Keywords

1 Introduction

Social entrepreneurship research is still in its infancy and, as a result, social scientists from across disciplinary fields (i.e., anthropology to sociology) are able to contribute to advancing the scope and direction of social entrepreneurship research (Short, Moss and Lumpkin 2009) . Despite its widespread appeal, much of the scholarly literature on social enterprise and/or social entrepreneurship has been limited to documentation of intriguing case studies, such as Grameen Bank and stories of individual social entrepreneurs like David Green, Vice President of Ashoka and a 2009 recipient of both the “Spirit of Helen Keller” award and the University of Michigan Humanitarian Service Award (Scientific American n.d.). Therefore, while the limited empirical evidence on social entrepreneurship and social enterprise is to be expected, as it would be of any pre-paradigmatic field (Nicholls 2010) , after 20 years of research there remains much to be desired (Hoogendoorn et al. 2010) .

In this paper I provide some preliminary empirical evidence for a theory of social enterprise by building on Bozeman’s public value failure theory (Bozeman 2002, 2007, 2012) . I apply this well-supported literature in the nonprofit and public management fields to social enterprise . By doing so, this work falls in line with other critical analysts like Dey (2006; Dey and Steyaert 2012) and Peredo (2006) championing a reorientation of the academic literature from one in support of the social as economic (i.e., consumers) to a focus on the social as public (i.e., citizens) (Hjorth and Bjerke 2006) .

In light of the call by authors like Ruebottom (2011) to move beyond the triple bottom line as a measure of success, this paper uses empirical qualitative data in order to re-frame an existing theory from the field of public policy, public value failure theory , and apply it to the social enterprise context (Haugh 2012) . This study uses both inductive and deductive approaches. I start by surveying the social enterprise and public value failure literature using public value failure theory criteria to explain the various manifestations of social enterprise. I then examine a sample of social enterprises for public statements in which they indicate a commitment to addressing societal needs by creating and/or ensuring public values.

The chapter begins with a review of the literature on the current state of the social enterprise field. I follow by defining, outlining, and linking key concepts in the public value failure theory to the social enterprise context. I then argue that social enterprises seek out opportunities to meet essential public value failures. I examine this proposition by reviewing the mission or other purposive statements of nearly 150 technology-centered social enterprises. Using the snowball method, I determine if the core organizational statements of the social enterprises in the sample express a commitment to addressing public value failures. It may not, however, be possible to generalize insights from this study to other forms of social enterprise because of the focus on technology-centered organizations. Limitations, implications, and future research perspectives for the social enterprise field are then discussed .

2 Literature Review

Authors have argued for increased conceptual and empirical work on the meaning of the “social” in social entrepreneurship , social enterprise, and social innovation (Nicholls and Murdock 2012) . Interpretations vary by national and regional context (Kerlin 2009) and by disciplinary focus (Nicholls and Murdock 2012) . However, in part due to a lack of consensus surrounding the meaning of the term (Dees 2001; Light 2008) , many scholars have relegated the ‘social’ as well as the ‘entrepreneurial’ to self-evident truths, inherently good and better for society and/or the environment, thereby converting the social entrepreneurship concept into a “fetish” (Andersson 2011; Petersen 1988) . Thoughtful clarification of the term is important because, without a clear definition, one can easily lose sight of why social perspectives matter. Likewise, without a clear definition, the diverse and numerous ordained (i.e., Schwab Foundation Fellows, Ashoka Fellows) and self-titled social entrepreneurs ‘making the world a better place’ may instead echo the ‘reflexive’ interests of foundations, investors, and individual actors as opposed to the needs of the groups they aim to serve (Nicholls 2010) . Nor can we determine if, when, or how entrepreneurs and enterprises actually generate social impact without being able to distinguish a social outcome from a non-social one. Similarly, understanding the term ‘social’ and its relationship to close cousins (i.e., public and civil), is constructive because usurpers (i.e., individuals or organizations claiming to create social impact without actually doing so) can easily co-opt the term by virtue of their intentions rather than as a consequence of their actions. Furthermore, social impact, if neither measurable nor differentiable from conventional entrepreneurship, can and will simply re-create more of the same wicked social and environmental problems (Rittel and Webber 1973) that we aim to address. In addition to practical concerns, given the pre-paradigmatic state of the field, sharper definitions of the social are necessary in order to move theory building forward (Haugh 2012; Nicholls 2010; Santos 2012) .

Significant strides have been made in this regard (Austin et al. 2006; Dacin et al. 2010, 2011; Mair 2010; Pless 2012; Santos 2012; Zahra et al. 2009) . Santos defines social entrepreneurship as the process of “addressing neglected problems with positive externalities” and value as “the increase in the utility of society’s members” (2012, p. 337) . Unlike Eikenberry (2009), Santos abandons the normative quest to determine “what counts as social,” and instead delineates between social and commercial entrepreneurship in terms of ‘value creation’ and ‘value capture’.

