Developing Social Entrepreneurs for Developing Pan-African Nations

Developing Social Entrepreneurs forDeveloping Pan-African Nations

Leon C. Prieto, Louisiana State UniversityJohn K. Osiri, Louisiana State University

James GUmore, Jr., Louisiana State University

Abstract

The future welfare and development of developing Pan-African nations resides in the ability to harness human capi-tal and promote leadership from their citizens who live indeveloped countries who want to return to their respectivecountries and make a positive difference. Social ills can bereduced if there is a Social Entrepreneur Development Pro-gram in place that facilitates an easy transition for foreigntrained and educated nationals to return to their nativelands to transform their communities and nations for thebetter. The article highlights the situation of some develop-ing nations, gives a brief review of social entrepreneurshipand provided a framework that can be used to design a SociolEntrepreneur Development Program.

Introduction

There is an immediate need to address some of thesocial ills, such as poverty, disease, and unemploy-ment, facing developing Pan-African countries. A SocialEntrepreneur Development Program can address thisneed by identifying and developing transformationalleaders who can influence and effect change in Africa,the Caribbean and other regions in the Diaspora. Thisprogram would foster Pan-African progress and utilizethe exceptional leadership talent that is, for the mostpart, wasting away due to under investment in humanresource development. Ultimately, a program as ambi-tious as a social entrepreneur development program isessential in encouraging professionals that reside andare being educated and trained in developed countriesto return and aid in solving complex social problems in

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their home countries. Caribbean and African profes-sionals living in developed nations have a desire to re-turn to their home countries and make a positive dif-ference (Borjas & Bratsberg, 1996; McCormick & Wa-hba, 2001) and a social entrepreneur development pro-gram will afford those individuals the opportunity toacquire the tools they need that will allow them topositively transform their countries because realizingthe potential contributions of returning migration proc-esses toward economic development in those develop-ing regions will depend on the extent to which return-ing migrants are successfully reintegrated into society{Thomas, 2008).

In this article we begin by 1) highlighting the socio-economic state of developing Pan-African countries, 2)reviewing the literature on social entrepreneurship, 3)describing a theory of change approach and 4) recom-mending a framework that can be used to design a so-cial entrepreneur development program.

Situation in the Pan-African Diaspora

Education in Africa has been dramatically affectedby the HIV/ AIDS crisis {Gundersen a Kelly, 2008). Thisis especially true for the millions of children who havelost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS. In 2003, over 12million children in sub-Saharan Africa under the age of18 - approximately 3.5% of this cohort - were orphaneddue to AIDS (UNAIDS, 2004). The situation is not ex-pected to improve anytime soon - by 2010 the numberof HIV/AIDS orphans is expected to exceed 35 million{Gundersen & Kelly, 2008). These orphans face numer-ous challenges, including interruption or termination oftheir educations {Gundersen & Kelly, 2008). In additionto the challenges facing orphans, there are millions ofother vulnerable children: these are children who areat-risk of becoming orphans, or who live in householdsfacing financial difficulties in caring for sick adults,orphans, or both (Gundersen & Kelly, 2008). One possi-

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ble consequence of the HIV/AIDS crisis in Zimbabweand elsewhere is a deterioration in the educational op-portunities for orphans and other vulnerable children.Given that high returns are associated with education(Glick & Sahn, 2000; Psacharopoulos, 1994), the loss ofeducation for a large segment of the population wouldlikely worsen the already dire economic consequencesof the HIV/AIDS crisis (Gundersen a Kelly, 2008).

The situation in some Caribbean nations is alsodire. With an average gross domestic product of lessthan $450 per head in 2002, which has not changed inreal terms since the 1970s, Haiti remains the poorestcountry in the western hemisphere (United Nations,2003). Over 60 per cent of the population lives in ex-treme poverty and the majority is completely out ofreach of any governmental amenities and services(United Nations Development Programme [UNDP] 1999;United Nations 2000; World Bank, 2001). Over two-thirds of the population lack access to safe drinkingwater and health and sanitation facilities (Gage &Calixte, 2006). Unemployment is around 70 per centand half the adults cannot read or write (World Bank2001). The declining economy and continued politicalinstability have had huge repercussions on Haiti'shealth system. With the exception of Port-au-Prince,the capital city, and a few urban areas, there is amarked shortage of equipment and qualified personnel(Gage a Calixte, 2006).

Identifying and solving large scale social problemsrequires social entrepreneurs because only entrepre-neurs have the committed vision and inexhaustible de-termination to persist until they have transformed anentire system (Drayton, 2005). Poor Pan-African nationsneed social entrepreneurs to generate innovative solu-tions to complex problems to transform their societies.We do not dismiss that citizens of other countries canbring about transformational change, for example, agroup of young Americans started a non-profit group

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called Invisible Children, to help tackle the issue ofchild abduction, torture and in many cases murder inUganda (Invisible Children, 2009). However, it is in ouropinion that foreign-educated Pan-African professionalsmay be better suited to tackle their nation's social ills(see Theory of Change Model in Figure 1) due to thefact that they understand the culture of those regionsand they are better equipped to tackle those problemsdue to the experience they gained while they werestudying and/or working abroad.

