A Note on the Social versus Private Value of Suits when Care is Bilateral

This paper re-examines the social versus private value of lawsuits when both injurers and victims can take care. The basic conclusions of that literature remain valid in this context: the private and social values generally differ, and there is no necessary relationship between them, meaning that there may be either too many or too few suits. Introducing the possibility of victim care does, however, alter the calculation of the deterrent effect of lawsuits. In particular, because allowing suits tends to reduce the incentives for victims to invest in precaution, the social value of prohibiting suits increases in direct relation to the productivity of victim care in lowering accident risk.

THE INTERNATIONAL GROWTH OF A SOCIAL BUSINESS: A CASE STUDY

ABSTRACTIn developing countries, initiatives have often been undertaken in order to fight social and environmental problems. Since the 1990s, an increase can be seen in corporate social responsibility actions, as well as increasingly strong activities by civil society organizations. Tweenty years ago, companies and civil society organizations stood wide apart from each other, with often conflicting agendas and resistance to mutual collaboration. This reality has changed significantly. Besides the phenomenon of cross-sector partnerships, we can also observe the expansion of a particular organization type, i.e., the social business, which combines two objectives that were previously seen as incompatible: financial sustainability and the generation of social value. This article aims to discuss the factors that influence the results of a social business operating in three countries: Botswana, Brazil and Jordan. The results allow understanding the challenges involved in constructing social businesses in developing countries as well as a better understanding of the very nature of those businesses, considering the social realities where they operate.

Empreendedorismo Social, o papel das IPSS: estudo de caso

O empreendedorismo social tem vindo, nas últimas décadas, a ser denominado como um novo paradigma determinante para o funcionamento da economia, em grande parte, porque a economia social tornou-se basilar na sociedade, por um lado, pelo crescimento exponencial da exclusão social, elevado desemprego e envelhecimento da população e, por outro, devido às dificuldades orçamentais dos governos. O empreendedorismo social, utilizado por Instituições Particulares de Solidariedade Social sem fins lucrativos, procura resolver problemas sociais de forma inovadora e sustentável, com a finalidade de dar resposta aos grandes desafios sociais da atualidade, através da ação social na prevenção e no apoio nas diversas situações de fragilidade, exclusão ou carência humana, promovendo a inclusão, a integração social e o desenvolvimento local. O objetivo fundamental do presente trabalho, pretende verificar até que ponto as IPSS podem ser definidas como empreendedores sociais, através da prestação de serviços, nas variadas áreas à população local, de forma a alcançar o valor social. Neste estudo enveredou-se pela metodologia qualitativa, utilizando o método do estudo de caso único, recorrendo ao questionário como instrumento de recolha de dados numa instituição particular de solidariedade social do concelho da Maia. Deste estudo foi possível concluir a IPSS tem uma proximidade às populações, através das diversas valências vocacionadas para a resolução de problemas sociais emergentes, promovendo a inclusão a integração social, e alcançar o valor social. Assim, consideramos a IPSS estudada como sendo parte integrante e promotora do empreendedorismo social.

O empreendedorismo social como promotor da integração socioprofissional: um estudo exploratório

Dissertação de Mestrado apresentado ao Instituto de Contabilidade e Administração do Porto para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Empreendedorismo e Internacionalização, sob orientação de Dra. Susana Bernardino e Professor Doutor José Freitas Santos

Proposta de implementação da responsabilidade social numa empresa de engenharia e construção

Este estudo tem como finalidade analisar a possibilidade de implementação e integração do sistema de gestão da responsabilidade social numa empresa de engenharia e construção, de acordo com a norma NP 4469-1 (2008). Um dos objetivos deste trabalho é explorar uma das atividades fundamentais para o crescimento da economia: a construção. Esta funciona como barómetro da economia nacional, ou seja, movimenta vários setores importantes na sua cadeia de produção, contribuindo na criação de riqueza como também de emprego. Como consequência das mudanças na economia nos últimos anos, o comércio nacional transformou-se em comércio globalizado, tendo como mercado não só um país mas o mundo inteiro. As empresas veem isso como um desafio, independentemente da sua dimensão. A redução de custos e a diferenciação não podem ser a única fonte de competitividade. A recente situação de instabilidade económica mundial impulsiona as empresas a inovarem na sua imagem para com os stakeholders e, assim, garantir o seu desenvolvimento e sustentabilidade financeira. A temática da Responsabilidade Social Empresarial (RSE) surgiu da necessidade de existir um espírito empresarial responsável, ao encontro do conceito de desenvolvimento sustentável (Baylis e Smith, 2005). Apesar da ampla divulgação da noção de responsabilidade social das empresas, não se verifica, no entanto, uma definição exata da mesma, pois o tema tem sido abordado de diversas formas e tem dividido opiniões ao longo dos anos. A responsabilidade social é, assim, um fruto da gestão das organizações e das profundas críticas sociais, legais, éticas e económicas, inspiradas nos parâmetros da obtenção de valor social (Parra, 2003). A sustentabilidade revela uma mudança de paradigma do mundo empresarial, na medida em que as empresas devem adotar práticas socialmente responsáveis, que integrem de forma voluntária as preocupações ambientais, sociais e económicas no desenvolvimento das suas atividades operacionais e das suas interações com as partes interessadas.

Measuring the impact with the social return on investment: the case of the social innovation HUB

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Economics from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

Measuring impact with the social return on investment: the case of the social innovation hub

There is a growing interest in social impact assessment across the private, the public and the nonprofit sector. However, there is still limited academic research produced in this area, particularly in what concerns to the application of the Social Return of Investment (SROI) methodology. The goal of this Work Project is to give an overview of the social impact measurement literature and apply the Social Return on Investment, a flagship methodology to measure impact, to the specific case of the Social Innovation Hub (SIH). The findings suggest that each 1€ invested on the SIH generates 1,21€ in terms of social value. While this value seems very appealing to use, there are some risks in monetizing impact in such way, mainly due to the lack of reliable data available for benchmarking purposes.

