This thesis aims to understand the phenomenon of social entrepreneurship and measure its
component dimensions. In particular, the thesis addresses two research gaps in the social entrepreneurship research. The first gap addressed is the resource mobilization during marketing
strategy development of a social enterprise in its start-up stage. Social entrepreneurship is a
diverse concept constituting various organizational form and activities. Hence, the second research gap that this research study addresses is the issue of measurement of social entrepreneurship construct. The thesis consists of an introductory essay and five research articles.
The first two articles in this compilation address the first research question. The research
question of how to address the resource constraints in marketing strategy development of social
enterprise is addressed with a case study of a social start up delivering health care in rural India.
The data consist of interviews, email discu
ssions, online discussion forums and student reports
collected over a period of two years. The results of the first paper advance the teaching methodology of live case for teaching students to solve problems of social businesses. The results of
the second study revealed that the network bricolage and entrepreneurship education bricolage
were used as two mechanisms to address resource shortage while developing marketing strategy of the health venture. The results from the study advances knowledge of the development of
marketing strategies in a social enterprise. The study also contributes to the field of social entrepreneurship education and social enterprise resource acquisition.
The final three articles in the compilation address the second research gap. To address the
measurement question, the data was collected from mature social enterprises from six European
countries and students developing business plans for nascent social enterprises using three
rounds of data collection. The third article in this compilation presents a pilot study of scale
development using a sample of 178 Nordic social enterprises. This study identified six constructs associated with social enterprises: creation of market disequilibria, open source sharing
of knowledge, earned income generation, limited profit distribution, employee compensation,
and autonomy in operation. The fourth article tests six hypotheses based on 245 mature social
enterprises and 441 nascent social enterprises. This study identified how the conflicting components of social innovation and earned income in a social entrepreneurial organization affect the
outcomes of the perceived social impact and fundability of organizations pursuing social entrepreneurship. The fifth article presents a second study of scale development with a larger sample
of 263 mature social enterprises and 184 nascent social enterprises. Based on the study we developed the concept of Organizational social entrepreneurship as a construct that can occur in
various types of social organizations. Organizational social entrepreneurship was conceptualized as a formative construct consisting of the dimensions of social innovation, earned income
and governance. The study developed scale items to measure each of these components. The
study has important implications for policy makers and governments interested in identifying
and measuring performance of social enterprises. It also presents a pioneering study which
develops a scale for conceptualizing and measuring organizational social entrepreneurship. The
scale developed will further future quantitative studies in the field of social entrepreneurship.
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