The Role of Local Connections in Network Configuration: A Case of Social Enterprise in India

Abstract

This paper brings together the fields of social entrepreneurship and social networks by using the social network analysis approach to map the evolution of the network of a social enterprise in India. The paper adopts a case-study approach. The paper asserts that local resources who are more proximate to the final beneficiaries, are central to a social enterprise’s network along with the social entrepreneur using the centrality measures of actors in the network, which had not been attempted in previous studies of social networks of social enterprises. The study can thus provide lessons to social enterprises in identifying local resources and positioning them in the enterprise’s network so as to optimise their utilisation. Additionally, the paper aims to throw light on high resource dynamism, a challenge that arises while leveraging these local human resources.

Keywords:

• Social enterprise
• social network
• local resource
• resource leveraging
• resource dynamism

Acknowledgment

The authors sincerely thank the founder, staff, volunteers and all actors associated with Unnati ISEC for their co-operation during this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

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