Bridget Stemmler

Stefano Gambriazio

Yu-Yin Lin

Resource Mobilization in Global Social Enterprise

Topic Overview: Global social enterprise is a sector of entrepreneurship that focuses on creating

positive social change as well as generating revenue. Resource mobilization plays a fundamental

role in the development of a social enterprise. Since their primary focus is on public interest

rather than commercial gain, social enterprises are more reliant on these resources. Since these

businesses seek to precipitate social change, a disproportionate amount of them are located in

remote, impoverished areas. The operating conditions and geographic locations of these

businesses tend to make it more difficult to access capital markets and additional resources. As

social entrepreneurs venture into new demographics, conditions, or environments, they face

obstacles such as weaker governmental infrastructure and rampant poverty. Due to these

constraints, social entrepreneurs have a much harder time generating revenue and to

experiencing growth within their enterprise compared to commercial entrepreneurs.

Purpose: The goal of this essay is to provide social entrepreneurs with a set of guidelines on

how to avoid resource constraints during the start-up stages of their social ventures.

Minimizing or even eliminating these common resource constraints will allow these social

enterprises to become more profitable. As these companies become more profitable, they will
attract more highly qualified employees, strengthening the legitimacy of these businesses.

Through following these guidelines, these social enterprise will also increase in scope, allowing

for a more widespread force of social good. Our ultimate goal in tackling this issue is to improve

the visibility and success of social enterprises, creating more social change in areas that need it.

Interdisciplinary Work: Resource mobilization within the sector of global social enterprise

combines the disciplines of international humanitarian work with traditional business

entrepreneurship. While global social enterprise in general combines these two disciplines, so too

does the specific topic of resource mobilization. Finding and utilizing resources available to

these companies employs the business end of social enterprise while the analysis of the cultural,

political, and socioeconomic factors that make these businesses particularly susceptible to these

setbacks requires an international affairs lens. These two disciplines are inextricably linked in

this field and both must be used equally to find a solution. The combination of these two

disciplines helps to better understand and brainstorm effective solutions to mobilize resources for

social enterprises. By using knowledge from both sides, research and analysis is complete and

overarching.

Genre: The genre of this essay will be a scholarly essay. There are many ways in which resource

mobilization is hindered within global social enterprise. In order to present the scope of the issue,

case studies from various social enterprises that experience these setbacks as well as proposed

solutions to these systemic problems will be explored. Zeroing in on well-known, established

social enterprises, such as Ashoka or Grameen Bank, also legitimizes the problem of resource

mobilization within this field. This will help prove the existence of this issue and convince social
entrepreneurs and corporations to change their opinion on global resource mobilization.

Although there are many hindrances, the case studies will explain how to mobilize resources

efficiently, therefore, educating social entrepreneurs and corporations that there are efficient

ways to mobilize resources globally.

Motive: Much of the discourse surrounding global social entrepreneurship takes place within the

social sciences, not within business circles. Emphasizing the business element of social

enterprise, as opposed to the activist element, will actually allow more humanitarian change.

Since social enterprises are usually run by humanitarians, solutions to the issue of resource

mobilization in social enterprise are not as readily apparent. Also, while there is quite a bit of

discourse outlining the problem surrounding resource mobilization in social enterprise, there is

not a substantial amount of literature offering easy to enact solutions to this problem.

Audience: The issue of global mobilization of resources mainly affects current entrepreneurs

and enterprises that have a strong international social justice element who is the target audience.

Specifically, a CFO or Business Development Manager in an enterprise could be interested in

reading this essay. The readers can be assumed to have a versed knowledge of the current issues

in resource mobilization within the field, and will be looking towards the exploration of potential

solutions to these issues. Although these professionals are the primary audience, the secondary

audience will include people who are not currently involved in a social enterprise but have a

vested interest in the work that these businesses are doing. These case studies provide a concrete

example of the challenges faced in global mobilization of resources and establishes the

legitimacy of the issues explored as well as proposed solutions. The essay will be published in
journals such as Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, or

Journal of International Business Studies.

