tangible return. In a more refined consideration of types of philanthropy today, the notion of strategic philanthropy yet emphasises that highly motivated and visionary business leaders can bring together networks of organizations in new community ventures.

Like the term ‘‘strategic philanthropy’’, ‘‘social entrepreneurship’’ is an articulation, a combination of two concepts that do not naturally fit together and yet which seeks acceptance as common sense. It is the lack of a natural fit that renders the term open to resistance and challenge. Challenges, implicit or explicit, range from different interpretations of how the terms might justifiably be joined to denial that they should be used together at all.

Language is a key component in the shift towards rationalization of the concept of social entrepreneurship. This is because discourse acceptance precedes or runs in parallel with material acceptance. Thus we see the emergence of terms that were previously restricted to the business sector, such as ‘‘social venture capital’’, ‘‘social return on investment’’, ‘‘invest’’
rather than ‘‘donate’’, ‘‘revenue streams’’ and ‘‘client groups’’ applied to the social and public sectors.

If the colonisation of the social and public sectors by the language of business is accepted, the breakdown of barriers between the sectors becomes normalised. However, the terms cited are in contrast to the distinction between entrepreneurs who create social or artistic capital rather than financial capital, with social capital referring to that which is valuable to communities.

On the other hand, opposition could arise from the close association of the term ‘‘entrepreneur’’ with the creative and destructive aspects of capitalism. Those who are concerned about the negative aspects of business will be resistant to the blurring of the boundaries between public, private and civil society suggested by social entrepreneurship with the potential for increased influence of business beyond the private sector. The non-profit sector has long been associated with the creation and maintenance of a strong civil society. Marketing of that sector then calls that association into question with concerns for the viability of an independent civil society.

Furthermore, if business has the power to choose which non-profits are to benefit materially through socially entrepreneurial partnerships, what happens to those that are not chosen and therefore are marginalised?

A parallel can be drawn between the concept of social entrepreneurship and that of sustainability because sustainability is equally open to broad interpretation. Like social entrepreneurship, sustainability can favour either the social and environmental or the economic sectors, depending upon which model is adopted. Strong sustainability favours the social and environmental over economic development, upholding the social values of a truly civil society based social entrepreneurialism. Interpretations are derived from the beliefs and experiences of individuals. Social entrepreneurs and their work should ultimately be judged by the quality of the social outcomes, and that assessment should be made independently of the private interests of those entrepreneurs.

With concepts and movements such as social entrepreneurship, environmental sustainability, and social responsibility, it is crucial that we pay close attention to the persuasive uses of the terms as well as to their practical implication. All of them are contested, value-laden labels that can be used to reference a wide variety of interests, motives, activities and outcomes.

What triggers entrepreneurship?

It is proposed that the process of entrepreneurship initiation has its foundations in person, intuition, society and culture. It is much more holistic than simply an economic function and represents a composite of material and immaterial, pragmatism and idealism. The essence is the application of creative processes and the acceptance of a risk-bearing function, directed at bringing about change of both economic and social nature. Ideally, but not necessarily, the outcomes would have positive consequences. The key to initiating the process of entrepreneurship lies within the individual members of society and the degree to which a spirit of enterprise exists or can be initiated.

Culture is important in any discussion of entrepreneurship because it determines the attitudes of individuals towards the initiation of entrepreneurship. Each era produces its own models of entrepreneurship according to its specific needs of the host society, however it has been described consistently using terms such as innovative, holistic, risk taking and co-ordinating ways of behaviour. Certain cultural institutions may facilitate, or hinder, entry into entrepreneurship. Thus, it is proposed that the culture of societies and the charateristics of people living in these socities, impacted by certain innate personality traits, will influence the degree to which entrepreneurship is initiated.

It appears that there is a significant relationship between entrepreneurship and cultural specificity, combined with an intuitive response by individual members of the society, albeit part innate and part cultural conditioning. Certainly, the cultural context in which persons are rooted and socially developed plays an influencing role in shaping and making entrepreneurs, and the degree to which they consider entrepreneurial behaviour to be desirable. Cultural dimensions that are significant to the extent to which entrepreneurial behaviour is supported by a society have been identified as: communal versus individual; conformist versus divergent; and equal versus elitist.

Furthermore, the role of the family, immediate and extended, is recognised as having the potential to make a positive contribution towards entrepreneurial behaviour through the provision of inter-generational role models. Finally, the profile of an entrepreneur which emerges through the study is one who is intelligent and analytical; is an effective risk manager and networker; possesses a strong set of moral, social and business ethics; exhibits a basic trader's instinct; and is dedicated life-long learning in its many forms.

Entrepreneurship with ethics

Why is it important to establish the moral status of entrepreneurship? Unless it can be shown that the entrepreneur does what is morally worthwhile as an entrepreneur, that his role is ethically praiseworthy, not only his or her status in the market but the market itself becomes vulnerable to serious moral criticism. This is because it is well recognised that ethics are the free market's life line. Many economists are beginning to realise this. Indeed, it is entrepreneurial activity that makes the best sense of profit - another vital part of capitalism.

