A Proposal for a Standard With Innovation Management System

Portuguese Social Stock Exchange – Assessment of
Sustainability
Teresa Costa and Luísa Carvalho
Economics and Management Department, Business School, Setúbal
Polytechnic Institute, Portugal
teresa.costa@esce.ips.pt
luisa.carvalho@esce.ips.pt
Abstract: Social organizations have an important role detecting and exploring social opportunities. Frequently
they are the solution to social problems where market and government fail. The social entrepreneurs identify and
solve social problems where the others just see barriers, identifying and evaluating opportunities, disseminating
new approaches and proposing sustainable solutions that contribute to create social value. This article, firstly
presents a literature review about social entrepreneurship, social innovation and social entrepreneur, considering
different approches and perspectives. Secondly, through a qualitative methodology, it is studied the projects
included in Social Stock Exchange (BVS). BVS replicates the atmosphere of a stock exchange and its role is to
approach civil society organizations and social investors that are available to support these organizations by
purchasing their social shares. This project is developing innovative approaches to attract financial resources in
order to solve social problems, including the eradication of poverty and other social risks. Through the promotion
of social investment, the BVS proposes an innovative financial model supported not in a philanthropy or charity
perspective, but deciding according with the social profit of each project. The empirical study based on interviews
applied to key-informers from social projects included in BVS. The interviews have three main objectives: 1-
Identify the degree of project attractiveness; 2-Understand the reasons of project attractiveness in terms of
funding; 3-Assess the sustainability of the projects, concerning economic dimension (eg job creation), social
dimension (eg, resolution of a social need for a vulnerable group) and environmental dimension (eg, reduction of
impacts on the environment). Finally we believe that this paper contributes to a better understanding of the
factors that promote the attractiveness of social projects and highlight the importance of improvement concerning
management practices.
Keywords: case study, social entrepreneurship, social stock exchange, social value, sustainability
1. A framework of social entrepreneurship
The conceptualization of social entrepreneurship, similarly to what occurs with the definition of
entrepreneurship is not consesual. This is an area of knowledge that is still young, which is reflected
in the variety of definitions in the literature (Seelos and Mair 2005).
Another peculiarity of this approach refers to the possibility of social entrepreneurship emerge in
various contexts; however, most studies refers to the public domain (Lewis, 1980; King and Roberts,
1987).
As Venkataraman (1997, p. 120) noted, “there are fundamentally different conceptions and
interpretations of the concept of entrepreneur and the entrepreneurial role, consensus on a definition
of the field in terms of the entrepreneur is perhaps an impossibility.” In this context we can identify
different approaches in the literature on social entrepreneurship.
To better understand social entrepreneurship, Austin et al. (2006) differentiate two types of
entrepreneurship. For these authors, commercial entrepreneurship represents the identification,
evaluation, and exploitation of opportunities that result in profits. In contrast, social entrepreneurship
refers to the identification, evaluation, and exploitation of opportunities that result in social value.
Social entrepreneurs have a sensitive understanding of social needs, and answer to these needs
through creative solutions. This attention on social value is present in various definitions of social
entrepreneurship (e.g., Peredo and McLean, 2006; Shaw and Carter, 2007). The main difference
between these two definitions of entrepreneurship (commercial and social) is the focus on social
value versus private value...
Other perspectives can be found in the literature. According with Dees (1998a), social
entrepreneurship refers to new non-profit ventures, as well as business ventures for social purposes,
including community development banks and for-profit hybrid organizations. Austin et al. (2006, p. 2)
define social entrepreneurship as “innovative, social value creating activity that can occur within or
105