Creating, Managing and Leading Social Enterprises
Instructor: Devi Vijay
Office Location: K-408, New Academic Block
Email:
[email protected]Virtual Lounge Meeting Hours: Wednesday: 6:00-7:30 p.m.
Course Description and Goals
Recent years have seen a proliferation of uniquely entrepreneurial activities addressing complex
social problems, such as global poverty, social exclusions, the climate crisis and healthcare
inequalities. Subsumed under the umbrella concept of social entrepreneurship, these value-creating
activities occur both within and across the not-for-profit and for-profit sectors.
This course is designed to give students the opportunity to understand the challenges of a broad-
spectrum of not-for-profit, hybrid and for-profit social enterprises and apply themselves to
addressing these challenges through live projects. The course is aimed at students who want to
organize for social change in various ways: as volunteers, managers, leaders, on the boards, as
external consultants, perhaps even as founders. This is a breadth course which will prepare students
to address questions that concern the entire life-cycle of a social enterprise – from founding, to
different business models, scaling practices, and the social enterprise ecosystem. The course is
intended to get students to critically engage with questions on social change.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this course, students will:
• Demonstrate knowledge of concepts pertaining to social problems
• Demonstrate knowledge of concepts, practices, and challenges for social enterprises
• Identify frameworks and tools that they can apply to start-up, manage, and/or lead effective
organizations in a global arena
• Appreciate and develop capabilities relevant to the needs of the public and social sector.
Teaching Methods
Throughout the course, students will be introduced to compelling instances of social change
through cases studies, reading materials, guest speakers, and a live project.
As a part of the group project, students are expected to select a complex social problem. They may
either attempt to address one aspect of this problem by themselves, or partner with an organization
working on this problem. Students are advised to form project groups within the first week and
connect with the instructor regarding their project. The instructor may facilitate student contact with
partner organizations, if the need arises. This live project forms the fulcrum of the course; i.e. class
room discussions, reading materials and guest lectures will provide students with a foundation on
the basis of which they can generate frameworks to be applied towards solving the complex social
problems in their projects.
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Text and Resources
The required readings to prepare for each session are listed in the outline below and copies will be
made available in a course pack. The readings have been drawn from contemporary books, media
articles, and research papers. There is no textbook for this course.
Grading Policy
1. Group Project: 50%
Students will be expected to work in teams on a complex social problem.
Students are mapped to live problems that social enterprises in Kolkata grapple with. The
instructor will provide further details of this project in Session 1.
Timelines to be adhered to are as follows:
▪ Session 7: Interim Reports due (max. length 3 pages- 5%)
▪ Session 17-19: Team presentations (15%)
▪ One week from last session of course: Report on the completed project (30%)
2. Class Participation: 5%
3. Individual Assignment: 45% (30+15)
Individual assignments will be evaluated on the basis of originality of thought, reflection, and critical
thinking.
a) Digital Exhibit Assignment: 30%
Students will select a complex social problem that they wish to analyze. They will then prepare a
digital exhibit (e.g., blog, video logs, other media) analyzing various aspects of this problem – such as
socio-political factors, ways in which organizations have responded, scale of the problem, and so on.
The assignment will be staggered across the term.
There will be more detailed instructions about this component on the courseweb platform.
b) Reflection Assignment (15%): The instructor will provide additional information.
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Session Session Topics for Discussion Readings and Cases
No.
Module 1: Definitions and Debates on Social Entrepreneurship
1. The Concept and • Understanding complex social • Gregory Dees. 2001. The Meaning of Social
Process of Social problems; ‘wicked’ problems Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship • Understanding sustainable • Sachs, J. D., Schmidt-Traub, G., Mazzucato, M., Messner,
development goals D., Nakicenovic, N., & Rockström, J. (2019). Six
• Meaning of social transformations to achieve the sustainable development
entrepreneurship goals. Nature Sustainability, 2(9), 805-814.
2. What’s the Right • What characterizes social • DiAngelo, Robin. White fragility: Why it’s so hard to talk to
Thing to Do? entrepreneurs? How are they talk to white people about racism, The Good Men Project.
unique? What’s in it for them?
• Mainstreaming of social In-Class Video Discussion
entrepreneurship
3. What’s the Right • Who deserves what? • Michael Sandel. Excerpts from How Markets Crowd out Morals
Thing to Do? • What do we owe one another?
• Tool: Effectuation Video: Bunker Roy and Barefoot College
Module 2. Responding to Social Questions
4. Education • Inclusions and Exclusions in Om Prakash Valmiki. (1997). Joothan. Pages 1-35
higher education sector Vaid, D. (2016). Patterns of social mobility and the role of
• Organizing Tool: Social education in India. Contemporary South Asia, 24(3), 285-312.
