ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the emerging organizational paradigm of social entrepreneurship and how it may be applicable within the sport industry. Over the past two decades, sport organizations have incrementally shifted towards forms of organizing that meet multiple requirements from diverse stakeholder groups. Profit-seeking organizations increasingly deliver social and economic outcomes based on perceived social responsibilities, such as Nike’s “Girl Effect”, which focuses on empowering young women in developing countries. Nonprofit organizations now use commercial terminology such as (social) return on investment to evaluate and legitimize their work within an increasingly competitive funding environment. Entrepreneurs are able to assess existing competitive environments and select a particular location and form of incorporation that best fit the multiple demands of a particular competitive landscape. An emerging organizational paradigm within entrepreneurship is social enterprises that exist to “leverage economic activity to pursue a social objective and implement social change” (Mair, Battilana & Cardenas, 2012, p. 356). Social entrepreneurship – conceptually – addresses several shortcomings of current sport development approaches. First, at the heart of the concept is the idea that market-based (business) solutions can (in)directly address social problems (Yunus and Weber, 2010). Second, social enterprises are able to become financially autonomous and independent from external funders. Financial autonomy removes continual reliance on third parties for economic resources, simultaneously enabling long-term decision making independent of funding cycles and allowing senior management to be directed toward mission-critical activities. Third, social justice is central to social enterprises. The centrality of principles of social justice ensures that social enterprises provide better than minimal working conditions within the organization and its supply chain, prior to the pursuit of overt actions to benefit society. Social enterprises can therefore be characterized as market-orientated, financially autonomous and socially just forms of organizing that exist to address a social problem. Social entrepreneurship (the concept), social enterprise (the organizational form) and social entrepreneur (the individual) are used interchangeably throughout this chapter to explain different aspects of the developing field of social entrepreneurship. Social sport business is one type of social enterprise and is utilized as a tool for explaining aspects of the broader concept of social entrepreneurship (Westerbeek, 2010; Yunus & Weber, 2010).
