Social Entrepreneurship and Social Inclusion: Processes, Practices, and Prospects

192 Pages·2017·1.56 MB·English

by  Rama Krishna Reddy Kummitha (auth.)

Rama Krishna Reddy Kummitha
SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP
AND SOCIAL INCLUSION
Processes, Practices, and Prospects
Social Entrepreneurship and Social Inclusion
Rama Krishna Reddy Kummitha
Social
Entrepreneurship and
Social Inclusion
Processes, Practices, and Prospects
Rama Krishna Reddy Kummitha
School of Management
Politecnico di Milano
Milano, Italy
ISBN 978-981-10-1614-1 ISBN 978-981-10-1615-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-1615-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016958290
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To Barefoot winners
P
reface
In my earlier work Social Entrepreneurship: Working towards Greater
Inclusiveness, I carried out a multi-case analysis to understand how social
entrepreneurs achieve inclusive growth by initiating various innovative
experiments. While the book offered narratives about the positive social
change in multiple contexts, it warranted the need for a more nuanced
understanding of social entrepreneurship at the grassroots level, and the
conflicts and the interactions that exist among various stakeholders. Such
understanding is crucial due to the existence of conflicting local con-
texts, institutional identities and aims. Accordingly, the analysis in this
book relies on a single case to offer a deeper analysis of the “change”
process by highlighting the issues of embeddedness and community
participation.
The book takes stock of the relevant academic scholarship that exists
in the field of social entrepreneurship and offers a perspective in which
to understand its relevance and significance in a community context.
Building on the literature on social exclusion and social inclusion, this
book argues that social entrepreneurship is a phenomenal approach that
could bring excluded communities into the mainstream. Social exclusion
as a concept recently came into existence due to the failure of existing
institutions, including the state and the market, to protect the interests of
the population. Thus, it has been identified that “including” those who
have been excluded from the mainstream is considered a crucial act that
existing institutions, which talk about development, need to take up. It
is found that the existing systems in both the social and market context
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viii PREfACE
compromise social realities and most likely discourage distruptive innova-
tions at both the process and product or service development level, which
are crucial for achieving social inclusion.
However, civil society and its positive role in building inclusive societ-
ies has opened a space for enhanced expectations. The social innovations
adopted by these organisations time and again created the necessary sce-
narios for positive social change to roll. Social enterprise as an advanced
form of civil society organisation takes the credit to create necessary envi-
ronment to build inclusive societies. Taking inspiration from the author’s
field exposure, the book highlights various innovative approaches and
methods that social entrepreneurship as a practice adopts in order to build
a more robust social order.
While existing knowledge in social entrepreneurship has long
accepted and analysed the methods that social entrepreneurs adopt in
order to achieve the relevant social change, the book brings a novel
perspective to analyse how community participation and embedded-
ness offer necessary contexts. Based on field research, the book looks
in depth into a social enterprise for evidence to understand how social
entrepreneurship as a practice brings different segregated communities
on board and enriches their living conditions. As part of the embed-
dedness, it is found that social entrepreneurs as agents initially engage
themselves in the local cultures, known as structures, in order to gain the
necessary trust and recognition from the communities. After acquiring
this, the social enterprises run by the social entrepreneurs then moves
on to transform the local cultures where they are embedded in order to
make them holistic. The participation of communities in the process of
social entrepreneurship opens up new avenues for social entrepreneurs
to innovative and build robust systems as necessary.
The researcher interacted with communities who benefited from the
services offered by the social enterprise, and those who were provided
with jobs. The latter claimed to initially hail from the most excluded back-
grounds who found a way out from their deprivation due to the enhanced
skills, capabilities and financial freedoms they acquired as part of the jobs
they were provided with. It is also found that by employing community
members in various jobs roles, the organisation has, it created win-win
scenarios where communities gain through the provision of employment
and service, and the social enterprise benefits from the trust it created
among the communities. Communities who have been provided with
various services have also gained quite significantly by undertaking central
PREfACE ix
roles in their planning and execution. It is found that excluded community
members, especially women, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and the
physically challenged have benefited in multiple ways. Social capital cre-
ated as part of the social entrepreneurial endeavour offers the necessary
mechanism for communities to come together and fight for their rights
and space in the mainstream social order. In fact, the way that social equity
is achieved using innovative mechanisms is quite instrumental in bringing
communities into the mainstream.
It is argued in the research that Barefoot College, the case study
selected as part of the book, has successfully operated to create the neces-
