For my thesis class at Parsons, we were asked to read selections from David Bornstein's book How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas.
You might say there is a trend to be followed. For example, the first instance of 'nonprofit' recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary dates from 1961. The term 'not-for-profit,' though appearing as early as 1919, did not obtain its modern or substantive usage until some time later. 'Not-for-profit' is probably more accurate, but it also serves to polarize institutions into 'for-profits' and 'not-for-profits.' Pretty loaded, no? But the label is also empowering, elevating what might be imagined as ramshackle charities ('They don't even turn a profit!') to two-can-play-at-this-game status.
Yet Bornstein, Dees, and others are fiddling with the nomenclature once again, preferring the term 'social enterprise.' The word 'entrepreneur' summons for me images of 1980's boardrooms, pyramid schemers, and the types you try to ignore at bars and cocktail parties. American Dreamers. But that's just me.
What's more remarkable in this new term is the contemporary ME-ME-ME fascination. Welfare is no longer an institutional priority - it is rather the heroic undertaking of an individual. Below, I excerpt from my response to Bornstein's text:
Bornstein claims that the sheer number of social outfits and the resulting competition have required these organizations to 'demonstrate their efficacy.' The author has not as yet suggested any real rubric to measure this effectiveness, except to propose that 'business as usual' doesn't cut it any more.
[...]
So the question remains - why doesn't 'business as usual' cut it? What is wrong, to cite the old adage, with if it ain't broke, don't fix it? [...] He suggests that many citizen sector efforts are spearheaded by a 'single entrepreneurial author,' described several times as 'obsessive' [...] the social entrepreneur is a maverick who swaggers in and smites society with a Nietzschean hammer.
[...]
According to Bornstein, with the rise of citizen sector activity, with the concentration of NFP's, there exists competition among them - and that this is somehow desirable. The author's evaluation is no doubt colored by traditional capitalism (Adam Smith's invisible hand, for example), but the analogy is somewhat problematic.
Competition in the corporate sector is regarded as an incentive to produce quality goods and services at the right price. Two corporations in a similar niche will compete for capital. How does this analogy manifest itself in social enterprises? According to Bornstein, competition likewise improves output in the citizen sector, but the organizations, I argue, are competing for the social wellbeing of their clients instead of their capital. It is not unlike two parents quarreling over what is best for the child, effectively enacting what is worst for the child.
[...]
Bornstein discusses the 'driving' forces of the trend [i.e., increased activity in the citizen sector]. He credits the spread of democracy. Is this the case? Certainly it plays a part, but the spread of capitalism is a more likely cause. After all, the social entrepreneur cannot subvert capitalistic paradigms if they aren't first there for the subverting. Moreover, the author himself points to governmental (democratic) 'impotence' against economic (capitalistic) power.
Unfettered capitalism is both the root and the medium of social enterprise. For example, Bornstein names 'surplus wealth in the economy' as another impetus for the expansion of the citizen sector. In this case, the people who have profited from the very system that perpetuates inequality are the ones making contributions to these 'corrective' outfits. The NFP is thus dependent precisely on the institution from which it seeks independence.
[...]
So the question remains - why doesn't 'business as usual' cut it? What is wrong, to cite the old adage, with if it ain't broke, don't fix it? [...] He suggests that many citizen sector efforts are spearheaded by a 'single entrepreneurial author,' described several times as 'obsessive' [...] the social entrepreneur is a maverick who swaggers in and smites society with a Nietzschean hammer.
[...]
According to Bornstein, with the rise of citizen sector activity, with the concentration of NFP's, there exists competition among them - and that this is somehow desirable. The author's evaluation is no doubt colored by traditional capitalism (Adam Smith's invisible hand, for example), but the analogy is somewhat problematic.
Competition in the corporate sector is regarded as an incentive to produce quality goods and services at the right price. Two corporations in a similar niche will compete for capital. How does this analogy manifest itself in social enterprises? According to Bornstein, competition likewise improves output in the citizen sector, but the organizations, I argue, are competing for the social wellbeing of their clients instead of their capital. It is not unlike two parents quarreling over what is best for the child, effectively enacting what is worst for the child.
[...]
Bornstein discusses the 'driving' forces of the trend [i.e., increased activity in the citizen sector]. He credits the spread of democracy. Is this the case? Certainly it plays a part, but the spread of capitalism is a more likely cause. After all, the social entrepreneur cannot subvert capitalistic paradigms if they aren't first there for the subverting. Moreover, the author himself points to governmental (democratic) 'impotence' against economic (capitalistic) power.
Unfettered capitalism is both the root and the medium of social enterprise. For example, Bornstein names 'surplus wealth in the economy' as another impetus for the expansion of the citizen sector. In this case, the people who have profited from the very system that perpetuates inequality are the ones making contributions to these 'corrective' outfits. The NFP is thus dependent precisely on the institution from which it seeks independence.
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