Santos also argues that social entrepreneurship entails the pursuit of value creation (i.e., social welfare) while commercial entrepreneurship is motivated by value capture (i.e., individual/organizational profit generation). Admittedly, this line of reasoning places the field of social entrepreneurship squarely in “the mainstream of economic and management thinking” (ibid.). However, rather than avoid use of the term social and refrain from positing a normative theory of social enterprise as Santos recommends, I do both by explicitly acknowledging that the term ‘social’ is normative and by unpacking what values make up the ‘social’ landscape. Furthermore, I argue that as a new field, much of the promise inherent in the study of social entrepreneurship and social enterprise has not only to do with accepting non-economic values and non-economic impact as valid and useful but also with accepting non-economic models of reasoning, justification, and validation as well. Thus, by introducing public value failure theory into the social enterprise discourse, I hope to make the field explicitly more pluralistic and inclusive (Palmas 2012).

2.1 Public Value Failure Theory

The concept of a unified public has been a matter of significant debate by scholars from across the social sciences. In the field of public policy, it is well understood that in order for governments to reach constituents beyond the ‘national majority,’ private, semi-public, and local government actors are needed (Dahl 1995) . What is understood is that publics are specific in the problems that they share, and therefore “cannot be general” (Grunig 1992; Grunig and Hunt 1984, p. 138; Theodoulou and Cahn 1995) . Bozeman arrived at the following somewhat ‘cumbersome’ definition of value “a complex and broad-based assessment of an object or set of objects (where the objects may be concrete, psychological, socially constructed, or a combination of all three) characterized by both cognitive and emotive elements, arrived at after some deliberation, and because a value is part of the individual’s definition of self, it is not easily changed and has the potential to elicit action” (2007, p. 117). Policymaking is often as much about what is (i.e., evidence) as what should be (i.e., emotion) with emotion sometimes gaining the upper hand (Birkland 2001) . Likewise, policy arguments (and academic research) are often ‘strengthened’ by numerical justifications (i.e., quantitative assessments) which can subsequently be used to support normative stances (Paris and Reynolds 1983) .

2.2 Public Values as Normative

Despite the powerful rise and dominance of numbers in the policymaking process (Laswell 1988) , not all worthwhile arguments can be quantifiably justified. Indeed, “the extension of economic models and reasoning to noneconomic contexts is not often empirically trustworthy. Moreover, its various strategies and criteria for establishing normative premises is both logically and morally suspect in some of its uses, despite its obvious appeal” (Paris and Reynolds 1983, p. 8) . Bozeman champions the call for public officials to reframe much of their decision criteria in terms of public values, and to rely less heavily on economic cost-benefit analyses. Bozeman’s conceptualization of value is much broader than economic definitions of the term. In neo-classical economics, knowing what one wants and therefore values (i.e., one’s tastes or utility preferences) requires full rationality. Bounded rationality relaxes these assumptions, allowing for incomplete information and unclear preferences (Simon 1997) ; however, as a decision-making criterion, it is still grounded in economic individualism.

A public value perspective of social entrepreneurship also aligns with the conditions of (1) increased public awareness and (2) dissonant loyalty that makes up crescive entrepreneurship as outlined by Dorado and Ventresca (2013) . This again promotes conditions that “…define the presence of a motivation to advance a public or common instead of a private interest” (p. 78). Building on the work of A. O. Hirschman, these authors argue that increased public awareness adds incentive to social entrepreneurs seeking to legitimize their activities, making them worthy of social approval. Secondly, they contend that dissonant loyalty acts as an internal driver connecting individual actors with a common collective as a result of institutional conditions. In every sense, the move away from individualist to collective or ‘publicness’ is at the heart of the social enterprise movement . This approach also lends support to Murphy and Coombes’s (2009) definition of social entrepreneurship : “the creation and undertaking of a venture intended to promote a specific social purpose or cause” whereby “social purpose or cause, implicate[s] an underlying range of basic values that are desirable and important in a civilized society” [emphasis added] (p. 326).

In this sense, public values are refreshingly normative. Society’s public values are defined as “those providing normative consensus about (a) the rights, benefits, and prerogatives to which citizens should (and should not) be entitled; (b) the obligations of citizens to society, the state, and one another; and (c) the principles on which governments and policies should be based” (Bozeman 2007, p. 13) . Any application of public value-failure theory requires a clear understanding of market failure and government failure theory. Based on this analysis, I offer suggestions as to how we can begin thinking about what it means to be social through a public value lens.

