Social entrepreneurship ignatian leadership-based: A proposal across jesuit education

Abstract

Social entrepreneurship is a recent economic phenomenon, not totally defined yet. Many experts think that social entrepreneurship can reduce the gap between the business world and the social world. It has received attention from government agencies, companies, non-governmental organizations, citizens' movements and universities and business schools. When we talk about entrepreneurship, we refer to the process of creating a new company. In the case of social startups, the main objective is to solve an urgent social problem through sustainable economic organization. In the process of social entrepreneurship, the role of the social entrepreneur is critical. He is the person who makes the decision to start a business with a social problem orientation. Leadership is an important feature in the personality of the entrepreneur; he has the role of guiding the mission and people of the organization. There are many types of leadership styles: directive leadership, authoritarian leadership, values-based leadership, etc. However, there are not many studies about the leadership of the social entrepreneur. The main objective of this work is to develop a theoretical basis for the leadership of the social entrepreneur based on the ignatian leadership, through argumentative method. The ignatian leadership emphasizes personal growth-oriented transformation. Indeed, the mission of the social entrepreneur is to generate a social transformation. It also relates to the reflections of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace about The Vocation of the Business Leader . The Jesuit educational model is summarized in the four principles of the Ledesma-Kolvenbach Paradigm: humanitas, utilitas, justice and fides. Universities of the Society of Jesus have applied these principles to fulfill this mission, training of the best for the world. A second objective of this work is to recognize the contribution of social entrepreneurship as an opportunity to further implement this educational style in leadership training. We rely on some successful examples from universities of the Society of Jesus. We believe that this work can contribute to the forum in order to address the incipient growth of social entrepreneurship from the perspective of the Jesuit university tradition and it can help one reflect deeply by their orientation in practice for training social entrepreneur ignatian leadership-based.