Nowadays, social entrepreneurship is one of the most effective methods to solve current societal problems. Its advantage over some other methods is explained by combining business skills with the desire to improve people’s lives. The former helps to bring innovations, and the latter – to use novel decisions for the benefit of others. It is explained by the fact that social entrepreneurs not only need to think about efficient money expenditure but also about ensuring revenues. Therefore, to better understand social entrepreneurship, this essay attempts to contrast this approach with other social movements and discuss which types of societal changes it can bring.
Social entrepreneurship is similar to other methods that help address various community and environmental problems due to the leader’s responsibility to organize other people around certain ideas. However, on the one hand, it differs from the reformatory and revolutionary movements as social entrepreneurship rarely aims at changing the existing social structures. On the other hand, this approach differs from alternative and religious movements as it does not seek to change the attitudes and behaviors of overall society to achieve its goals. Therefore, considering the stages of the social problem, it is argued that the appearance of social entrepreneurship belongs to the alternative stage when people attempt to bring change outside of the system.
Based on the aforementioned information, it can be hypothesized that social entrepreneurship can mostly affect changes that are not related to the social organization, such as initiating new laws and regulations and human attitudes and behaviors. Rather, this method can be effective in addressing the issues that do not necessitate big structural transformations. Therefore, social entrepreneurs can successfully fight poverty, racism, and local environmental problems, to name a few.
In conclusion, it is necessary to mention that although social entrepreneurship is associated with micro-level attempts to change the world, I believe that it can cause macro-level improvements as well, even though it is difficult. For instance, through media communications, businessmen can significantly affect the cultural norms of society members. In this regard, the case of Weird Enough Productions can be a good example. Tony Weaver Jr. – the company creator – was very concerned about the lack of African American heroic figures in media; rather, black people were mostly represented negatively (Weaver, 2016). Therefore, the social entrepreneur decided to initiate a company that would create comics about heroes who belong to some minority groups.
References
Weaver, T., Jr. (2016). Analysis of representations of African Americans in non-linear streaming media content. Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications, 7(2), 57-67.