An Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship

This course introduces students to organizational social entrepreneurship, a process by which opportunities to create public goods are identified and created. Being an “essentially contested concept” (Choi and Majumdar, 2014) social entrepreneurship is best understood as a cluster concept covering different applications ranging from the launching of social enterprise start-ups to the transformation of industry sectors towards sustainability. In the course we will analyze the antecedents of social entrepreneurship. An essential part of the course will be an introduction to core concepts of social entrepreneurship such as the theory of change, social impact measurement tools, and hybrid organizational form selection. To supplement academic learning with handson project experience students will work in teams on a specific social entrepreneurship problem.

Course leader

Anne-Karen Hüske - Department of Management, Society and Communication Kai Hockerts - Department of Management, Society and Communication

Target group

This is a bachelor level course. CBS Summer University courses at Copenhagen Business School is open to all and welcomes domestic and international students as well as professionals.

Course aim

Classify definitions for social entrepreneurship at various levels of analysis and discuss how these differ in terms of their impact change generation. Enumerate the antecedents of social entrepreneurial intentions and how and why they affect intentions formation. Apply the notion of antagonistic assets and discuss the process through which they can be turned into social entrepreneurship opportunities with an earned income potential. Describe the different organizational forms available for social enterprises and argue for which form is most appropriate for your social enterprise idea (and why). Identify different tools to measure the social impact of social entrepreneurship and evaluate which best suits to your group’s idea.