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Abstract
The paper outlines a perspective on social entrepreneurship that is based on
a Schumpeterian view of entrepreneurship as the creation of new combinations
of resources, and focuses on the nature of actors engaging in the
pursuit, and the nature of resources mobilized. So as to highlight less familiar
aspects of social entrepreneurship, analysis is primarily illustrated by
applications of a resource-based approach to the study of grassroots enterprising
in Sweden. The presentation proceeds from rudimentary cases (that
are organized around a single process of resource conversion) to more
complex ones. Social entrepreneurship is viewed as a category of entrepreneurship
that primarily (1) is engaged in by collective actors, and (2)
involves, in a central role in the undertaking’s resource mix, socially embedded
resources. Social entrepreneurship involves the tapping of socially
embedded resources and their conversion into (market-) convertible resources,
and vice-versa. In doing so, it spans the boundaries between
different property-rights regimes that define resources and their utilization.
To ensure the undertaking’s (or enterprise’s) survival over time, it would
also be expected to contribute to the replenishment of such resources, reconverting
market resources into social capital, and reproducing the context
that makes such transactions possible.