2.3 Market, Government, and Public Value Failures

Public values are unique because they are not market-based. Market values are based on the principles of economics, of which the central construct of value is that of substitutability. According to Freeman (1994) , economic value can only be understood in a market economy in which products (goods and services) are tradable (bought and sold) and substitutable (goods and services have no inherent value) via monetary exchange. This operationalized definition of economic value helps to clarify why values cannot be fully explained by economic theorizing. For example, not all activity takes place in markets (a mother suckling her child), individuals and societies often value the non-tradable (integrity), many of humankind’s most valuable resources are not replaceable (clean air and water), and monetary valuation is often impossible or at a minimum repugnant (the value of a human life). Argandona says it well: “Values are normative: they tell us how we should behave…Their meaning is objective—we want things that are good and valuable, but things are not good or valuable because we want them…our valuations are subjective—things are valuable for us; we feel the value of things [however]…[w]e cannot be indifferent about them, they demand a response from us—this is what sets them apart from mere tastes or preferences” (2003, p. 16) .

While neoclassical economics cannot explain all types of values, as a field it still has significant influence over the value sphere, particularly with regard to the policymaking process. A brief description of market-failure theory will help illustrate this point. Neoclassical economics emerged entirely out of a mathematical model, designed to reconcile the fact-value dichotomy in the sciences (Rosenberg 1992). Its aim is to provide and explanation of the allocation of resources among producers and consumers in a market-based economy (Dean and McMullen 2007) . The most favorable distribution of resources is known as Pareto optimality, which represents the theoretical and moral arrival at a general equilibrium market state, where no one is benefitted without simultaneously harming someone else (Varian 2005) . By extension, under perfect market conditions the private sector is considered the best at solving problems. It is important to note however, that Pareto optimality is an ideal state, not a reality.

Markets that diverge from this optimal state result in market failures. In other words, market failures occur where there is an absence of Pareto efficiency. In this respect, there are three types of market failures: (a) information asymmetry (moral hazard or the problem of adverse selection); (b) positive and negative externality (national defense and pollution); and (c) imperfect competition (monopoly). Under these conditions, ‘prices lie’ and market competition is flawed because a fair and free market is no longer possible (Bozeman 2002) . Imperfect market conditions translate into opportunities for entrepreneurial action and profit generation. Thus, gains to trade are seized upon by entrepreneurs when market failures present a departure from Pareto efficiency (Dean and McMullen 2007) . However, market failures also offer an opportunity for public intervention (i.e., government) to step in and correct those failures. A brief overview of government failure will help illustrate this point.

Correcting market failures is often referred to as the business of government. The government’s role is to reduce and/or improve the market imperfections outlined above. Public policy is designed to increase access to information, eliminate barriers to entry of existing markets and help the economy function optimally. Mirroring traditional market failure approaches, non-market failures like government failures occur when the public intervention into the private sphere creates more inefficiency or socially undesirable outcomes than there would have been had the intervention never taken place (Weimer and Vining 1992; Wolf 1979) . There are four types of government failure (social harms caused by government intervention): (a) internalities and private goals (budget growth, i.e., the ‘more or new is better’ argument); (b) redundant and rising costs (funding unnecessary activities due to the lack of competition); (c) derived externalities (negative unintended consequences of policies aimed at creating greater social good); and (d) distributional inequity (serving particular constituencies to the neglect of others due to increased issue saliency by lobbyists). The keen mind would notice the possibility of having a market failure followed by a government failure, where society is “twice harmed” by private and public activities. More notably, however, this limited interventionist view describes the role of government as ‘residual’ or secondary to the role of the market (Bozeman 2002, 2007) . Thus, in this conceptualization, government intervention is only requested when market efficiency is threatened. Despite this characterization, what governments do that markets cannot is concern themselves with the distribution of market goods and services in society. The fact that government does concern itself with issues of equity and equality (the winners and losers in otherwise ‘efficient’ market transactions) often means that government interventions are considered sources of reprieve for ‘unfair’ market outcomes. This apparent dichotomy frames Bozeman’s question/proposition when markets and governments are operating efficiently and effectively: “Is there nonetheless a failure to provide an essential public value?” (2002, p. 150) . Like Bozeman, I answer yes, but in turn ask another question: Who is capable of providing essential public values, if not markets or governments? In order to answer this question, I begin by identifying public value failure criteria.

Public value failure theory accounts for the conceptual space between the market and government. It is ‘new’ to the extent that it acknowledges values unrecognized by the traditional market or government failures. A public failure takes place when neither the market nor government provides a good that meets core public values (Bozeman 2002) . This definition falls in line with arguments put forth by the author representing several disciplines that private non-profit entities step in to fill gaps unmet by the market or government (Dees 2007; Weisbrod 2000) ; are solutions to market failures (Ben-Ner and Gui 2003) ; and are a result of new public management practices (Hood 2005; Lynn et al. 2000; O’Flynn 2007) . Public value failure criteria delineate the circumstances under which the public interest is not being met. Bozeman accounts for nine public value failure criteria (2012) . I outline these nine public value failures below and provide examples in Table 6.1:

