Value creation within societal entrepreneurship : a process perspective

Sammanfattning: Social entrepreneurship is given considerable attention within literature andacademic research despite that fact it is an area that needs considerable attentionand research. The main purpose for societal entrepreneurs is to create societalvalue but there can be difficulties to understand value creation within the area.Important components within Total Quality Management (TQM) are processorientation and value creation. A TQM perspective with processes in focusprovides opportunities to clarify societal value creation within societalentrepreneurship initiatives.The main purpose of this thesis has been to explore how societal value is createdwithin the area of societal entrepreneurship and the underlying purpose has beento contribute to the development of knowledge and understanding about thesocietal entrepreneurship area. In order to fulfil the purpose one literature casestudy and three empirical case studies have been conducted with processes infocus. The literature case study was conducted first and it resulted in a theoreticalprocess map based on a process perspective, which showed how societal value wascreated within a societal entrepreneurship initiative. After that the three empiricalcase studies were conducted separately and the findings from the empirical casestudies were compared with the previously developed theoretical process map. Across case analysis was made to find out if the process map could be confirmed,developed or rejected.The result of the case studies contributes to earlier findings within research andgives a common, comprehensive and simplified picture of a complex phenomenonand an opportunity to understand how societal value is created. A general overallprocess map is presented that gives a picture of how value is created within thearea of societal entrepreneurship. The result shows the management process andsupport process fields. The map also shows a main process that is furtherdeveloped with input, output and sub processes. The studies point out that societalvalue is created through processes and that societal value creation can be describedout of a process orientation perspective. Important components to create societalvalue have been found to be: 'unidentified needs'; 'knowledge about the context';'identified need'; 'an idea or a vision'; and some kind of 'organization' andimportant activities to create value seem to be: 'being in the context'; 'analysis ofknowledge'; 'searching for solution'; 'organize and mobilize'; and 'realize'. Fieldswhere support processes are performed that are of importance in societal valuecreation have been identified. Those fields are 'creation of financing opportunities';'performance of political decisions and acts'; 'development and use of networks';'establishment of initiative'; 'creation of media information'; 'development and useof scientific results'; and 'development and use of competence'.The map does have potential for development. Further studies need to be donewithin the area concerning how societal value is created and to get an even morecomprehensive process map of the societal entrepreneurship area but the resultpresented in this thesis is a start to understanding how societal value is created andto develop knowledge and understanding of the societal entrepreneurship area.