Publications
Our research insights drive social innovation—encompassing new organisational practices, processes, and frameworks that advance human flourishing—through leading academic journals in management and entrepreneurship. Our findings reach a broad audience, including academics, practitioners, and policymakers, to ensure global influence and impact.
Prof. Harry Barkema, Prof. Jacqueline-Coyle Shapiro, Dr Eva Le Grand
Abstract
This mixed-method research combines in-depth interviews and longitudinal surveys regarding teachers and learners from an NGO educating 25,000 children in informal settlements across Ahmedabad, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh. Using nine data waves, we found that teachers, often from the local community, meaningfully shape their work, enhancing social impact for learners. We identify key challenges and enablers that allow teachers to craft their work meaningfully and effectively for social impact. Additionally, we extend the Sen/Nussbaum theoretical lens to develop a framework that can be used to identify and measure what specific target groups have reason to value to be and to do in context (i.e., their socio-cultural, economic, industry-context), and apply it to measuring the teachers’ social impact on learners in these informal settlements.
How we change the conversation
Our research challenges mainstream beliefs that top-down policies foster human flourishing for employees and learners in poverty contexts. Instead, we unravel how schools can innovate by unleashing the agency, local knowledge, and inclination of (female) teachers to craft their roles meaningfully, ultimately improving learners’ human flourishing. Our new framework enables funders, policymakers, and organisations to identify and measure what target groups have reason to value in a diversity of contexts, which is key for designing social interventions, and for monitoring, evaluating, learning, and innovating these further towards human flourishing.
Prof. Harry Barkema, Prof. Uta Bindl, Dr Lamees Tanveer
Abstract
Our mixed-methods study combines in-depth interviews and longitudinal surveys to examine women entrepreneurs in Nigeria participating in a blended learning program focused on business and financial literacy. The research highlights that the strong social bonds they formed with fellow entrepreneurs were vital, helping them manage both their enterprises and households more effectively. This led to improved economic performance and overall flourishing in both personal and professional spheres. We developed and applied a new framework, identifying four contextualised dimensions of entrepreneurial eudaimonic wellbeing - extending Sen and Nussbaum’s theory on eudaimonic wellbeing - to measure the impact of learning on these women entrepreneurs.
How we change the conversation
Our research shifts the focus from top-down policies to understanding how women entrepreneurs in emerging economies leverage their agency, local knowledge and meaningful connections to enhance their well-being - what they have reason to value - in terms of their personal growth, positive relationships, and contributing meaningfully to society. Our new framework enables funders, policymakers, and organisations understand lived experience and measure eudaimonic well-being for relevant target groups in their context, enabling them to monitor, evaluate and innovate social innovations that promote flourishing in diverse economic, cultural and industry contexts.
How Entrepreneurs Achieve Purpose Beyond Profit: The Case of Women Entrepreneurs in Nigeria
Dr Christian Busch, Prof. Harry Barkema
Abstract
We know little about how organisations successfully scale in resource-scarce environments. In this case study, we studied an organisation operating in townships and rural areas in South Africa and in Sub-Saharan Africa which uses simple organisational rules to scale bricolage—making the most of scarce resources. This led to a new conceptual model of scaling bricolage: a low-cost replication process of heuristics, that adapts across diverse countries while fostering cross-country innovation and learning.
How we change the conversation
Traditional scaling models of companies, NGOs and other international organisations often rely on financial resources and struggle to adapt to diverse contexts. In contrast, our research identifies a process for organisations to scale effectively in low-resource African contexts. This approach is low-cost, adaptable to a variety of local settings, and promotes cross country-innovation and learning.
From necessity to opportunity: Scaling bricolage across resource-constrained environments
Dr Christian Busch, Prof. Harry Barkema
Abstract
Our case study of an incubator in Kenya highlights how, in a high-uncertainty context, creating social structures that allow for flexibility can provide the conditions for unexpected discoveries of entrepreneurs and others in the local ecosystem, facilitating opportunity-inducing networks, and enterprise growth and success.
How we change the conversation
While international and national organisations aiming to support entrepreneurs in Sub-Sahara Africa typically use top-down approaches, we demonstrate, in contrast, how bottom-up organisational innovation - creating flexible social structures to identify, collaborate, and support novice entrepreneurs – can more effectively drive opportunity identification, enterprise growth and success by empowering local ecosystem actors.
Abstract
In this case study of Kenyan social enterprises, we explore how managing networks with partners in diverse local contexts helps social entrepreneurs achieve success, andhow these networks need to be managed differently for success at different stages of growth and scaling of the social enterprise.
How we change the conversation
So far we know little about how and why social enterprises successfully orchestrate networks over time as they scale, particularly in the Sub-Saharan Africa. Our research provides new academic and practical insights into how these evolving networks drive success for social entrepreneurs in emerging economies.
Align or perish: Social enterprise network orchestration in Sub-Saharan Africa