Social Entrepreneurship : A Blueprint for Humanistic Business Organizations

‘Business as usual’ has come under heavy scrutiny. Public outrage over crooked corporate officers, the looting of pension funds, the defrauding of stockholders, and the wholesale firing of hardworking employees has reached a new high (see e.g. Jackson and Nelson 2004; Pirson 2007). Not only the anti-globalization movement of the far left, but also more traditional thinkers and the public in general are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with corporate power and influence. Overall, the criticism leveled at current capitalism is that it fails to be life-conducive. It is insufficiently set up to fulfill authentic human needs (Diener and Seligman 2004) or, in humanistic terms, it fails to make "humans the measure of all things" (Protagoras). Consequently, current business organizations are facing a predicament that Jackson and Nelson (2004: 19) compare to a “perfect storm.” In the following chapter, the author examines how organizations can weather the “perfect storm” by learning from a newly emerging field called social entrepreneurship