Abstract
In recent years, social entrepreneurship has emerged as a global phenomenon due to the gap between social and environmental demand, and the supply side of available resources to meet these demands (Nicholls, 2006). Social entrepreneurs use entrepreneurial activities to provide sustainable solutions to social and environmental problems and achieve their social mission and create social and economic value. In the field of social entrepreneurship, values of two cultures—culture of charity and culture of entrepreneurial problem-solving, are integrated, in which the satisfaction of giving is correlated with social benefits of rigorous problem-solving (Dees, 2012). The dual-mission social enterprises integrate social and economic development and contribute in reducing economic, education, health, technology and other disparities among marginalised individuals, families and communities (Briar-Lawson et al., 2020). This justifies the need of promoting social entrepreneurship across the globe.
Social entrepreneurship requires action—an intentional behaviour. Thus, taking the decision of whether to act on the identified opportunity depends on the degree of uncertainty (McMullen & Shepherd, 2006). This uncertainty exists due to diverse reasons. It may be because of one’s judgment based on the experience, or various other internal and external environments, as social entrepreneurship is a highly contextual phenomenon (Singh, 2016). ‘Context matters in social entrepreneurship, and it matters a lot. Social entrepreneurs are deeply entrenched in the context where they operate: they respond to its challenges, are shaped by it, and attempt to shape it in turn’ (Farhoud et al., 2023). Social entrepreneurs deal with a range of uncertainties, while solving social problems.
The concept of ‘uncertainty’ refers to an epistemic state at the limits of knowledge (Wakeham, 2015). It is concerned with ‘what is known or believed without certainty’ and ‘what is not known’. This concept attracts researchers in areas concerned with decision-making and knowledge (Wakeham, 2015). A strong connection is thus inevitably established between uncertainty and social entrepreneurship. Researchers have emphasised different aspects and dimensions of uncertainty. Thus, exploring how such aspects and dimensions of uncertainty influence the behaviour of social entrepreneurs and drive the process of social entrepreneurship will be exciting.
Social entrepreneurs operate in an uncertain environment. The COVID-19 pandemic is the recent example. It has changed the world (Bacq & Lumpkin, 2021). The emergence of COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 brought radical, unanticipated economic, political and social changes. Majority of the literature focused on the response of social entrepreneurship in addressing issues created and exacerbated from this virus has been recognised by scholars, but the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on social entrepreneurship are unexplored at this time (Jalagat, 2021; Weaver, 2021). In this context, it is equally critical to explore how COVID-19 has impacted social enterprises, in terms of (a) financial performance, challenges and opportunities; (b) influence of geographical location on opportunities and (c) resilience strategies employed to address these issues (Weaver, 2021). There is a necessity to discuss sustainability and survival of these social enterprises in COVID-19 and beyond (Jalagat, 2021). It highlights the importance of social entrepreneurial leadership in this new COVID-19 pandemic era (Oberoi et al., 2021). To adjust to this new reality, more entrepreneurship is required, particularly social forms focussing on value co-creation (Ratten, 2020). A perpetual need exists to enhance social entrepreneurial mindset and encourage technology adoption and innovation to tackle uncertain situations and wholesaling social change (Hecht, 2008).
Technology and innovation enable social entrepreneurs to bring positive social change (Singh & Majumdar, 2015). Most of the time, social entrepreneurs are working in a resource-constrained environment. It makes them creative, innovative to innovate products and processes by adopting technology as a tool. Technology is acceptable by the society when it is developed as per the local unmet needs and social entrepreneurs facilitate the target groups to adopt it for social change (Damani & Sardeshpande, 2015). In the context of uncertainty, social entrepreneurs have adopted technology in terms of know-how, technology as product, innovations and so on for solving the problems of uncertainty. It also helps the social entrepreneurs to increase the employment opportunities (Osabohien et al., 2022). Technology diffusion, in terms of ownership of a website, communication with the clients through e-mail, has a positive impact on uncertainties of employment creation by social enterprises. Apart from that this diffusion of technology helps the social entrepreneurs to be part of the broader ecosystem of social entrepreneurship. For systemic social change, scalability, sustainability and social impact of the social enterprises are required. Along with the technology diffusion, catalytic innovation is very important to assure the social impact of a large group of people (Auvinet & Lloret, 2015). In the presence of uncertainty, such as COVID-19 pandemic, almost all sections of the people suffered. Social entrepreneurs need to innovate such processes, services and products, which help them to achieve scale and sustainability. In this situation, the adoption of technology and catalytic innovation play a pivotal role in social enterprises to create social value and social impact.
