Models for Social Good: How Social Ventures Differ on Dimensions of Culture, Marketing, and Operations

Abstract

Social ventures are defined as start-up organizations with a social focus. As a whole, the current climate of social entrepreneurship and social ventures is volatile, still not clearly defined, and not very well understood by the general public and those that may be interested in pursuing an opportunity within this field. However, the current body of literature lacks any systematic classification of social entrepreneurship and fails to recognize how dimensions such as culture, marketing, and operations can vary even further within the field. This thesis creates an analytical framework along three dimensions (culture, marketing, and operations) and qualitatively analyzes eight cases of young, food and beverage social ventures in New York. This study intends to add another level of organization (the business model typology) to this ambiguous field, understand how firms of different models differ along culture, marketing, and operations, and develop a clearer sense of direction of where research in social entrepreneurship should go.