Jarrod Ormiston

Understanding the Value Created by Social Entrepreneurs: Exploring social mission, impact and entrepreneurial adjustment

This thesis investigates how social entrepreneurs understand the value created from their venture. This includes an understanding of: 1) How social entrepreneurs formulate and develop their social mission; 2) How they measure and understand the value created (e.g. social, economic, cultural) by their venture; 3) Whether and how they re-evaluate and refine their mission. The research also explores whether they see their venture differently to other participants (such as employees, consumers, government agencies etc.) and how they make their (potentially different) understandings social.

The research is focusing specifically on the Latin American region and the methodology being adopted is that of qualitative case studies. In the field of academia, this will assist the building of a framework to analyse the performance of social entrepreneurial activities. In a practical sense, the findings from this research will give insight into how social entrepreneurs can achieve social value creation and evaluate their performance. To a lesser extent, implications for corporate entrepreneurship also arise with respect to many of similar understandings required.