Table 6.1 Public values failure criteria. (Adapted from Bozeman 2012)
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Public values are the lifeblood of a society. Generally speaking, values are expected to vary by region and national context (Salamon et al. 2003) , but whatever their form, public values are inherently non-economic. They shape the quality of the lived experience. One can imagine the agents of public value criteria, as those dedicated to serving a protective and defensive role for core or essential values, whether or not they are met by existing institutional frameworks (i.e., governments or markets). While overlaps and correlations may exist between failures (i.e., public value failure: “distribution of benefits” and government failure: “distributional inequity”), this should encourage the reader in knowing that values are not owned by a particular institution. Organizations of any form can theoretically step in and defend values upheld by governments, markets or publics. The argument posed here is that social enterprises, by virtue of the problems they seek to resolve, are the type of organization that often does step in for this very purpose .

2.4 Social Enterprise

Just as public value theory emerged out of government and market failure theory, social enterprise surfaced out of the non-profit and for-profit organizational forms. The term social entrepreneurship was first coined by the Ashoka Foundation’s Bill Drayton (Light 2006) . Since then, the overlapping and competing definitions of social entrepreneurship and social enterprise have been the source of extensive dialogue and constructive debate (Defourny and Nyssens 2012; Light 2008) . Without directly entering into this discussion, a recognizable and notable distinction between social and conventional enterprises has to do with organizational mission (Alter 2007; Dees 2001) . This difference is best illustrated by quoting two Nobel Laureates. In his book Capitalism and Freedom (1962, p. 133) , Milton Friedman contends: “There is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits.” Forty years later, Muhammad Yunus proposes an alternative view of business in his 2006 Nobel speech (Yunus 2006) : “By defining ‘entrepreneur’ in a broader way, we can change the character of capitalism radically, and solve many of the unresolved social and economic problems within the scope of the free market. Let us suppose an entrepreneur, instead of having a single source of motivation (such as, maximizing profit), now has two sources of motivation, which are mutually exclusive, but equally compelling—(a) maximization of profit and (b) doing good to people and the world.” Dr. Yunus’s characterization of social entrepreneurs as having a dual-yet-conflicting purpose captures the simultaneous, yet competing social (i.e., mission-oriented) and economic (i.e., profit-oriented) institutional forces that compel us to view social enterprises an ideal type of multidimensional or hybrid organization from .

One of the best ways to operationalize this hybridity is to briefly discuss another dichotomy: for-profit vs. non-profit legal status. Social enterprises are not tied to legal status. Some may incorporate as a non-profit legal entity in order to focus on social needs; others adopt a for-profit legal structure in order to behave competitively in the market. Therefore, while the definition of social enterprise is still highly contested, in the U.S. it is certainly not defined wholly by legal status (Kerlin 2009) . In fact, effective social enterprises do not need to be legal entities at all (the informal economy). Nevertheless, within the legal framework of for and non-profit it may be useful to conceptualize social enterprises along a combined legal form-mission spectrum. I find that Alter (2007) provides us with the following useful typology (Fig. 6.1):

Fig. 6.1
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Hybrid enterprise spectrum

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In this model, all enterprises fall into one of six categories. On the left of the model are nonprofits, which may or may not engage in commercial activity capable of generating economic value (earned income activities) to fund social programs but whose primary motives are driven by a mission focus. The Girl Scouts, Inc. is an example of a non-profit with income-generating activity (selling cookies). On the right of the model are for-profit enterprises that employ profit-seeking behavior to generate economic value with or without coupling those values with social ones. As a result, classifying enterprises requires defining them according to their objectives (mission or profit motive) and reinvestment practices (programs or shareholders). Better World Books, LLC is an example of a socially responsible business. This company is a for-profit entity that sells books online and donates books to schools and non-profit literacy programs worldwide. They also recycle books that they cannot sell in order to keep them from filling up landfills (meeting triple bottom line standards).

Alter’s spectrum serves as a guide for understanding the nuances of social enterprise activity and does not serve as an absolute reflection of reality. In essence, the variety of social enterprise types demonstrates that organizations can operate within the market (trading good and services), while simultaneously addressing social needs. I contend that this blending partly usurps the role of government (whose role is to ensure the public good) and expands on conventional or traditional market seeking firms (satisfying the private good) by meeting public value needs thereby creating greater overall ‘social good’ in the process. As a result, social enterprises are at least conceptually linked to public values. Social enterprises are fully capable of using the market to address the unmet public value needs of society. This notion is not far- fetched, as even according to Bozeman, “[a] focus on public values does not necessarily require a rejection of the market failure model…but it does require a willingness and ability to move beyond [it]” (2002, p. 10) . I contend that social enterprises move beyond markets and address fundamental societal values of equity and equality. Public values would be considered what Argandona calls “ultimate values,” those values that are often modeled as goals or objectives but that are less subject to change.

