Question on social entrepreneurship?

[hissingvein708]

Hey guys, I just want to ask two questions here. What are the negative and positive impacts of social entrepreneurship?

[Peter]

Positive: They impact greatly on their community by choosing projects that create a social change for the better. Typically social companies (run by social entrepreneurs) pay their employees fair wages, ensure they are not harming the environment, are providing meaningful services. They are more interested in providing a positive social or environmental change than they are with maximizing profits. This leads us to what some consider the negative aspect.

Negative: They don't follow the typical capitalist rules of self-interest and maximizing profits. For those entrenched in the free-market ideology, the idea that a company could exist not solely to create the biggest return for it's investors in dumbfounding and rocks the foundation of capitalism. People who follow this idea believe that companies competing to maximize profits will produce the greatest efficiency in the marketplace resulting in higher prices for the consumer etc.

On a personal note: I believe in social entrepreneurship. Those who eat up the capitalist ideas typically dont see the long term costs of maximizing profits: destruction to the environment, and large disparities between social classes (rich get richer, poor get poorer)