Towards a relational approach to social entrepreneurship

This paper seeks to generate new insights to social entrepreneurship, which has attracted growing scholarly interest recently. Taking a relational approach in studying process of social enterprise formation and management, it is purported in this paper that seven dimensions of relationality (Ozbilgin, 2006) combined with seven domains of discourse (Clarkson, 1998) enable us to understand the process of social entrepreneurship at multiple levels. Drawing on a case study of a faith-based social enterprise, we demonstrate how social entrepreneurs engage in such an enterprising activity, reflecting on their own constructions, values, past, present and future projects, and interacting with others within a bounded framework of a social enterprise. The originality of this work stems from its methodological approach in terms of looking at multiple relationships, but also from its inter-disciplinary nature, bridging the gap between sociological and socio-psychological, discourse based-approaches.