FOCUS & AIMS
Cardinal Focus of JSB
Journal of Social Business (JSB) cardinally lays focus on Social Innovation – ‘one that addresses society’s most pressing needs, and explores solutions to critical issues facing humanity’. Sustainable Social Business Creation remains at the core of entrepreneurial innovations aimed at enhancing human welfare. The Journal would thus emphasize social interventions in maximization of the economic and social impact of entrepreneurial pursuits for the disadvantaged in communities.
Given that ‘social business’ entrepreneurship is an emerging global phenomenon, the JSB will be emphatically international in its coverage in terms of scholarship (academia) and real-life (practitioner) experiences. The international dimension of JSB indeed points to overcome cultural and national barriers, and meet the needs of accelerating technological innovations taking place in the global economy.
Indeed, the Global Assembly 2010 pertinently demonstrated mapping of social innovation initiatives directed at empowering communities via rigorously tackling poverty, social disadvantages and inequalities. These remarkably reflected Microcredit & Social Business Genius Muhammad Yunus’ timely propositions encouraging innovative ideas, and his flagship make Grameen’s global experiences with entrepreneurial non-loss non-dividend social cause-driven initiatives - dealing with insurmountable problems facing the people from malnutrition, clean water, healthcare, education, housing, alternative energy needs, cleaning up environment and access to technology. The recent success of the Grameen microcredit, microfinance and social business pathway in addressing the critical needs of people at the bottom calls for adoption of community-grounded initiatives, alongside a radical re-appraisal of conventional ideas for conducting profitable entrepreneurial ventures.
Obviously, the JSB will lay emphasis on the challenges that Social Business Enterprises face as they venture to solve insurmountable problems facing humanity inside one country and across countries around the world.
Core Aims of JSB
Given infancy of scholarly enquiry, extending conceptual underpinnings of ‘Social Business’ and effectively integrating the theory and its practice in the real-life are essential for the development of this emerging field.
Until recently, the movement around Social Entrepreneurship has not showcased ‘social business’, because of its non-existence. However, with launching and creation of a number of Social Business (SB) projects within the Grameen organisations in Bangladesh and elsewhere by leading corporations namely, Danone, Veolia, Intel, BASF, Adidas, UNIQLO and Yukiguni Maitake during the last Decade (2011-2021), the concept has gained theoretical perspective as a subset of Social Entrepreneurship and an important element in New Economic ideas.
The pointer coining of ‘Social Business’ by Muhammad Yunus has revolutionized the entrepreneurial world to rethinking of capitalism with a human face by ‘harnessing the energy of profit-making to the objective of fulfilling human needs’. ‘Social Business’, as he defined, ‘is a non-loss, non-dividend enterprise – dedicated entirely to achieving a social goal – where an investor aims to help others without taking any financial gain, reinvests all profits in expanding and improving the business or for increased benefits to society’, has widened the Realm of Social Entrepreneurship.
The Journal JSB aims to provide valuable insights into academic developments in the emerging field of ‘Social Business’ (theory and research). It thus seeks to attract high quality ‘think pieces’ and research on ‘social business’ entrepreneurship from a range of scholarly perspectives including but also beyond conventional business and management. To accomplish, it would encourage the exchange of ideas and real-life experiences between academic and practitioner community.
The Journal would obviously provide a forum for a wide range of discussions of the problems and experiences of social cause-driven entrepreneurial activities – both for-profit and not-for-profit. This would offer an accessible and engaging analysis of the global expansion of financial markets in underserved communities.