2.5 Opportunity-seeking Behavior

Arguably, the opportunity dimension of entrepreneurship is the ‘most distinct’ between social and commercial enterprise “owing to fundamental differences in missions and response to market failure” (Austin et al. 2006, p. 6) . The claim made in this paper is that social entrepreneurs create public value by seeking out opportunities unattended to by existing institutional structures (Ozgen and Baron 2007; Santos 2012) . According to Murphy and Coombes, all entrepreneurship begins with opportunity, and opportunities are “unique to entrepreneurship research” (2009, p. 327) . However, unlike traditional entrepreneurship opportunities that derive from ‘longstanding inefficiencies’ (ibid.), social entrepreneurship opportunities derive from longstanding inequalities (i.e., reducing financial illiteracy, quality health care for underserved groups, educational opportunities for rural communities, etc.). Unpacking the social aspect will assist entrepreneurs with identifying windows of opportunity when monitoring their environment (Kickul and Lyons 2012) .

2.6 Summary

Market failures provide opportunities for entrepreneurial action (Drucker 1985) , however, as with economic markets, non-market failures, create opportunities for social entrepreneurship . Several authors have identified the “failure” theme in social entrepreneurship (Austin et al. 2006), social enterprise (Dart 2004) , and social innovation (Nicholls and Murdock 2012) . Most contend to some extent, that public sector and civil society failures create opportunities for social intervention. This chapter extends work along this theme be identifying opportunity creating failures and values created by social interventions using public value failure theory .

3 Method

At the request of authors like Dacin et al. (2011) I depart from earlier works that focus on the individual level characteristics of heroic social entrepreneurs (Bornstein 2004) but instead focus on their “social value creation mission” (Dacin 2011, p. 1205) . These authors suggest beginning with the mission of the social entrepreneurship venture, as it focuses attention on the outcome efforts of the entrepreneur and offers the most promising direction for future research (Dacin et al. 2011) . Bozeman proposes beginning with the mission statements of public-serving organizations in order to identify public values (2007) . This research looks at the online, publicly available mission statements or the primary organizational objectives or goals of social enterprises with a technological focus. Data are gathered from an earlier study that investigate how technology is used in the social enterprise context (Cozzens & Monroe-White, unpublished) . This database was constructed in 2010 and drawn from a snowball sample of 20 top-ranked online website portals (See Table 6.2). These websites catalogued nearly 800 social enterprises from across the globe. Rather than define social enterprise and search for cases in which the definitional criteria were met (i.e., top-down approach), the definition of social enterprise used in this chapter emerged from the data .

Table 6.2 Data collection sources
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The unit of analysis in this study was the organization. A snowball sampling method was used to gather the names and mission statements of 200 social enterprises that fit the technological focus criterion (i.e., where the use, development and/or redistribution of technologies were a focal part of their mission). Technology focus was determined by developing a thematic conceptual matrix of these statements (Miles and Huberman 1994) . Technology-focused entrepreneurs in which innovation is highly valued have demonstrated significant, proactive opportunity-seeking behavior (Kickul and Gundry 2000) . Likewise, the social innovation literature acknowledges the importance of unpacking the role of technology in social enterprise. Of the three types of social innovation proposed by Nicholls and Murdock (i.e., incremental, institutional and disruptive), institutional innovation necessarily involves the “repositioning new technology or intellectual capital to social rather than purely economic ends” (2012, p. 4) . In the analysis of the data, however, a second theme emerged. After combing the 20 website portals and identifying firms with a technology focus, these enterprises were then sorted and grouped based on two sets of common criteria: technology focus (i.e., ICT, electrification, mobile technology, biotechnology, etc.) and target population. The only externally imposed restriction was that all enterprises should identify a target population. Target populations were then grouped together by theme (i.e., women, children, the elderly, rural schools that serve local children, disabled, poor, underemployed, developing country populations, etc.). The vast majority of these enterprises explicitly identified a vulnerable or marginalizedFootnote 1 group.

Organizations excluded from this analysis were environmental enterprises that clearly did not target a specified population. After removing the environmental enterprises from the sample, the remaining 152 enterprises expressed a commitment to two things: serving a particular group and explicitly utilizing, developing, and/or redistributing technologies. With respect to the target populations observed, this snowball sampling technique lent support to the proposition made by Santos (2012) : “[s]ocial entrepreneurs are more likely to operate in areas with localized positive externalities that benefit a powerless segment of the population” and the EMES definition of social enterprise offered by Defourny and Nyssens (2012) : “[o]ne of the principal aims of social enterprises is to serve the community or a specific group of people” (p. 78) among others. I examined 524 entries on these sites and identified 152 that met both the technological and marginalized group criteria.

