RESPONSIBLE ENTREPRENEURSHIP VISION DEVELOPMENT AND ETHICS

66 RESPONSIBLE ENTREPRENEURSHIP
son & Wei-Skillern, 2006). Social entrepreneurs face the challenge of performing a social mission
as explicit and central in their business in order to create superior value for customers
(Dees, 1998). Social entrepreneurs as agents of change tend to create and sustain social value
recognizing and pursuing new opportunities to serve that mission. Social entrepreneurs operating
in markets that are no perfect behave as reformers making profit as means for achieving
a social mission looking for a long term social return on investment following a vision
about how to achieve real social improvements for beneficiaries and communities by a continuous
tension for innovation, adaptation and learning gaining attractive return to their investors,
being able to do more with less and using efficiently scarce resources (Dees, 1998). Social
entrepreneurship is deeply rooted in the social mission of an organization embedded in a wider
cultural and institutional context, its drive for sustainability influenced and shaped by the environmental
dynamics. Social entrepreneurs tend to pay attention to external resources to overcome
environmental barriers leveraging on relational, cultural and institutional resources. Social
entrepreneurs should be able to collect, understand and leverage cultural knowledge as key
resource explaining what is permitted by social and cultural standards in order to successfully
develop strategic and operational plans. Social entrepreneurs tend to identify gaps in the social
system as an opportunity to serve and address new needs in entrepreneurial ways showing a
high social responsible orientation. Social entrepreneurs utilize strategically their social mission
as source of legitimacy to access to other needed resources (Dacin, Dacin & Mateor, 2010).
Social entrepreneurship occurs where significant cultural, economic and environmental problems
emerge, comprising the innovative use and combination of resources in order to catalyze
social change addressing social needs (Mair & Martì, 2004). Thereby, social entrepreneurial
organizations have to adopt a corporate culture oriented to innovative, proactive and risk management
behaviors constrained by the desire to achieve the social mission to maintain a sustainable
organization (Weerwardena & Mort, 2006).
The role of rural economy as source for sustaining entrepreneurship
In the post-fordist scenario the agriculture plays a central role for diffusion of cultural values
and beliefs within rural economies that imply an own system of social, economic and
productive relationships embedded in the territories. The countryside tends to emerge as an
asset of rural economies based on: productive differentiation, coordination and integration
between industrial sectors and territory. Endogenous rural development is based on differentiation
and integration of economic activities in the same territory relying on rural local system
being able to improve the use of resources employed in agriculture. Rural and local systems
imply the collective organization of communitarian resources. The countryside as the pillar
of rural economies imply decentralization and dispersion of economic and productive systems
and functions, entrepreneurial activities and ventures, a weak inhabitancy density within
territories (Basile & Cecchi, 2001). The rural economy should be considered as social and
economic system completely integrated within capitalistic growth. The rural differentiation
seems to be a signal of structural transformation. The rural economy tends to represent the
evolutionary issue of productive relations in the countryside. The rural space is fully integrated
in a restructuring process comprising an increasing range of inter-sectorial and international
relationships (Basile & Cecchi, 1997).