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Foreword
This collection of teaching and learning resources is an outcome of a three-year project (2017–2020) “Education for smart development of social entrepreneurship” funded by the Nordplus Horizontal programme (Project No. NPHZ-2017/10198). The project was carried out by 4 partner institutions, i.e. Geri Norai LT (Good Deeds, coordinator), ARVO – the Finnish Association for Social Enterprises, the Estonian Business School, and Vilnius University. The partners from academic and non-governmental sectors aimed to develop teaching and learning resources for promoting the development of social entrepreneurship in the Baltic-Nordic countries, in this way systematising knowledge in the field, sharing and disseminating best practices in the region. Disregarding legal forms of social enterprises that exist in partner countries, the project rests on the concept of social enterprise defined by the European Commission’s Social Business Initiative (2006), which holds that the main objective of a social enterprise is to have a social impact, rather than make a profit for its owners or shareholders, by providing goods and services for the market in an entrepreneurial and innovative fashion. As social enterprises are active in variety of fields, the partners initially planned to focus on cases dealing with women’s empowerment, immigrant integration, elderly care and child welfare. In the course of the project the social issues focus was narrowed to empowerment, elderly and disabled people care and empowerment, and child welfare and youth engagement, as these are among most pressing issues in the partners’ societies. This collection is targeted at developing analytical and creative thinking skills of both undergraduate and graduate students at higher education institutions as well as beginner social entrepreneurs. It combines diverse resources: cases capturing a certain stage of social entrepreneurship development in Estonia, Finland and Lithuania, followed by brief teaching notes and suggestions for teaching particular topics or/and theories, role play scenarios and instructions; contextual notes to help students better understand restrictions and opportunities for the enterprise in focus; and a PowerPoint presentation, social business model canvas, etc. Some cases illustrate a transitional stage of social entrepreneurship development where the business founders are still searching for a strategy to become sustainable and make social impact, prompting students to create and test different strategic perspectives. Other cases offer an opportunity to reflect on outcomes and impact, how
they can be perceived and measured. In this respect, there is space for research-oriented students to elaborate available social impact measurement tools. The contents of the cases are structured following the framework of The Impact Chain’s Seven Steps, shared by the Finnish partner ARVO who developed it with several partners and stakeholders in the Measures of Good (Hyvän Mitta) project. (see Fig. 1). Following the arguments of Maas and Grieco (2017), the partners believe that all activities of social enterprises must be directed at making social impact. However, findings from a research project on the social economic impact of social enterprises in Lithuania indicate that very few social enterprises in Lithuania measure social impact, as they are just developing their business models (Pušinaitė-Gelgotė et al., 2019). In some cases, what they call impact is just outputs (ibid.). This stage of development in Lithuania contrasts with the one in Finland, where social enterprises may be very large (e.g. employing over 1,000 people), established and well-aware of their outputs, outcomes and impact. Yet, although the studied social enterprises are at different stages of development, the cases give directions on the amount and quality of resources, and intensity of actions to achieve certain outcomes and impact. Therefore, they can be used as comparative examples in the discussions in both formal and informal learning environments.
Social need
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Vision
2
Goal(s)
3 4
Actions
5 6 7
Resources
Outcomes Impact
Fig. 1. Impact value chain (Clark et al., 2004)