During uncertainty and crisis, social enterprises need to be resilient. Digital technology enables resilient outcomes of social enterprises during the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria (Nakpodia et al., 2023). During adverse situations, social enterprises probably adapt their operations to mitigate the social challenges (Muñoz et al., 2020). Here, adaptations explain how social enterprises depend on their internal capabilities and how they access external support to address the gaps in internal capabilities during the crisis (Mithani, 2020). Digital technologies help this process of adaptation and also help to overcome the crisis. It enables social enterprises to become more sustainable resilient organisations (Iyortsuun, 2016; Saqib & Zhang, 2021). The impact of digital technology on social enterprises in the process of social value creation depends on available infrastructure in the countries (Li, 2023). If the digital economy supports the infrastructure for the adoption of digital technology, social enterprises can bring social change with scale and sustainability. This scalability of social enterprises in addressing social problems might resolve the issues of crisis during uncertain events. The special issue has raised several important issues related to technology adoption the social entrepreneurs in the time of uncertainty.
Overall, several critical questions remain unanswered in the context of uncertainty, social entrepreneurship and the role of technology, which demand scholarly attention. For example, how should social entrepreneurs think, plan and act in uncertain times? How do they deal with uncertainty in general? How do social entrepreneurs identify opportunities in uncertain situations? What is the role of technology in solving social problems innovatively in uncertain times? How can technology be deployed in the social entrepreneurship process for wholesaling social change in uncertain situations? How can technology help entrepreneurs to efficiently deal with uncertainties in the social entrepreneurial process? and so on.
The special issue explores the role of technology in the area of social entrepreneurship during the uncertainty. On one hand, it has focused on the issue of how social entrepreneurs responded to the social problems during uncertainty; on the other hand, it has also discussed how the pandemic impacted the social enterprises—challenges faced, opportunities found and resilience strategies adopted to deal with the issues, particularly during COVID-19 pandemic.
The articles included in this special issue have addressed several challenges of uncertainty faced by the social entrepreneurs and their strategies to deal with these challenges specifically during the COVID-19 pandemic. Articles in this special issue deal with how adoption of technology helps social enterprises to address the challenges faced by Indian Artisans, how the unmet needs of healthcare facilities of the rural people in the Indian State of Kerala are addressed by a unique health intervention of the state, not-for-profit organisation and public sector bank. One of the papers analyses the role of technology in creating a balance between value creation and value capture in the context of solid-waste management social enterprises during the COVID-19 pandemic. An important query on how new technology is adopted and implemented by social entrepreneurs working in the education sector is discussed in one of the papers. This article also explores the role of innovative technology in promoting educational development of the marginalised section, while discussing the barriers faced by these social entrepreneurs. In this issue, innovative business strategy is also discussed. One paper discusses how a social enterprise from the non-profit sector survived in COVID-19 pandemic by adopting innovative resilience business strategies and a sustainable model of social enterprise. Another paper explores the possibility of creating an inclusive business model to protect the economic rights of the rubber grower’s cooperatives in Meghalaya, India. In this issue, the issue of disability in social entrepreneurship is also explored. How social entrepreneurs with disabilities deal with the uncertainty and how technology enables them to perform entrepreneurial activities during this uncertainty is explained in this paper. Overall, this special issue discusses the role of technology adoption by social enterprises in addressing the issues of uncertainties.