Lastly, the social enterprises in this study are all examples of successful organizations, having been supported and recognized as such by established, powerful third party entities (i.e., foundations, fellowship organizations and network builders (Nicholls 2010) (see Table 6.2). Thus, it is important to keep in mind that this sample is limited with regard to its generalizability. The selection criteria of these 20 web portal agencies demonstrate how successful social enterprises are assessed as such. Some data sources focused primarily on individual level characteristics of the entrepreneur as opposed to the accomplishments of the social enterprise. Others were not clear or provided no indication of how their enterprises were selected. Nevertheless, some familiar themes emerged from a review of the readily available eligibility and selection criteria. Social and/or environmental impact, social change, and innovation were topics shared by most agencies but not all. Others required that their social enterprises target a specific segment of the population, i.e., base-of-the-pyramid consumers. Overall, criteria served as guiding posts for applicants in some instances and as strict eligibility criteria in others. The combination of social entrepreneurs and enterprises created a rich and diverse array of organizations tackling a number of social and environmental problems in new ways.

The benefits of classifying social enterprises by specialized group are that it allowed for the development of a matrix that categorized social enterprises along two dimensions: specialized group and public value focus . The public values criteria are based on Bozeman’s public value criteria including “progressive opportunity,” which was added to the eight established in his previous work (Bozeman 2002) (see Table 6.1). The specified groups identified could be classified along four dimensions: economic, structural, physical, and developing countries. Again, these classifications emerged from the analysis of the 152 enterprises with a technological focus which served a specialized population. Other enterprises that did not explicitly serve a special group but were recognized as social enterprises by these leading third party agencies primarily consisted of environmental organizations also known as eco-enterprises (Schaper 2005) . The implications of removing this group from the list of social enterprises are reviewed in the discussion.

A broad definition of a special marginalized or vulnerable group is used in this study. Economic groups were identified based on income (i.e., the poor, low-income, under-employed or unemployed); structural groups included traditional social organizations like non-profits, health clinics, and schools; physical groups included women, children, the elderly, the disabled or underrepresented racial and/or ethnic groups; lastly, the developing classification included any group based in a developing area including rural populations, villages or and most non-Western countries. This classification scheme does not allow for the development of mutually independent categories, instead using this categorization method, enterprises which targeted multiple specialized groups simultaneously were easily identified. Likewise, this dataset also captured organizations addressing multiple public values as the same time. As such, the public values and groups served by this sample will vary from the total number of social enterprises analyzed (N = 152). Social enterprises were categorized as meeting a public value need if the mission, purpose or goal statement indicated as much. The list of public values used in this analysis came from Bozeman’s work. Public values were identified via thematic mapping of the public mission statements of the social enterprises in the sample and supported by additional publicly available information found elsewhere on the websites of the organizations in question . A sub-sample of these social enterprises and their public statements is provided in Table 6.3 below.

Table 6.3 Examples of technology based social enterprises and their social purpose statements (n = 22)
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4 Findings

Results lend support for the idea that social enterprises have as a goal, addressing public value failures and/or ensuring essential public values. Table 6.3 and Fig. 6.2 help illustrate this relationship. Fourteen enterprises (9 %) served more than one specialized group (for example, economic and physical).

Fig. 6.2
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Distribution of public values by marginalized group

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Table 6.4 Crosstabulation of public values criteria and marginalized groups served
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Of the 152 technology-centered social enterprises examined in this study, the author identified 37 (24 %) enterprises that did not express a commitment to any of Bozeman’s nine public value criteria in their missions. The remaining 115 enterprises (76 %) expressed a commitment to one or more public value criteria. Overall, most social enterprises in this study addressed the public values of distribution of benefits (34 %), ensuring subsistence and human dignity (28 %), progressive opportunity (21 %), and provider availability (20 %). This general pattern among the top three values (distribution, subsistence and dignity, and progressive opportunity) was closely followed by social enterprises serving economically and physically marginalized groups as well as those serving developing countries. Most social enterprises serving structurally marginalized groups and organizations on the other hand did not address any public value need at all (67 %), followed by 23 % of social enterprises serving the physically marginalized, economically marginalized (13 %), and 10 % of those serving developing countries. Most social enterprises in the sample served developing countries and they were also the organizations firms most likely to meet at least one public value need. While it is useful to point out which values were the most popular, it is also worthwhile to draw attention to empty sets within this sample of technology centered enterprises .

5 Conclusion and Discussion

In the foreword of Janelle Kerlin’s book Social Enterprise: A Global Comparison, Jacques Defourny states that “the most common view of a social purpose or mission is to relieve social problems such as unemployment, poverty, underdevelopment, or handicaps of all kinds, among other factors, which may cause marginalization or exclusion of certain individuals, groups, or large communities” (Kerlin 2009, p. xiii) . The findings of this study support this view and suggest further that social enterprises express a commitment to create and/or maintain public values. The most common public value met by the social enterprises in this sample was distribution of benefits. The distribution of public commodities and progressive opportunity criterion both have to do with social inclusion, equity and equality (Cozzens 2007; Cozzens and Kaplinsky 2009) . As such, the social enterprises in this study demonstrate a clear commitment to preserving distributional equity and equality.