Social Entrepreneurship

William Drayton is thought to have coined theterm 'social entrepreneur' several decades ago (Davis,2002). He is widely credited with creating the world'sfirst organization to promote the profession of socialentrepreneurship, called Ashoka: Innovators for thePublic. Drayon recognized that social entrepreneurshave the same core temperament as their industry-creating, business entrepreneur peers but instead usetheir talents to solve social problems on a society-widescale including but not limited to efforts related to in-accessibility of education and technology, pollutionincreasing, etc. Both types of entrepreneur recognizewhen there is a void that needs to be filled within soci-ety and provides innovative solutions to fi l l that void.Each type of entrepreneur envisages a systemic changethat will allow him or her to tip the society onto a newpath, and then persists until the job is done (Drayton,2002). Thompson, Alvy, and Lees (2000) described so-cial entrepreneurship as the process of applying entre-preneurial principles to creative vision, leadership, andthe will to succeed in inducing social change. The keydifference between social entrepreneurs and theirbusiness counterparts is that social entrepreneurs setout with an explicit social mission in mind. Their mainobjective is to make the world a better place. This vi-sion affects how they measure their success and howthey structure their enterprises (Dees, 2001). Generally

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speaking, two overlapping conceptions of social entre-preneurship can be identified in the literature. Forsonríe scholars, social entrepreneurship refers to thecreation of positive social change, regardless of thestructures or processes through which it is achieved(Tracey a Phillips, 2007). Indeed, this underpins theinfluential work of Dees (1998), whose definition isperhaps the most commonly cited and used. From thisperspective, social entrepreneurs are concerned withreconfiguring resources in order to achieve specific so-cial objectives, and their success is measured by theextent to which they achieve "social transformation"(Pearce, 2003; Alvord, Brown, & Letts, 2004). Whilethey may develop business ventures in order to fundtheir activities, they are as likely to rely on philan-thropy or government subsidy to achieve their socialmissions (Tracey & Phillips, 2007). A second strand inthe literature focuses on generating "earned income"in the pursuit of social outcomes (Boschee, 2001). Fromthis perspective, social entrepreneurship is concernedwith enterprise for a social purpose and involves build-ing organizations that have the capacity to be bothcommercially viable and socially constructive (Tracey &Phillips, 2007). It therefore requires social entrepre-neurs to identify and exploit market opportunities inorder to develop products and services that achievesocial ends, or to generate surpluses that can be rein-vested in a social project (Leadbeater, 1997). The jobof the social entrepreneur Is to recognize when a partof society is not working and to solve the problem byfixing the system, spreading solutions and persuadingentire societies to take new leaps (Drayton, 2005). So-cial entrepreneurs are not content just to give a fish orto teach how to fish. They will not rest until they haverevolutionized the fishing industry (Drayton, 2005).

Social entrepreneurship leads to the establishmentof new social organizations or not for profits and thecontinued innovation in existing ones (Mort, Weerawar-dena, & Carnegie, 2003). There is broad agreement

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that social entrepreneurs and their undertakings aredriven by social goals; that is, the desire to benefit so-ciety in some v̂ ay or ways. This is another way of say-ing that the social entrepreneur aims in some way toincrease "social value," i.e. to contribute to the wel-fare or well being in a given human community (Peredo& Mclean, 2006). Entrepreneurial activity with an em-bedded social purpose has been on the rise in recentdecades. A partial indicator of this surge is revealed bythe growth in the number of nonprofit organizations,which increased 31% between 1987 and 1997 to 1.2 mil-lion, exceeding the 26% rate of new business formation.However, the dynamic is even more robust, as otherforms of social entrepreneurship, beyond that occurringwithin the nonprofit sector, have also flourished in re-cent years (Austin, Stevenson, & Wei-Skillern, 2006).Social entrepreneurs play the role of change agents insociety, by: 1) adopting a mission to create and sustainsocial value, 2) recognizing and relentlessly pursuingnew opportunities to serve that mission, 3) engaging ina process of continuous innovation, adaptation, andlearning, 4) acting boldly without being Limited by re-sources currently in hand, and 5) exhibiting heightenedaccountability to the constituencies served and for theoutcomes created (Dees, 1998).

