Caglar Dogru - Leadership Styles, Innovation, and Social Entrepreneurship in the Era of Digitalization

Towards a Conceptual Framework

• alar Doru
  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4215-8979
  Ufuk University, Turkey

ABSTRACT

Creating social value with the help of social entrepreneurship is among the most meaningful goals of ventures in the modern world. The intent of this chapter is to evaluate the effects of different leadership styles on social entrepreneurship theoretically. A detailed literature scanning was conducted in order to find correlations between different leadership styles and social entrepreneurship so as to note which of them mostly promotes social entrepreneurship. Among the leadership styles included in the study, there exists entrepreneurial leadership, responsible leadership, innovative leadership, value-based leadership, visionary leadership, strategic leadership, transformational leadership, authentic leadership, cultural leadership, paternalistic leadership, servant leadership, ambidextrous leadership, ethical leadership, and negative leadership styles. As a consequence, all of the leadership styles included in this chapter, except for negative leadership styles, were proposed to promote social entrepreneurship based on the related literature.

INTRODUCTION

From the early works of Bowen (1953) on the social responsibilities of entrepreneurs, research on social entrepreneurship has come a long way until now. Unfortunately, because of the importance of the topic still there is need for extra work. This is due to the absence of both a consensus on the definition of the term and lack of studies revealing the antecedents and consequences of social entrepreneurship. As Short, Moss and Lumpkin (2009) set forth in their article, beginning with 1990s, there has been an increasing interest on the concept of social entrepreneurship among scholars. Throughout this period, it has been noted that, the concept of social entrepreneurship has been linked to social value creation (Austin, Stevenson and Wei-Skillern, 2006), social goal (Weerawardena and Mort, 2001), and social enterprise (Campbell, 1998) from a narrow perspective of non-profit organizations or philanthropists (Moss and Lumpkin, 2009). Beyond this, in accordance with the emerging literature about social entrepreneurship, the concept will be held in a broader meaning throughout this chapter. Because according to the existing literature, it can easily be seen neither that all the nonprofit organizations are social entrepreneurs (Weerawardena and Mort, 2006) nor all the profit organizations are not social entrepreneurs (Thompson, Alvy and Lees, 2000).

To demonstrate entrepreneurship behaviors, individuals must possess leadership characteristics (Cunningham and Lischeron, 1993; Gupta, MacMillan and Surie, 2004). Precisely, a very special type of entrepreneurship, which is social entrepreneurship, can be best exercised by individuals certain leadership behaviors (Cogliser and Brigham, 2004; Litzky, Godshalk and Walton-Bongers, 2010). These leadership behaviors are called as leadership styles in general in the literature.

In this chapter, it will be discussed which leadership styles promote social entrepreneurship mostly or do they really affect social entrepreneurship behaviors by scanning the existing literature. This theoretical chapter has the intention of putting forth a conceptual framework for leadership styles enhancing social entrepreneurship. The rationale behind this idea has been embodied by the future research direction from the study of Short, Moss and Lumpkin (2009). Hence, to attain this, the concept of social entrepreneurship will be exhibited in the following background section before explaining the leadership styles, which boost social entrepreneurship most.

BACKGROUND

The Concept Of Social Entrepreneurship

Before, figuring out the concept of social entrepreneurship, it should be put forth what the concept of entrepreneurship is. Based on the Schumpeterian Model, entrepreneurship necessitates the presentation of a new good or service, adding a quality or improvement, a new technique for production, a new market for selling goods and services, or a new source inputs (i.e. raw materials or half-manufactured goods) (Schumpeter, 1934). This type of entrepreneurship can be considered as the allocation of entrepreneurship between the groups of tasks mentioned above (Baumol, 1990). In addition, this type of entrepreneurship emphasizes on innovation and creativity (Carland, Hoy, Boulton and Carland, 1984). According to the related literature, among the characteristics of entrepreneurs, there exist their being risk-taking (McClelland, 1961), ambitious, self-confident (Timmons, 1978), hardworking (Beugelsdijk and Noorderhaven, 2005) and achievement oriented (Kessler, 2008).

After touching briefly on the concept of entrepreneurship, a more precise concept which is social entrepreneurship can be emphasized. Social entrepreneurship has been on the agenda of both practitioners and scholars since 1980s. On the basis of literature scrunity it is observed that the concept of social entrepreneurship has been attracted more attention from governments and institutions rather than from scholars until now (i.e. Mair, Robinson and Hockerts, 2006; Short, et al., 2009). But in the last decades, there has been a growing interest on social entrepreneurship by the scholars.

Social entrepreneurship can be simply defined as, a specific type of entrepreneurship within or across the organizations operating in private, public or not-for-profit sectors, in which innovation and social value creation are the key issues (Austin, et al., 2006). Additionally, social entrepreneurship can be defined by Johnson (2000) as an entrepreneurial movement that consists of social oriented intentions.

The components of social entrepreneurship which can be seen on Figure 1. should be understood in order to distinguish the concept of social entrepreneurship from related constructs.

Figure 1. Components of social entrepreneurship

First of all, social value is at the center of the social entrepreneurship since entrepreneurship cannot be taken as social, unless there is social value creation. In this chapter, social value is defined as, a response to a social need or a solution to a social problem which creates better conditions for the society. These needs and problems of societies may vary from educational, economic, political and cultural (Alvord, Brown and Letts, 2002), to environmental, equality and health needs and problems. In order to create social value, entrepreneurs try to fulfill their social missions. These social missions are creative, innovative and satisfactory for the society (Mort, Weerawardena and Carnegie, 2003).

Furthermore, creativeness is obligatory for social entrepreneurship (Perrini and Vurro, 2006). Here, creativeness refers to unique ideas and solutions of entrepreneurs to unique social problems (Gibb, 2006). Trying to solve a social problem or to reach a social aim, entrepreneurs should generate unique and effective projects.

The last main component of social entrepreneurship comes to be the concept of innovation. That is why social entrepreneurs are innovative entrepreneurs (Prabhu, 1999). Together with the social value creation and creativeness, innovation makes difference for social entrepreneurship from other types of entrepreneurship especially commercial entrepreneurship. Social entrepreneurs are the ones who bring about innovative solutions to social issues (Nicholls, 2006).