Social entrepreneurship literature describes social entrepreneur as a hero who carries strong ethical fibre, self-motivation and commitment towards solving identified social problems with their innovative business idea (Bacq & Janssen, 2011). Literatures also describe them as an individual, who determined with egoist approach to achieve the success in social business (Zahra, Gedajlovic, Neubaum, & Shulman, 2009). In a business environment, ethics plays an important role. It is such a crucial matter that can affect organisation and its activity positively or negatively. Business leaders make difficult decision each day that demands ethical sensitivity, and clear guidelines (Ferrell & Fraedrich, 2014) . Similarly, social entrepreneurs also work in the environment of financial instability and high competitions that force them to take difficult decision and any transgression can provoke or hamper the ethical attitude of the Social entrepreneur (Zahra et al., 2009).
Social entrepreneurship is a rapidly growing field of study and has an important place in literature, still there is a significant gap to study the ethical issues in social entrepreneurship (Pate & Wankel, 2014). This paper tries to fill this gap by answering the following questions; what are the ethical dilemmas in social entrepreneurship and how a social entrepreneur makes ethical decision?
A qualitative study following face to face in-depth interviews with 12 social entrepreneurs were made in Portugal. The paper develops an understanding on the ethical climate of social entrepreneurial organisations and to examine the qualitative evidence for ethical issues social entrepreneurs in Portugal encounter.
Drawing on and adapting from conventional entrepreneurship literatures it attempts to provide a conceptual clarification of ethics within the field of social entrepreneurship (Trevino, 1986). It also develops a conceptual framework for ethical decision making. This paper explores ethical dilemmas and possible solutions to avoid them. It has contributed to the academia of social entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship ethics and also to practitioners.
References:
Bacq, S., & Janssen, F. (2011). The Multiple Faces of Social Entrepreneurship: A Review of Definitional Issues Based on Geographical and Thematic Criteria. Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 23(5–6), 373–403. Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/loi...
Dees, J. G., Emerson, J., & Economy, P. (2002). Enterprising nonprofits: A toolkit for social entrepreneurs (Vol. 186). John Wiley & Sons.
Ferrell, O. C., & Fraedrich, J. (2014). Business ethics: Ethical decision making & cases. Cengage learning.
Mair, J., Robinson, J., & Hockerts, K. (2006). Social entrepreneurship. Palgrave Macmillan New York.
Pate, L., & Wankel, C. (2014). Emerging Research Directions in Social Entrepreneurship (Vol. 5). Springer Science & Business Media.
Trevino, L. K. (1986). Ethical Decision Making in Organizations: A Person-Situation Interactionist Model. Academy of Management Review, 11(3), 601–617. https://doi.org/10.5465/AMR.19...
Zahra, S. A., Gedajlovic, E., Neubaum, D. O., & Shulman, J. M. (2009). A typology of social entrepreneurs: Motives, search processes and ethical challenges. Journal of Business Venturing, 24(5), 519–532. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbus...
2. Social innovation and social entrepreneurship