Although the concept of social entrepreneurshipmay be new, initiatives that employ entrepreneurialcapacities to solve social problems are not. For years,agencies have launched programs and implementedinterventions to help impoverished and marginalizedgroups. Government aid agencies and private founda-tions have invested billions of dollars to support suchinitiatives, and the approach in which they go about totackle their missions have been quite innovative (Al-vord. Brown, & Letts, 2004). While entrepreneurialphenomena aimed at economic development have re-ceived a great amount of scholarly attention, entrepre-neurship as a process to foster social progress has only

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recently attracted the interest of researchers (Alvord,Brown, & Letts, 2004}.

A social entrepreneur development program can bea very useful initiative that can be used to develop so-cial entrepreneurs that can positively transform Pan-African nations. A theory of change approach can beutilized to design and evaluate the program because itillustrates how the program activities can lead to trans-formational change over time. Social entrepreneurshipis seen as a way to catalyze social transformations wellbeyond solutions to the initial problems (Alvord, Brown,& Letts, 2004). From this perspective, social entrepre-neurship can produce small changes in the short termthat reverberate through existing systems to catalyzelarge changes in the longer term (Ashoka Innovators,2000). A theory of change is an ideal method that canbe used to design a social entrepreneur program and areview and a model will be provided in the next sec-tion.

Theory of Change Approach

The theory of change approach to evaluationgained popularity and wide acceptance in the 199O'sthrough its innovative use in the evaluation of compre-hensive community initiatives (CCIs) (Hannum, Marti-neau, & Reinelt, 2007). By definition, CCIs are commu-nity based initiatives that seek multiple level outcomesacross programmatic areas, such as education, health,housing, and employment {Hannum, Martineau, &Reinelt, 2007). Given the inherent complexity of CCIsevaluators found serious limitations in traditionalevaluation approaches and were forced to come upwith other approaches that would be suitable for theseinitiatives (Hannum, Martineau, & Reinelt, 2007). Thework of the Aspen Institute Roundtable on Comprehen-sive Community Initiatives for Children and Familieswas extremely important in legitimizing and expandingthe understanding of the applicability and limitations

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of the theory of change evaluation approach. The basicdescription of a theory of change approach to evalua-tion was defined by Professor Carol Weiss who proposedthat a theory of change approach requires that the de-signers of an initiative articulate the premises, assump-tions, and hypotheses that might explain the how,when, and why of the processes of change. As part ofthis approach, program designers with other key stake-holders are asked to identify key programmatic ele-ments and to indicate how these interventions mightlead to the anticipated short term, intermediate, andlong term outcomes (Hannum, Martineau, & Reinelt,2007, pp. 49 & 51).

The theory of change approach is a good fit for de-signing and evaluating a social entrepreneur develop-ment program for the following reasons: i) Social en-trepreneurship is a term with multiple meanings anddefinitions: Given the various definitions of social en-trepreneurship, the theory of change approach focus onarticulating premises and assumptions is an effectiveprocess for clarifying a program's view of social entre-preneurship and how this view shapes program activi-ties. This will work well for a social entrepreneur de-velopment program because it will effectively clarifythe assumptions. For example an assumption may bethat encouraging internationally based professionals toreturn home will benefit Africa and the West Indies.The theory of change refers to the specific guidingmodel of those responsible for developing, directing,and implementing the program (Hannum, Martineau, &Reinelt, 2007). In this approach, evaluators work withprogram staff to make the theory explicit and the as-sumptions implicit in the programs they are undertak-ing. That is, using a theory of change approach, theevaluator seeks evidence that the assumed (or theo-rized) links between program activities or processesand the desired results have been borne out by experi-ence. Researchers may then compare the expoundedprogram theory about how an intervention will unfold

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to the observations evaluators make about how it doesunfold (Weitzman, Silver & Dillman, 2002); ii) Socialentrepreneurship is a complex psychological and socialprocess: Describing the change process for individualsparticipating in a social entrepreneurship developmentprograms may be complex and challenging as describingthe change process in future social entrepreneurs. Forthat reason, a theory of change evaluation represents apromising approach for systematically tracking and un-derstanding the personal change process in individuals;iii) Leadership development programs typically hold theexpectation that individual level changes will lead toorganizational level, system level, and societal leveloutcomes (Hannum, Martineau, a Reinelt, 2007): Thesame may apply to a social entrepreneur developmentprogram. In this context, the theory of change ap-proach provides a framework that articulates the an-ticipated pathways of change and allows evaluators togather data in order to determine whether, to whatextent, and in what context individual level changeleads to broader outcomes; for example a social entre-preneur development trainee who is a trained inHealthcare Administration will learn skills that will al-low him or her to impact healthcare in their communityand nation. Figure 1 (next page) outlines a theory ofchange model and illustrate how a social entrepreneurdevelopment program can transform the Diaspora.

