A dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Commerce by Research in the field of Management to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, June 2017 / The field of social entrepreneurship is gaining prominence in academic research through
its ability to drive innovation and solve complex societal problems. There is a growing
interest in this field due to the inherent appeal of entrepreneurship as well as the need to
address social inequalities. However, despite the growing interest in social
entrepreneurship, there is limited academic research in the subject – especially with
regards to the nexus between institutional influence and scale of social enterprise. The
majority of social entrepreneurial endeavours in South Africa are found in the food
industry. Despite the magnitude of the role that social entrepreneurs play in this industry,
research remains limited. Definitional debates with a bias towards conceptual research
over empirical research dominates current study on social entrepreneurship – resulting in
a lack of consensus among researchers on what social entrepreneurship means.
In addition to the above, social entrepreneurship literature has devoted insufficient
empirical and theoretical work to the study of scaling of social impact. The majority of the
theoretical work has been geared towards the development of practitioner frameworks.
The empirical research in the field has also been limited, specifically with regards to
understanding the drivers of successful scaling of social entrepreneurial organisations. The
majority of these empirical studies have utilised comparative case study approaches.
Using institutional theory as a lens, this research aimed to develop a conceptual framework
that can be utilised by social entrepreneurs, as well as relevant stakeholders in order to
promote the scale of individual social enterprises, particularly in the South African food
industry, by developing a “roadmap” to scaling. In addition to the above, the focus was on
food security in the South African food industry. It is intended that the conceptual
framework can indirectly address the broader societal issues surrounding food security.
The above was achieved through a qualitative study. Perceptions of institutional influence
on scale as well as start-ups, and drivers of scale were identified through conducting a
literature review. A conceptual framework was then established from these constructs. The
next step involved conducting semi-structured interviews with 14 social entrepreneurs in
the food industry to validate the constructs, and identify the relationships between the
constructs. The data was then analysed using the Interpretative Phenomenological
approach. The result of the qualitative research is a conceptual research framework, with
certain hypotheses.
The empirical study identified social innovation as well as the implementation of impactful
governmental policies as the most critical institutional influencers of scale. In addition,
using SCALERS model as a reference, the empirical study identified lobbying, alliance
building, and staffing as drivers to scale. It is noted that that lobbying and alliance building
can be linked to government policies as it relates to the collaboration of social enterprises
in order to influence policymakers, in addition, staffing relates to the use of volunteers to
bring new innovative solutions to the business – these drivers of scale (based on SCALERS
model) reinforce the identified institutional influences as critical to scale. If all of the above
are present, with all things being equal, then social ventures are more likely to scale –
resulting in economic growth and in addition, social issues such as food security will be
addressed.
From a social entrepreneurship perspective, this study made a substantial contribution in
shifting the social entrepreneurship research focus from conceptual, definition biased
research towards empirical research that strengthened theoretical research on social
entrepreneurship. / XL2018
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/24141 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Larbi, Lee Calvin Jojo Tete |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | Online resource (x, 182 leaves), application/pdf |
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