5.1 Structurally Marginalized

Most structural social enterprises did not explicitly express a commitment to any public value. One explanation may be that these organizations already have a public value motive embedded in them (i.e., education) as a non-profit organization. Therefore, while their mission statements do not reflect a precise public value, their service to the public is embedded in their legal structure.

5.2 Economically Marginalized

In the economically marginalized group the majority of enterprises addressed distributive, subsistence and dignity or progressive opportunity concerns. This can be explained in part by the characteristics of the marginalized group being targeted. Poor, under- or unemployed and low-income populations are likely to benefit most from healthcare access, housing, and financial services typically afforded to wealthier segments of society. Meanwhile, ensuring subsistence and human dignity addresses the hunger and malnutrition needs of this segment of the population. Lastly, the overlap between economically marginalized groups and the progressive opportunity criterion indicate that much of the equity issues in the world today have to do with an inherent structural imbalance that is based on long-standing power differences between groups, whether ethnic, racial or otherwise. These social enterprises then also recognize that those in power tend to remain in power, economically and otherwise. Their intervention would help to alleviate the pressure placed on groups whose opportunity for upward mobility has been thwarted based on these historical differences.

5.3 Physically Marginalized

Social enterprises serving a physically marginalized group expressed commitment to select public values relatively equally. Distribution of benefits was the most common public value criterion expressed by this set of firms, followed by the absence of any public value, enduring subsistence and human dignity and finally progressive opportunity. Social enterprises serving a physically marginalized group often focused on gender, race, ethnicity, or language barriers. Increasing access to services and goods (distribution of benefits) while also creating opportunities for inclusion (progressive opportunity) would naturally be common objectives for these particular kinds of social enterprise. At the same time, a larger portion of these firms did not explicitly address any particular public value commitment. This is also not surprising. For firms that expressly target a marginalized group, that effort in and of itself can be viewed as a sufficient objective. Firms serving physically marginalized groups may also operate in developing countries where the variety of services provided are not narrow enough to warrant specific classification along the lines of public value criteria. In many cases, broad objectives better reflect the variety of skills sought.

5.4 Developing Countries

Social enterprises are often started as complements or substitutes for international development organizations. Others are founded by entrepreneurs who are citizens of the countries they aim to serve. Most of the enterprises in this sample are organizations like these. Whether they were founded within the country they are hoping to serve or started abroad they all served groups developing areas. By far, most of these organizations addressed distribution of benefits, ensuring subsistence and human dignity and provider availability

Ensuring subsistence and human dignity is probably what observers most commonly think of when thinking of development aid (i.e., providing basic for basic human needs including but not limited to water access, food, housing, electricity, etc.). This public value criterion also includes ensuring human dignity, a much more amorphous concept that is up to individual level interpretation. Whether human dignity is achieved through the preservation of culturally relevant practices or empowering women with the power to decide the fate of their unborn child is up to the entrepreneur. Thus, public values can be conflicting and controversial.

5.5 No Public Value

I have briefly discussed the reasons why certain social enterprise groups may not have expressed an interest in creating public value in their mission statements. However, what was not discussed are the potential reasons why on the whole organizations do not commit themselves to these particular public values. Bozeman admits that public values are not fixed, that they are ambiguous (i.e., have multiple meanings) and are context specific (i.e., vary based on their local context) (Bozeman 2007; and Norton 2005) . That is to say, while some of the social enterprises catalogued in this study did not indicate a commitment to a public value, they may be committed to some other public value not yet reflected in Bozeman’s nine criteria. Just as the most recent public value criterion, progressive opportunity, was added a decade after Bozeman’s initial article outlining the public value failure theory (2002, 2012) , so too can social enterprise shed light on new gaps (i.e., uncovering unrecognized public failures) and solve as of yet unpopular or wicked problems (Nicholls and Murdock 2012; Rittel and Webber 1973) , thereby creating public value.

5.6 Opportunity Recognition

What is equally interesting are the social enterprises for which there are very few or no actors in that space. This can be partially explained by the fact that our selection criteria for social enterprise was one that targeted a marginalized group, a decision that subsequently excluded those social enterprises focusing primarily on environmental issues. As efforts to conserve resources are typically handled by the latter form of environmental or eco-preneurship based organization, the instances in which this public value criterion was addressed was understandably lower in this sample. On the other hand, a chart like the one in Table 6.4 may prove useful for social enterprises seeking out opportunities to operate. In other words, the public value mapping process and public value criteria can assist with opportunity recognition among social enterprises (a growing area of research in the field) (Lehner and Kaniskas 2012) . For example, where there are very few actors (e.g., social enterprises serving an economically marginalized group while meeting the public value criterion of values articulation and aggregation), a social entrepreneur with expertise in both of these fields would be filling a necessary gap. On the other hand, where there are no actors present, a social enterprise, for example, serving a physically marginalized group (gender, race, ethnicity, disability, etc.) and addressing the public value criterion of legitimate monopolies may imply the absence of a public value failure, such that the services of a social enterprise organization might not be needed. A public value mapping process can also aid certifying agencies in the selection of criteria on which to rate social enterprises. The B-Corp certificate, for example, has a complex pre-screening process for its social enterprises to pass before being granted the B-Corp seal of approval. This process is appropriate for larger organizations, but for smaller newly established ones a less rigorous (but no less important) set of criteria based on the realized articulation of public values may help guide their path.