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The Business Renaissance Qfjarterly: Enhancing tfie Quality of Life al Work 50

Sample Social Entrepreneurship Development Pro-gram

In order for foreign educated/trained nationals ofPan-African nations to return to their respective coun-tries the authors suggest that a program that addressesthe areas of i) Cultural Readjustment: Cross-culturalreadjustment is the transition from a foreign cultureback into one's home culture. It is the experience offacing previously familiar surroundings after living in adifferent environment for a significant period of time(Adler, 1981). Research indicates that repatriation canbe an even more difficult adjustment than expatriation(Adler, 1991; Linehan, 2000). There is an unanticipatedre-entry culture shock or sense of loss and isolationresulting from a lack of current behavioral understand-ing of the repatriates' home country (Harvey, 1982).After many years of living in a foreign country and ad-justing to that culture it is sometimes difficult for peo-ple to readjust to their original culture and a modulethat deals specifically with learning to culturally adjustwith the business, social and political climate of theircountry is essential, ii) Building Social Capital: Socialcapital is described as actual and potential assets em-bedded in relationships among individuals, communi-ties, networks and societies (Burt, 1997; Nahapiet &Ghoshal, 1998). The structural dimension of social capi-tal refers to the overall pattern of connections be-tween actors-that is, whom one reaches (Burt, 1992).Various authors have emphasized the importance ofnetworks for social entrepreneurship (Mair &: Marti,2006). Structural capital defines the potential or possi-bilities that the social entrepreneur has to access in-formation, resources and support. It is important tounderstand the structural dimension of social capital,how it can be built, increased and, most importantly,maintained, since it is one of the factors that will de-termine whether and to what extent social entrepre-neurs are able to solve and alleviate social problems,and elevate them to the public sphere (Mair & Marti,

7?7e Business Renaissance Quarterly: Enhancing the Quality of Life at Work

2006). Social capital resides in relationships that aremade and an important component of the programshould be to pair the program participant with a men-tor in his or her field who will introduce the participantto formal and informal networks within their field. Astudy showed that female executives indicated thatmentors provided information, training, advice and ca-reer direction for re-entering their home organizations.In addition, mentors were seen as important for intro-ducing them to the informal networks which existed intheir organizations (Linehan & Scullion, 2002). Thishave important implications for professionals wishing toreturn to their home country because it is necessary forthem to have access to formal and informal social net-works in order for them to build the social capital thatis necessary for them to help transform their society,iii) Leadership Competencies: A key feature of thesocial entrepreneur development program should be aleadership development component in which partici-pants are taught the necessary skills they would needto lead organizations in tackling pressing issues. Ac-cording to Waddock and Post (1991) social entrepre-neurs epitomize the type of leader that Burns (1978)has called transforming, which occurs when one ormore persons engage with others in such a way thatleaders and followers raise one another to higher levelsof motivation and morality, iv) Facilitating Change:Social entrepreneurs play critical roles in bringingabout catalytic changes {Waddock & Post, 1991), and itis important that the program participants learn how toutilize techniques in managing and facilitating change

Figure 2 visually outlines the sample socialentrepreneur development program and lists theproposed modules that should be present in theprogram.

The Business Renaissance Quarteriy. Enhancing the Quality of Life at Work

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Conclusion

The situation facing developing Pan-African coun-tries is dire. Ravaging diseases, lack of education andsocial amenities are commonplace in these countriesand these social ills can be effectively curbed by con-certed efforts, which a social entrepreneur can providewith the level of persistence and diligence that is re-quired. Migrants in developed countries that have ac-quired certain expertise in various fields can becometransformational social entrepreneurs who can bringabout measurable change in their home countries ifthey return. To this end, we propose a framework forsocial entrepreneur development that can be followedto develop these individuals to enable them make posi-tive impacts in developing Pan-African countries.

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Leon C. Prieto is pursuing a Ph.D. in Human Resource andLeadership Development at Louisiana State University. Healso holds a B5 in Business Administration from Claflin Univer-sity and an MBA from Georgia Southern university. His re-search interests include social entrepreneurship, leadershipdevelopment, diversity and proactive personality.

The Business Renaissance Quarterly. Enhancing the Quality of Life at Work

John K. Osiri is an entrepreneur by interest and a scientist byprofession. He holds an Associate Degree in Petroleum Mar-keting and Business Studies from The Petroleum Training In-stitute, Nigeria and a B.Sc. in Analytical Chemistry fromGrambling State University, LA. He is currently a Ph.D. candi-date in Bio-Analytical Chemistry at Louisiana State University,Baton Rouge, LA. He is also interested in forging new re-search efforts on how to quickly and effectively transfer sci-entific research breakthroughs from academic laboratoriesinto the markets.

James Gilmore, Jr. is pursuing a Ph.D. in Human Resourceand Leadership Development at Louisiana State University.James is a former Policy Advisor to Governor KathleenBabineaux Blanco and Vice President of the Louisiana HousingFinance Agency. James is currently conducting a researchstudy on social capital, political trust, and their relationshipto citizen political and civic engagement.

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