Social Entrepreneurship

Course Objective

Upon completion of the course, students will be able to analyse the
nature of local and global social and environmental problems that
motivate social entrepreneurship

Upon completion of the course, students will critically reflect and
assess the economic, business, social, environmental, and ethical
dimensions and societal implications of social entrepreneurship. This
includes the ability to critically evaluate similarities and differences
between social and conventional forms of entrepreneurship.

Upon completion of the course, students will be able to apply and
critically evaluate the central concepts used in social entrepreneurship
research, including 'managing hybridity', 'green prison', 'scaling
social impact'.

Upon completion of the course, students will develop practical knowledge
on the phenomenon of social entrepreneurship by developing, managing and
assessing actual social entrepreneurial activities and promote a “social
entrepreneurial mindset” in terms of the ability to recognize and create
opportunities to become a social entrepreneur.

Upon completion of the course, students will show improvement in their
skills in executing and writing academic research (literature review,
data collection, analysis and reporting) on the topic of social
entrepreneurship in different contexts and addressing different social
problems.

Course Content

This course deals with the question how entrepreneurial activity can be
a vehicle for creating a better world, an idea often described under the
umbrella term “social entrepreneurship”. Social entrepreneurship is a
form of entrepreneuring that aims at sustainably and innovatively
solving social, environmental and economic problems, and thus departs
from the classic understanding of entrepreneurship as “merely” oriented
at generating opportunities for profit-maximization or self-fulfillment.
Social entrepreneurship can be non-profit, for-profit or a hybrid form
and represents a phenomenon that has gained increased attention both in
practice as well as in academic research. The Netherlands in particular
hosts plenty of social enterprises that aim to address “local” social
problems such as homelessness, healthcare or education problems, as well
as social enterprises targeting “global” problems such as climate change
or even modern forms of slavery.

The course has a strong practical orientation that is based on a solid
theoretical foundation. It provides students with an in-depth
understanding of the changing social and environmental conditions that
gave rise to the phenomenon of social entrepreneurship and acquaints
students with such forms of entrepreneurship, and how they are different
from conventional entrepreneurship. In building on research-based
theoretical knowledge obtained throughout the course, students will
learn to analyze social entrepreneurship in real-life settings and
foster their ability to develop and assess actual ideas following the
spirit of social entrepreneurship. Multiple guest-lectures of social
entrepreneurs, field excursions (when possible), and hands-on practice
assignments will allow students to better understand current
developments and challenges in the field from a practical point of view.

Additional Information Teaching Methods

This course uses collaborative, action learning pedagogy. This means
that the course is designed in such a way that most of the learning of
concepts is done out of the classroom using individual assignments,
while in-class we can debate these concepts and understand where they
hold up and where they do not. We also use case studies of real social
entrepreneurs in Amsterdam, who are facing challenges to their
enterprise. This may include cases on a social enterprise.

Method of Assessment

Assessment of learning objectives

This course is designed so that each of the learning goals lare achieved
through individual and group assessments.
Individual assessments make up 60% of the final score while group
assessment makes up 40%.
Individual assessments are based on three individual written reports,
cases,
cases or other forms of written assessment.
Group assessments are based on a project using MasterChallenge platform
in which students to gain relevant experience in social entrepreneurship
by addressing real-life company challenges.

Literature

Academic articles (to be announced)