Social Entrepreneurship in Armenia

Abstract

“Business must be for profit, but profit must also be for purpose”. Mads Kjaer, co-founder of MYC4, a social entrepreneur. My master thesis addresses the status of social entrepreneurship in Armenia, its models, history, present, and prospects. It also attempts to identify which aspects define the success of the social entrepreneurship, to determine the existing problems and to provide suggestions based on the cases of international and Armenian companies. Within the scope of the current research, 30 social entrepreneurs were identified and surveyed to investigate the status of social entrepreneurship in Armenia and the key determining factors affecting on their progress including the social enterprises. Case Studies and qualitative approach have been implemented to achieve the purpose. The main findings are the following. In my literature survey, I found Social Entrepreneurship is described by 4 main schools of thought, namely Social Innovation School and Social Enterprise School comprising American school of thought, while EMES School and UK Schools comprise European schools of thought. There are 2 units of observation, namely social entrepreneur and social enterprise, which contain 5 main characteristics, each characteristic is given a certain weight across the schools that differentiate each school of thought from the other. The five main characteristics are mission-services link, legal structure of social enterprises, profit distribution, earned income, governance, and entrepreneurial innovation. In my study, I attempted to investigate the status of these 5 main characteristics to describe the social entrepreneurship mindset in Armenia, as well as to find any affiliation with the main schools of thoughts.