Conscientization: A Subversive Response to Social Dilemmas

Abstract

In the recent years, social enterprises have become center of attention both for researchers and practitioners around the globe. Social enterprises primarily work for creating social value in order to benefit the society while being self-sustainable .However these social enterprises face several unique resources challenges as compared to their commercial counterparts because of their dual mission base . There is a vast array of literature addressing financial and human resource challenges of social enterprises while challenges associated with respect to other types of resources particularly the intangible resources such as corporate reputation and image have been largely ignored. Considering the need to expand the repertoire of resources the researchers have studied so far and drawing the inference from resource based view this study explains how social enterprises are trying to overcome the challenge of building goodwill and reputation in communities of interest using multiple holistic case study design. The findings of the study also unveils how conscientization made these social enterprises more subversive and resilient in the face of continuous stress posed by the social dilemmas and mental deadlocks prevailing in underserved communities.