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SoCiaL eNTRePReNeuRSHiP & CoRPoRaTe SoCiaL ReSPoNSiBiLiTy
Social Entrepreneurship & Corporate Social Responsibility: Using ethical private sector approaches to create or expand marketoriented responses to social problems
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in their book Getting Beyond Better, Roger L. Martin and Sally R. Osberg distinguish social entrepreneurship from other social impact approaches. Some groups, for example, engage in direct action that may provide relief but that ultimately maintains the status quo, and others work to indirectly benefit communities through legislation advocacy and policy change. Social entrepreneurs should utilize the market to create transformative change that can be scaled. However, often social entrepreneurship is bogged down by the inherent aspects of capitalism that center profit rather than people and planet, productivity over healthy relationships with others and self, and growth at any cost rather than ethical social justice.
Humanizing social entrepreneurship and corporate social responsibility (CSR) must begin with recentering community relationships in a way that honors compassionate relationality and social
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equity. The trending focus on small and local businesses offers some examples of what this might look like. For example, local pop-ups have proven to be a turning point for small businesses that do not have the resources to open a standard storefront. It is a model that allows creators and people interested in their work to meet and build community. This creates a social intimacy between sellers and buyers that one does not find in bigger corporate settings. Additionally, such models provide increased accessibility to the market for underprivileged communities, and improve local economy which benefits vulnerable communities more than enriching giant, wealthy businesses.
A great local example is that of Strength in Shades, a monthly pop-up market founded by Black and Latina entrepreneurs Alicea Arnold and Kris Ayoso, that seeks to showcase small businesses run by women of color. Strength in Shades promotes compassionate relationality via its local popup model, bringing community members together, but also provides a platform for groups who have been statistically marginalized within systems that discriminate based on race and gender. Therefore, this entrepreneurial venture also humanizes identities that have often been under and misrepresented, shifting attention from a white male dominated market and consumer landscape to one that centers and celebrates women of color. Arnold and Ayoso expressed experiencing feelings of estrangement and otherment while attempting to start businesses in Utah, a place where racial and gender inclusion and equity is not always celebrated. With Strength in Shades, they have worked toward building a relational community that both welcomes and amplifies diverse voices and contributions.
Social enterprises like this one help us imagine business and economic structures differently. Rather than using the market for individual advancement, entrepreneurs can promote collaboration and relationships over competition. Changing core motives from unlimited growth and profit to community well-being and relationship building will allow social entrepreneurship and CSR to become increasingly humanized.
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