sary contexts for social inclusion to thrive. While analysing these contexts,
it is found that Barefoot College began as a community-based voluntary
organisation and later emerged as a social enterprise. The transition was
not merely caused by the innovations it adopted, but also due to the entre-
preneurial endeavour it undertook. Though the entrepreneurial context
offers a significant push in terms of raising necessary resources from the
local contexts and the marketing techniques it adopted, it is found that the
organisation’s capacities to venture into successful entrepreneurial endeav-
ours became stuck as income raised from the local contexts had signifi-
cantly fallen in the recent past. Thus, it is argued that the organisation,
apart from contributing to its social value creating endeavour, must adopt
a strategy in order to be entrepreneurially sound again.
Accordingly, the manuscript offered the study of a tree diagram with
three pillars—organisational, social value and sustainable, which have
quite significantly contributed to the successful existence of the social
enterprise. The various key identities developed as part of the diagram
offers a rich understanding of the identities that successful social enter-
prises would need to excel in. finally, the manuscript narrates how future
research could narrow the gap opened by current research.
Rama Krishna Reddy Kummitha
Milano, Italy
a
cknowledgements
The book took shape from the work I undertook as part of my doctoral
research, which was carried out at the Centre for the Study of Social
Exclusion and Inclusive Policy at the University of Hyderabad. While my
research endeavour on social entrepreneurship and social exclusion took
shape at the University, my participation in the Jagriti Yatra, at the begin-
ning of my doctoral study helped me to meet unsung heroes who under-
took innovations to build inclusive societies. It was actually their idea of
development and inspiration that inspired me to carry out this research in
order to build scholarship that will be useful to understand the grassroots
innovations and developmental patterns.
This research has constantly benefited from several researchers and
academicians at the University of Hyderabad. Among them, Professor
Sudarshanam Gankidi, my doctoral supervisor, guru and source of
inspiration, has constantly supported my ideas and encouraged me
in all my research and academic endeavours. Apart from his academic
credentials, he is one of the finest human beings I have ever met. He
was the first person to support my attempt to do research on social
entrepreneurship and has encouraged me from the day one. Professor
Sudhakar Rao, who happened to be one of my doctoral committee
members and mentor, helped me when I was short of ideas and con-
stantly nurtured the progression of my career. He, along with Professor
Gankidi, oversaw my overall academic orientation and developed my
doctoral work. The other scholar who offered invaluable support is
Professor Krishna Reddy Gaddam, the then Director of the Centre for
the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy. He advised me to
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xii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
focus more on an in-depth understanding of the grassroots level social
transformation and contribute to academic scholarship. He has also
been a source of knowledge and academic significance who has tremen-
dously influenced my career path.
The other researchers and scholars who helped me shape this work
include Doctor Rani Ratna Prabha, Doctor Ramdas Rupavath, Doctor
Nagaraju Gundemeda, Doctor Ratnam, Doctor Chandrasekhar Rao,
Doctor Srinivasa Rao from JNU and Mr. Dileep Valeru. It is also appro-
priate to mention the intellectual stimulation I received from scholars like
Hilary Silver, one of the most renowned scholars in social exclusion and
inclusion. She not only guided me through her phenomenal work in the
field, but also mentored me on several of my scholastic endeavours. In
addition, it is needless to state the support and sacrifices that researchers
receive from friends and family. They have always stood by me and encour-
aged my research, and personal and academic endeavours. The adminis-
trative staff of the Indira Gandhi Memorial Library where this book took
advanced shape and the staff of the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion
and Inclusive Policy were extremely helpful. I owe special thanks to my
other colleagues at the Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, Tata Institute
of Social Sciences, Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability of
the United Nations University and National Graduate Research Institute
in Tokyo, the Smart City Institute at the University of Liege and my col-
leagues in the research group on Technology and Innovation REsearch on
Social ImpAct (TIRESIA) at Politecnico in Milan.
The Jagriti Yatra team including Shashank, Rewati, Raj, Swapnil and
Ashutosh were the first few people who introduced me to social entre-
preneurs and their phenomenal work. This then moves to the Barefoot
College team, especially Roy, Vasu, and Ramkaran and several others
who provided great hospitality at the Barefoot College guest house and
allowed me to collect data and information from various people. In
addition, I have greatly benefited and acquired energy from the passion
and enthusiasm from the 800-odd youths with whom I travelled in the
Jagriti Yatra. Their passion to learn from the successful experiments,
and contribute to national growth was phenomenal. I also took inspira-
tion from my students at the Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, TISS
where I taught social entrepreneurship upon completion of my doc-
toral research. My involvement with student ventures, their novel ideas
and community concentration helped me to understand the intentions
of social entrepreneurs, first hand.