Tentative Outline:

Introduction

I. Overview of Social Entrepreneurs and Resource Mobilization (Basu, Desa)

Resource Mobilization Constraints Faced by Social Entrepreneurs

I. “Unprofitable” Market (Meyskens, Robb-Post)

II. Geographic location (Basu, Desa)

III. Weaker governmental infrastructure (Basu, Desa)

IV. Rampant poverty (Basu, Desa)

Solution to Resource Constraints

I. Bricolage (Basu, Desa) (Baker, Nelson)

II. Optimization (Basu, Desa)

III. Alternative solutions (Viravaidya, Hayssen)

IV. Real Case Studies (Baker, Nelson) (Basu, Desa) (Meyskens, Robb-Post)

Conclusion

Annotated Bibliography:
 Basu, Sandip & Desa, Geoffrey. Optimization or Bricolage? Overcoming Resource

Constraints in Global Social Entrepreneurship. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal. 7: 26-49.

2013.

This journal article by Sandip Basu and Geoffrey Desa explores a general overview of the

challenges to resource mobilization that social entrepreneurs face due to the activist nature of

their business. The authors study two processes of resource mobilization that social

entrepreneurs currently use to mobilize critical resources. They compare and test their hypothesis

on a sample of 202 technology social ventures from 42 countries and discuss implications with

the processes. Throughout this scholarly essay, this article will help demonstrate the constraints

social entrepreneurs face with resource mobilization and the processes that can be used to

overcome these constraints. It will also be used to show real life case studies of social enterprises

that have applied these processes and the implications and benefits of the processes.

Meyskens, Moriah & Robb-Post, Colleen. Social Ventures from a Resource-Based

Perspective: An Exploratory Study Assessing Global Ashoka Fellows. Wiley Online Library. 34:

661-680. 2010

This journal by Moriah Meyskens and Colleen Robb-Post examines the relationship

between a resource-based view of entrepreneurship with the social value creation of 70 social

entrepreneurs. The authors do this by showing how commercial and social entrepreneurs share

similar operating processes that social entrepreneurs can use. Social entrepreneurs can learn from

how commercial entrepreneurs operate by applying a resource-based approach for resources. The

authors depict this by showing a study of 70 social enterprises, Ashoka being the most known,

who were successful in applying a resource-based lens to social entrepreneurship. This article
will be used to demonstrate why social enterprises tend to be overlooked compared to

commercial enterprises because of their profitability. Throughout this scholarly essay, this

journal will be used to demonstrate why social enterprises are viewed as unprofitable and tend to

be overlooked for funding and how they can learn from commercial entreprises operation

processes.

Hayssen, Jonathan & Viravaidya Mechai. Strategies to Strengthen NGO Capacity in

Resource Mobilization Through Business Activities. PDA and UNAIDS Joint Publication.

UNAIDS Best Practice Collection. 2001.

This journal by Jonathan Hayssen and Mechai Viravaidya demonstrates the common

setbacks social entrepreneurs face when venturing into third world countries with resource

mobilization constraints. Their intention is to increase the awareness of the opportunities, and

possible problems, associated with alternative resource mobilization strategies, with a special

focus on commercial activities. The authors are trying to demonstrate how social entrepreneurs

can implement alternative resources-generating strategies to expand their venture. This journal

will be used to demonstrate alternative solutions social entrepreneurs can use as solutions to

resource mobilization constraints.

Baker, Ted & Nelson, Reed E. Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 50, No. 3 (Sep.,

2005), pp. 329-366 Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. on behalf of the Johnson Graduate

School of Management, Cornell University.

This article by Ted Baker and Reed E. Nelson demonstrates how social entrepreneurs in

resource-poor environments were able to strive by recombining elements at hand for new
purposes (bricolage). The authors provide a field study focused on 29-resource constrained firms

and show similar behaviors between the small firms that were able to create something from

nothing. This article will be used in this scholarly essay to demonstrate how social enterprises

can use a bricolage approach to resource mobilization and what traits are exactly needed by the

firm to achieve this. This article will also be used to demonstrate the benefits and implications

real life companies face that have used an entrepreneurial bricolage approach.