However, without also demonstrating that entrepreneurship is ethical, the market would at most be hospitable to morally indifferent kinds of behavior; at worst it would encourage moral callousness and discourage the pursuit of presumably morally more significant objectives, such as order, self-restraint, artistic excellence, family values.

When a system is vulnerable in one of its essential ingredients, competing systems that lack this weakness become very powerful if not immediately successful alternatives. Their images improve, even if their actual performance leaves a lot to be desired.

Some argue that all we need is the hospitable environment, but this is false. Even in the freest of societies many, many potential market agents can be lazy. Not that laziness is encouraged but that it is clearly not foreclosed. That is partly what freedom means. One has a genuine choice whether to be productive or not. It is not enough to show that under capitalism human beings are free, unless the kind of uses to which such a system puts human effort can themselves be
morally worthwhile. So the question needs to be addressed. Why should one be productive? Why should entrepreneurship be practiced? What is good about it?

It is not enough by a long shot to answer that entrepreneurship is the ticket to a decent chance for wealth. Certainly one can agree that between stealing and producing, the latter is more honorable. However what if quietism - the form of religious mysticism that involves complete extinction of the human will, drawing away from worldly things - is proposed as an alternative?

How about asceticism - the religious ideal that one can reach a higher spiritual state by self-discipline and self-denial? How will the system that is hospitable to entrepreneurship be defended in the light of such powerful challenges?

The most serious challenges to capitalism come from those who contend that by making entrepreneurial effort possible - by protecting the rights to private property and the pursuit of happiness here on earth - this system corrupts human life. It tends to permit the commercialisation of human relationships, making us self-interested economic agents instead of what we really ought be, altruistic members of our community.

It is insufficient to reply that the capitalist system makes it possible for people to attain a better life here on earth. That is just what is in need of defense. Why should we strive for such a life in the first place?

In a society of just human relationships, there must be a consistent and constant hospitality to entrepreneurship because without this, an important moral dimension of human life would be suppressed or at least seriously distorted. Without such a welcome, public policy and law would yield to more widely accepted but sadly misguided moral sentiments, for example, the call for greater and greater state power to regiment or re-engineer society instead of making it safe for natural human initiative.

Tips for an effective human resource management action plan

What are some tips for having an effective human resource management plan? First of all, it has to address the facts that business fortunes rise and fall periodically, employees and talent needs change and evolve, workforces age and retire in perhaps unplanned ways that do not match business needs. Also the market value of talent changes over time, sometimes becoming more valuable or less valuable.

Business focus:
Be a best business place to work, not just a best place to work. Create a human resource management strategy to live with throughout the business cycle. Test some alternative solutions assuming growth and shrinkage of the number of customers and their profitability. Reward people who have helped the organisation to succeed.

Emphasise key skills:
Mentor staff with the crucial business skills so that they grow and learn. While everyone is important, some people have skills which a business needs than do others. This means investing in the talent that is closest to the business' core competencies - capabilities which are vital in making the business a winning one. Inform everyone what the talent priorities are and build a reward solution that fits. Invest on the area where most of business value comes from - people with expertise that add most to the business.

Communicate:
Educate employees about the rules of staffing growth and reduction early in their career. During the staffing build up over the last 5 years, companies implied that jobs were more secure than they really are. Thus, when the business tide turned, workforces recalled these implied promises and interpreted them as job guarantees. It is extremely important to have people understand the actual deal the company can provide. Be clear that staffing levels would change. However, also make employees comprehend what they can do to improve their value to make it less likely that they will be picked for lay offs and salary reductions.

Measure performance:
Build an accepted and valid way to judge performance before it is needed. It is important to have a credible and reliable performance management system in place when times are going well. In good times, it is easy to protect inadequate performers when staffing levels are high, but not when cutting is necessary. The best way to foster distrust, to say nothing about litigation, is to adopt a makeshift ranking system just before it is needed to reduce staff and try to use it to decide who goes and who remains.

Humanity counts:
Cut the workforce quickly and humanely. Spreading the pain around does not make much business sense. When there is a need to reduce staff, reduce it. Build a reputation for keeping people close to the meat of the business even when cutting is inevitable.

Get it over with:
Cut enough so that when it is over, it is really over. Do some staff planning and stick with it. Companies cannot continue to regain the trust of the workforce if they do not make the needed cuts and commence to regain business momentum. While it is very hard to predict the next possible economic fortunes of the business, the staff cutting must stop when management promises that it will.

Employee benefits for motivation and productivity of work

Employee benefits are essential for the development of corporate industrial relations. According to Herzberg’s two-factor theory (motivation and hygiene), an employee benefit programme is a necessary and sufficient working condition. The hygiene factor will affect employees’ work motivation and thus productivity.

