Entrepreneurship and Social Change: Putting People at the Center of Social Transformation in Africa

Entrepreneurship is frequently considered by academics and practitioners as valuable mean to achieve social transformation (for instance in tackling poverty, inequality, homelessness, and environmental issues, such as ecological degradation, and climate change), and how these social changes are created continues to generate interest among researchers (e.g., Saebi, Foss, & Linder, 2019; George, Howard-Grenville, Joshi & Tihanyi, 2016). Considering the growing literature on entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship, and the size and scale of the African continent, surprisingly few studies have engaged with and explored how different types of entrepreneurship can lead to social change in African countries (Rivera-Santos, Holt, Littlewood, & Kolk, 2015; Zoogah, Peng, & Woldu, 2015). Moreover, while many in Africa seek profound societal change, research on social change is limited and fragmented, and ultimately fails to put the people (entrepreneurs, customers, communities and the civil society) at the centre of such societal transformation. This presenter symposium seeks to address two fundamental shortcomings in current organization, management, and entrepreneurship scholarship. First, the symposium seeks to provide deeper knowledge on the practices and processes that lead to social change in African contexts. Particularly, African countries seek societal transformation, but people tend to be at the margins of such processes and practices of social change. On one hand, entrepreneurs seek to exploit market opportunities for social change, but face several constraints, such as lack of resources, weak institutions, marginalization etc. (Littlewood, Ciambotti, Holt, & Steinfield, 2022; Busch & Barkema, 2020). On the other hand, people and communities in such contexts face severe challenges such as poverty and resource-scarcity, making change difficult to happen. This evidence calls for peculiar and localized processes and practices to social change which take effectively in consideration such challenges. Second, the symposium responds to the critique that prior research has silenced theory development in non-Western contexts (Hamann et al., 2020; Banerjee, 2022). Most recently scholars have highlighted the need to explicate how the learnings derived from a better understanding of how African communities organize local responses to local needs creates opportunities for indigenous people-centric theory development (Bruton, Zahra, Van de Ven, & Hitt, 2022). Such broader knowledge contextualizes social change by revealing ‘decolonized’ approaches to social change in Africa, as well as ‘unconventional’ approaches (Slade-Shantz, Kistruck, & Zietsma, 2018; Weber, Fasse, Haugh, & Grote, 2022; Bakker & McMullen, 2023). The paper presentations included in this symposium shed light on four practices and processes that lead to social change in Africa, while putting people at the center of this important transformation. Unexpected Events as Sources of Opportunity: Enabling Serendipity in Context of Extreme Uncertainty Author: Christian Busch; USC Marshall School of Business Prosocial Growth in the Informal Economy: A study of Microentrepreneurs in South Africa Author: David Littlewood; U. of Sheffield Management School Author: Margot Leger; Utrecht U. School of Economics Author: Philip James O'Donnell; Dublin City U. Author: Diane L. Holt; Leeds U. Business School Solidarity as Response to Crises: Organizing across Divided Spaces in South Africa Author: Ralph Hamann; U. of Cape Town Author: Jenny Soderbergh; U. of Cape Town Author: Annika Surmeier; U. of Cape Town Transforming healthcare through social franchising: Evidence from a health clinic network in Africa Author: Constance Dumalanède; Tecnologico de Monterrey Author: Giacomo Ciambotti; U. Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Author: Addisu A Lashitew; McMaster U.

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