5.7 Limitations

There are several limitations worth mentioning in this study. First, data collected for this study are not representative of the social enterprise landscape. Technology-oriented social enterprises are a rare case of social enterprise; as such, the findings in this study may reflect a unique subset of the broader social enterprise spectrum. However, by focusing on technologically centered social enterprises, this study offered the researcher with a feasible source of exploratory data for future investigations of more representative samples of social enterprise.

One of the difficulties with using public mission statements of organizations is that they are an incomplete source of information. Thus, the expression of public value does not necessarily reflect the actions or outcomes of these firms. Relying on the mission statements alone could serve to inflate or deflate the incidence of public values addressed in the sample. However, from a more in depth investigation of the firms in the sample, I am inclined to say that the results deflate the role of public value in the social enterprise mission. In many instances, the firms in which “no public value” was identified, was due largely to the narrowness of the definition offered in the public value criterion. For instance, not all goods are scarce or vital, and in many respects public commodities and services are not the only products (goods or services) that should be equally distributed. In fact, for many social enterprises, access to “unnecessary” goods or services (modern technology, banking services, and other goods) was their primary service. In this way, these social enterprises, while they were excluded from the nine public value classifications, served a combination of needs: those of private citizens (affordable television) as well as public needs (access to clean water).

On the other hand, certain public values that were met by social enterprises negated claims of “failures” in the criteria themselves. For example, the legitimate monopolies criterion states that the private provision of goods and services deemed suitable for government monopoly is a “violation of a legitimate government monopoly” and thus should be considered as a public value failure. However, a number of social enterprises in this study actually intervened to provide access to a good or service (i.e., clear water, housing) that were not being provided by the government. In this case, the private provision of a good was technically a violation, but it also served as a useful substitution of what should have been a legitimate government monopoly.

5.8 Implications and Future Research

The aim of this research is to provide a starting point for researchers interested in understanding the different ways in which we can begin to unpack the term ‘social’ in social enterprise. Public values are “the foundation of a society’s social contract, a set of natural rights” (Bozeman 2002, p. 149) and, by redefining the way that problems are framed (i.e., away from an enterprising/economic value perspective towards a societal/public values perspective), social enterprises remind us of the limitless ways in which these longstanding social issues can be resolved. Not only does this preliminary research provide support for the use of public values by policymakers interested in assessing the impact of social enterprises, it also serves as a guide for social entrepreneurs looking for ways to make a big impact. This research also offers future researchers with fertile ground to conduct more conceptual as well as empirical work on evaluations of the ‘social’ in organizations.

A commitment to public value is a commitment to a social ideal, much like the ideal of a free market (Bozeman 2007) . Public values are often complex, competing, and even contradictory. Nonetheless, public value failures occur when markets and governments fail to operate effectively thus creating opportunities for value creation. This research supports the idea that the social enterprise innovation emerged as a unique organizational form to meet essential needs of the public. This formulation reinforces the conceptualizations of the social articulated by the other chapters in this volume.

Globally, social entrepreneurship is a rare phenomenon (Hoogendoorn et al. 2010) . Few are able to contend with the multiple and competing institutional forces of social impact and profitable returns, not to mention the various and dynamic sets of public values that are created (or destroyed) in this process. Future research should investigate whether social enterprises or their founders do in fact explicitly seek out public value failures as an opportunity-seeking mechanism. Likewise, it would be useful to investigate whether or not organizations that seek out opportunities to address public value failures are more successful than their non-public value seeking counterparts. While it is the case that the social enterprises in our sample are well recognized, their recognition is not based on monetary success or even standardized social impact assessment criteria.

Data used in this study include social enterprises from across the globe. However, this study does not take into consideration differences in public values in different country contexts. Public values and public value failures are not expected to be uniform across all contexts (Bozeman 2002) ; and neither are social enterprises (Kerlin 2009) . Therefore, future research should investigate the role of country specific public values as a source of opportunity for social enterprise. The approach taken in this study was a rationalist one (i.e., what organizations say they do); future research should take a naturalist stance (i.e., what organizations actually do) and empirically examine the impact of social enterprise at the local, national, and international scale.