In the stimulus-response behaviour, employees’ work-motivation, seen as the response, can be analysed from absence rate, leave rate, quit rate, get-to-work speed and so on. Productivity can be analysed from quality and quantity of products. The quality indices include faults and returns. The quantity indices include completion time and the production hygiene factor. This depends on the individual properties of the employee, who is the medium essential for management, and stimulates employees to enhance their work and productivity.

In addition, everyone works in expectation of some rewards (both spiritual and material), and welfare is one of them. In other words, the degree of reward influences the quality and quantity of work, and in turn productivity. Hence it is important to explore how to give the stimulus (welfare) in order to promote work motivation and productivity.

To understand the impact of employee benefit on employees’ work motivation and productivity, questionnaires were sent to corporations which had undertaken employee benefit programmes. Results reflected on a variety of assumptions.

Implementation of employee benefit programmes affects employees’ performance. Employee benefit programmes have greater impact on work-motivation than on productivity. Monetary benefit programmes are most highly valued by both executives and workers. There is a cognitive gap between management and worker on the importance of employee benefit programmes. Private-corporation employees have greater employee benefit demands than their public corporation counterparts. Female and male employees have different benefit demands. Single employees perceive more employee benefit impact on job performance than married ones. Employees with different education levels perceive different employee benefit impact. Employees with different positions perceive different employee benefit impacts. Employee benefit programmes have greater influence on job performance of younger employees.

Infopreneurship

The exciting term, infopreneur, is becoming a hit among today's entrepreneurs who want to capitilise on the sea of opportunities available on the internet. An infopreneur, apparently combined from the two words "information" and "entrepreneur", refers to an entrepreneur who makes money by selling/sharing information on the web.

Infopreneurs fall into two categories. One is where infopreneurs sell information which are created on their own. The other kind is whereby infopreneurs piggyback off information from certain sources, modify as their own and sell them. The selling part might not exactly refer to selling information to readers directly all the time. Instead, sometimes information will be made free to be read by anyone. In this case, revenues are earned through advertistments which are relevant to the information. Infopreneurship serves as an important purpose to the public especially when people are looking for information on a specific topic. Then again, the reliability of the source has to be checked for.

The selling part comes in when an infopreneur offers information products in a variety of formats including books, e-books, special reports, audio formats, videos, workbooks, booklets, and virtually any method in which one can deliver information. This method is practised by entrepreneurs cum infopreneurs and successful results are obtained.

The reason for successful infopreneurship, be it selling information or sharing information for free, is that it is a great way to market an individual's ideas, products or services. Information sharing is like presenting a business card. It opens up doors to new business opportunities. With more media exposure, it can easily increase popularity to one's business. An article published on an article submission site, gets republished several times to various websites which increases visitor traffic in the twinkle of an eye. Most infopreneurs have their own website which is a centre for their business. By publishing information on the net, they leave a link behind for interested readers to follow through and land up on the infopreneurs' sites. For an example, an infopreneur may have written on a specific topic such as "the best ingredients to use in cooking a Bombay styled mutton biryani". An interested reader who finds the information useful would then click on the link left by the author to visit his website where there would be more related information on that particular topic.

Gone were the days where there existed an industry era peacefully before technology started exploding into the scene in exponential forms. Today we are living right in the heart of the information era and what more relevance could it be other than infopreneurship. Information is the underlying vitality in today's success to both an individual and a company. So if you feel the need to share loads of information, be it for profitable or non-profitable reasons, dive right into the limitless stream of information superhighway aka internet today.

8 ways to fire up your firm

There are 8 carefully planned steps which are bound to boost an organisation. Develop a situation to act upon, form a dynamic guiding coalition, create a vision, communicate the vision, empower people to act on the vision, plan and create short-term wins, find improvements to change and finally, utilise the new approaches. These are the steps the management team should consider in elevating the company to the next level.

1) Develop a situation to act upon
Study the current market and the realities of the competition. Identify and discuss crises (including potential crises) and major opportunities which can be capitilised on.

2) Form a dynamic guiding coalition
Garner a group with sufficient expertise to bring about the change effort. Encourage the group to work as a team and synergise their efforts.

3) Create a vision
Create a vision to help lead the change effort in the right direction. Come up with strategies on how to go about achieving that vision.

4) Communicate the vision
Use every possible means to communicate the new vision and strategies. Teach new behaviours by using the example of the guiding coalition.

5) Empower people to act on the vision
Move obstacles out of the way in order to change. Change systems or structures that pose hinderance to the vision. Encourage risk taking and unconventional ideas, activities and actions. People must be taught to break away from the norms whenever and wherever appropriate and necessary.

6) Plan and create short-term wins
Plan for visible performance improvements. Create those improvements. Recognise and reward employees involved in the improvements.

7) Find improvements to change
Use increased credibility to change policies, structures and systems that do not fit the vision. Hire and train employees who can implement the vision. Breathe life into the process with new projects, themes and change agents.

8) Utilise the new approaches
Articulate the connections between the new behaviours and organisational success. Create the means to ensure leadership development and sustainable competitive advantage.