Social Enterprise or Social Entrepreneurship – Which Matters and Why?

Whilst we may not have a ‘universal’ definition of a social enterprise, we do have a number that are frequently cited, capture the ethos of social enterprises andwhich are broadly similar (Birch and Whittam 1998; Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) 2002 ; Dees 2001 ; Thompson and Doherty 2006 ; Nicholls 2006 ). But if we then look at the key elements of entrepreneurship, whether it is practised in social enterprises or elsewhere (Bolton and Thompson 2004 ), it becomes apparent that an organization can be a social enterprise without being entrepreneurial. Correspondingly, social entrepreneurship is manifest in organizations that are not social enterprises when benchmarked against the popular and prevalent definitions. Therefore, and in turn, social enterprises may not be led by people we might describe as social entrepreneurs. And people we call social entrepreneurs may be active in activities and organizations that are not social enterprises. To ‘complete the circle’, a person who might be described as a social entrepreneur might well be involved in an activity or organization that is not socially entrepreneurial in the way that it behaves.