Imagination
In-class exercise: Group exercise in developing canvas
5. Education Inclusion in the primary education Guest Speaker
sector
6. Gender Rights • Patriarchy bell hooks. Understanding Patriarchy.
• Occupying Public Spaces Shilpa Phadke. Why Loiter?
• Gender-based Violence
Case: SEWA
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7. Equal Opportunities: • LGBTQ questions Reading: Gagan Chhabra. 2021. Two Worlds, Too Apart to
LGBTQ+ • Inclusion of people with Converge?
Disability Rights disabilities in workspaces
• Interlocking systems of power Kulkarni, M. 2017. Namma Vaani: Lessons from an unusual
• Organizing Tool: Social social network.
Imagination
http://www.forbesindia.com/article/iim-bangalore/namma-
vaani-lessons-from-an-unusual-social-network/48531/1
In-class Exercise: Campus Queer Collective/ Writing
Exercise
8. Microfinance & • Microfinance Abhijit Banerjee & Esther Duflo. Excerpts from Poor Economics:
Livelihoods • Self-Help Groups A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty
Ram Mohan Turaga, George Kandathil & Poornima Verma.
Kudumbashree. In Varman, R. & Vijay, D (Eds.). Organizing
Resistance and Imagining Alternatives.
Case: Grameen Bank & Kudumbashree
9. Health Rights • Structural Violence Devi Vijay (2018). Being Mortal: Beyond The Great Doctors,
• Creating Bottom-Up Care And What Matters In The End. Discover Society.
Infrastructures
• Organizing Tool: Organizing Vijay, D., & Monin, P. (2018). Poisedness for social innovation:
Communities The genesis and propagation of community-based palliative care
in Kerala (India). M@ n@ gement, 21(4), 1329-1356.
Supplementary Reading
Devi Vijay, Shahaduz Zaman and David Clark. (2018).
“Translation of a community palliative care intervention:
Experience from West Bengal, India”. Wellcome Open Research. 3:
66. https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/3-66
Case Discussion: Community Organizing for Palliative Care
10. Health and the • Environmental toxicity Case: Plachimada campaign: Ravi Raman, K. (2010). Transverse
Environment solidarity: Water, power, and resistance. Review of Radical Political
Economics, 42(2), 251-268.
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Mehdiganj campaign: Varman, R., & Belk, R. W. (2009).
Nationalism and ideology in an anticonsumption
movement. Journal of consumer research, 36(4), 686-700.
11. Digital Media • Responding to needs of media Building capacity in civil society organizations
Literacy and information literacy
• Digital citizenship In-Class Case: Video
• Countering misinformation
• Organizing Tool: Organizing
Communities
Interim Reports Due
Module 3: Leading for Social Change
12. Social Enterprises • Managing diverse stakeholders: Guest Lecture 2: Meta-Organizations
and non-governmental organizations,
The Policy social movement organizations,
Environment. government agencies,
corporations, international
Challenges of public aid agencies.
Growth and Scale
13. Funding & • Finding Funds to Launch or Guest Lecture 3
Evaluation of Grow
Impact • Performance Goals, Metrics, and
Social Impact
• Why measure?
14. Funding & • Finding Funds to Launch or Guest Lecture 4
Evaluation of Grow
Impact • Performance Goals, Metrics, and
Social Impact
• Why measure?
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15. Types of Enterprise • Designing the collective for Business Model Canvas of Project Organizations:
Models growth: Challenges with Class Exercise
Building your resource mobilization (talent,
Business-model (I): funds), mission drift
The For-Profit • Different models for different
Social Business markets
Model • Selection of for-profit, hybrid or
not-for-profit business forms to
serve social missions
• Replication strategies
16. Leading for System- • In-class group and individual • Michael Sandel. 2009. Chapter 1. ‘Doing the right thing’.
Wide Change exercise From Justice: What’s the right thing to do?
• Learning to Disagree • Spicer, J., & Kay, T. (2022). Another organization is possible:
New directions in research on alternative enterprise. Sociology
Compass, 16(3), e12963.
In-Class Exercise: Asking the Other Question
17. Leading for System- Organizing Tool: • Excerpts from Spade. 2020. Mutual Aid
Wide Change Creating Systemic Change • Excerpts from Edmondson, Amy C., and Jean-François
Harvey. Extreme teaming: Lessons in complex, cross-sector leadership.
Emerald Group Publishing, 2017.
• Individual Reflections and Startup Exercises
18. Final Student Presentations
19. Final Student Presentations
20. Class Wrap-Up Critical Dialogues Continued Class Summary
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