Social Entrepreneurship Education in American MBA Programs and the Potential for Enriching Curricula by Incorporating a European Conceptualization of Social Business

While a robust debate about the definition of social entrepreneurship has flourished between scholars in Europe and the United States in recent years, much less attention has been given to the ways education about social... [ view full abstract ]

While a robust debate about the definition of social entrepreneurship has flourished between scholars in Europe and the United States in recent years, much less attention has been given to the ways education about social enterprise (SE) differs across the Atlantic Ocean. As education can inform practice, the recent growth in the popularity of SE as an approach to addressing social challenges makes the question of how SE is taught highly relevant.  This research examines how the types of social ventures studied in Masters of Business Administration (MBA) programs in the US compare to the differing theoretical frameworks espoused by European versus US-based scholars.  The results show that few of the case studies included in social entrepreneurship classes meet the classic US definitions of SE that are focused on system-change and addressing root causes and that a minority of cases focus on the types of SE most common in Europe.