Noor Abu Jbara

Noor Abu Jbara

Social entrepreneurship sheds light on emerging businesses that combine commercial and social values offered to markets and communities. In other words, social entrepreneurship looks for social gains rather than financial gains or profit shares. Leading businesses have said that entrepreneurs gain the maximum benefits from social enterprises, if they choose the right business model, structure and strategy for their enterprises.

Although there are two types of business models; traditional business models and sustainable business models, both are missing key commercial and social components. We’ll be sharing a new business model, known as hybrid linking traditional and sustainable business models (HSBM) to be used by social enterprises that have profitable, social and commercial objectives.

A Closer Look at Social Entrepreneurship

In general, social entrepreneurship is about performing an innovative activity that has a social impact in a commercial venture, or a corporate, or a not-for-profit organization (NPO), or a hybrid organization that has a mixed structure between non-profit and for-profit organizations.

On the other hand, a narrow definition of social entrepreneurship is about applying managerial and business practices in an NPO, in order to allow the organization to be innovative and to create new values. The aim here is to prioritize social value rather than personal gains and profits.

Social entrepreneurship is about having an entrepreneurial mind-set that is able to exploit a business opportunity and generate social value that satisfies community and market demand. Accordingly, social enterprises have many legal forms, whether they are a non-profit or for-profit organizations, as the most important features of them is having social driven structure, norms and values.

On the other hand, scholars have argued that the base of a business model is the ability to show how the business creates, delivers and captures the use and monetary values. Fundamentally, sustainable business models are those that help social enterprises illustrate how the business will create, deliver and capture its social value.

4 Categories of Objectives

Social protection has several objectives. These are classified into 4 categories: the first is economic development; such as solving poverty, reducing economic risks, improving labor market, decreasing unemployment rate, increasing productivity and flourishing economy.

The second is social development; such as increasing inclusion, reducing inequality and improving education quality and accessibility.

The third is healthcare development, which is all about improving health systems and promoting a healthy lifestyle.

The United Nation’s SDGs

Social protection is linked with several United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs). as SDGs 1,3,5 and 8 have social protection targets. For example, goal 1.3 calls for implementing national social protection systems to achieve sustainable coverage of the poor and vulnerable by 2030.

Goal 5.4 calls for valuing unpaid and domestic work, through social protection policies, infrastructure and the promotion of shared responsibility within communities.

Goal 8.5 focuses on offering decent work and economic growth for men and women, young people and people with disabilities. Finally, goal 10.4 focuses on reducing inequalities, through adopting social protection policies.

A Feminist Perspective

It’s important to understand that choosing suitable social protection policies is very critical, in order to achieve women empowerment. For instance, in the UK, women who are educated and have higher income have experienced more domestic violence. Accordingly, we may see a shift in these policies where they’ll focus on reducing domestic abuse more than empowering women through employment and increasing their income, since these activities may have an opposite effect.

Social protection helps women manage risks, adapt with uncertainties and secure a good living. It is also a strategic intervention that secures and maintains social, economic, cultural and human rights.

Finally, it plays a major role in improving women’s economic situation, since it controls the benefits of unemployed people and informer workers, where women are found mostly in informal and unsecured sectors