Social Entrepreneurship: Investigating the Experiences of Moroccan Artisans in Cooperatives

Abstract

This paper takes a qualitative approach to observe how social entrepreneurship interacts with the people it is purposed to benefit using the Moroccan artisan sector as a case study. Much of the literature surrounding the highly contested topic of social entrepreneurship is concerned with definitions and socio-economic implications. This study takes a specific interest in the people at the root of social entrepreneurship as well as the programs and cooperatives it employs. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (Smith & Osborn, 2015) of interviews involving four Moroccan artisans from two separate cooperatives is used to observe the artisan experience within a social entrepreneurial context. The results show that the experiences of the artisans are heavily influenced by the characterization of the cooperative in which they operate. The lived experiences of the artisans indicate that cooperatives acting as wage-labor programs are only social entrepreneurial on the surface, effectively retaining characteristics of exploitative economic apparatuses. The findings support the argument that purely entrepreneurial cooperatives, and the flat structure within them, are the preferred framework to employ social entrepreneurship programs. In the end, through communication of their lived experiences, artisans operating within the more entrepreneurial cooperative not only displayed a better understanding of themselves as individuals, but also the broader socio-economic landscape in which they exist. Understanding this will help inform future initiatives and social enterprise that are concerned with producing sustainable benefits to society and the economy.