Sophia University Institute of Comparative Culture Lecture Series 2018

Just Good Business:How Social Enterprises Negotiate the Dual Pressures of Market and Mission

Emily Barman


July 3rd, 2018
18:30-20:00
Room 301, 3F, Building 10, Sophia University


A growing number of private and public actors are embracing cross-sectoral partnerships and novel organizational vehicles to solve pressing social and environmental challenges. Yet, social enterprises face a dual tension: they must achieve financial sustainability while offering a high quality, affordable product that addresses a social or environmental problem. Drawing from an innovative data set of health enterprises, this paper examines the determinants of double bottom line success for these hybrid organizations, testing the salience of extant scholarship's attention to entrepreneurial traits, organizational behavior, and environmental factors. While the appeal of social enterprise is premised on the viable synthesis of social and market logics at one and the same time in organizational form, I find that successful social enterprises are characterized by founders who embrace a jurisdictional division between social versus financial expertise.


Emily Barman is an associate professor of sociology at Boston University. Her award-winning research employs organization theory to study the nonprofit sector, the evaluation/valuation of public goods, and market-based solutions to social problems. Her last book, /Caring Capitalism: The Meaning and Measure of Social Value/ (Cambridge University Press, 2016), examined the consequences of the emergence of market-based solutions to social and environmental problems for understandings of social value. Other publications include /Contesting Communities: The Transformation of Workplace Charity/ (Stanford University Press, 2006) and articles in /American Journal of //Sociology/, /Journal of Management Studies/, /Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly/, /Social Forces/, and /Social Science History/, among others.


Language: English / No Prior registration necessary
This talk is organized by Professor James Farrer (FLA)

http://icc.fla.sophia.ac.jp/html/events/2018-2019/180703_Barman.pdf

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