Social ventures : the development of the theory of sustainable contributive advantage and initial empirical tests

This thesis attempts to fill gaps in both a theoretical basis and an operational and strategic understanding in the areas of social ventures, social entrepreneurship and nonprofit business models. This study also attempts to bridge the gap in strategic and economic theory between social and commercial ventures. More specifically, this thesis explores sustainable competitive advantage from a resource-based theory perspective and explores how it may be applied to the nonmarket situation of nonprofit organizations and social ventures. It is proposed that a social value-orientation of sustainable competitive advantage, called sustainable contributive advantage, provides a more realistic depiction of what is necessary in order for a social venture to perform better than its competitors over time. In addition to providing this realistic depiction, this research provides a substantial theoretical contribution in the area of economics, social ventures, and strategy research, specifically in regards to resource-based theory. The proposed model for sustainable contributive advantage uses resource-based theory and competitive advantage in order to be applicable to social ventures. This model proposes an explanation of a social venture’s ability to demonstrate consistently superior performance. In order to determine whether sustainable competitive advantage is in fact, appropriate to apply to both social and economic environments, quantitative analyses are conducted on a large sample of nonprofit organizations in a single industry and then compared to similar quantitative analyses conducted on commercial ventures. In comparing the trends and strategies between the two types of entities from a quantitative perspective, propositions are developed regarding a social venture’s resource utilization strategies and their possible impact on performance. Evidence is found to support the necessity of adjusting existing models in resource-based theory in order to apply them to social ventures. Additionally supported is the proposed theory of sustainable contributive advantage. The thesis concludes with recommendations for practitioners, researchers and policy makers as well as suggestions for future research paths.

Regional response differences across the human amygdaloid complex during social conditioning

The amygdala is consistently implicated in biologically relevant learning tasks such as Pavlovian conditioning. In humans, the ability to identify individual faces based on the social outcomes they have predicted in the past constitutes a critical form of associative learning that can be likened to “social conditioning.” To capture such learning in a laboratory setting, participants learned about faces that predicted negative, positive, or neutral social outcomes. Participants reported liking or disliking the faces in accordance with their learned social value. During acquisition, we observed differential functional magnetic resonance imaging activation across the human amygdaloid complex consistent with previous lesion, electrophysiological, and functional neuroimaging data. A region of the medial ventral amygdala and a region of the dorsal amygdala/substantia innominata showed signal increases to both Negative and Positive faces, whereas a lateral ventral region displayed a linear representation of the valence of faces such that Negative > Positive > Neutral. This lateral ventral locus also differed from the dorsal and medial loci in that the magnitude of these responses was more resistant to habituation. These findings document a role for the human amygdala in social learning and reveal coarse regional dissociations in amygdala activity that are consistent with previous human and nonhuman animal data.

Dinâmica de institucionalização de práticas sociais: estudo da responsabilidade social no campo das organizações bancárias

The scope of this theses is to understand the dynamics of the institutionalization of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) within the Field of Banking Organizations in Brazil. Using the social analysis model put forward by Boltanski and Chiapello (1999) and reverting to the conceptual basis of the institutional approach and using Bourdieu¿s notion of interest (1996), we arrive at an analytical model that enabled us to assess CSR as part of a movement of displacement of capitalism. The theory we propose here is that with the institutionalization of CSR, actions are justified in terms of the common good, being legitimized by structural confirmations and arrangements and, at the same time, heeding the inherent interests of the Field. The means used for comprehension of the dynamics of the institutionalization of CSR were: (1) the analysis of the construction of the phenomenon of CSR, which enabled us to identify critical factors and events, leaders in Brazil and associated ratification of the institutionalization of this social practice; (2) the description of the Field of Banking Organizations and the identification of the elements of its CSR in History, which are essential steps for understanding the justifications for insertion of the Field in the movement towards CSR; (3) the identification of key players in the institutionalization of the social practice within the Field, as well as the categorization of practical actions considered socially responsible to be found in the organizations researched, analyzing them in terms of justifications and interests; (4) the analysis of the dissemination and sedimentation of structural arrangements linked to CSR in the organizations of the Field, such as specific areas created to deal with CSR, social reports and organizational websites. The field research assessed some 30 organizations and included documentary analysis and interviews. We noted that, from being a marginal and isolated action, over the course of the past decade CSR has become a structured action in banking organizations, while at the same time becoming transformed into a social value, capable of contributing to the legitimacy of the Field. In this respect, research showed that retail banks are those that are inserted in the movement towards CSR, which ratifies the thesis of the phenomenon as displacement of capitalism.

Uma análise do valor social considerado pelo Comitê de Pronunciamentos Contábeis à luz da teoria tridimensional do direito

Esta tese teve como objetivo identificar qual o valor social considerado pelo Comitê de Pronunciamentos Contábeis (CPC) na emissão de seus pronunciamentos contábeis: aproximação ou distanciamento das normas contábeis brasileiras às internacionais. A contabilidade mundial se encontra em um momento histórico, marcado pelo processo de convergência das normas contábeis e da criação de uma linguagem universal. No processo, cada país tem uma abordagem, que pode variar da convergência, onde os países mantêm suas instituições normativas, ao endosso, onde é efetuada uma tradução dos pronunciamentos contábeis. No Brasil, o processo é conduzido pelo CPC, formado sob a égide de seis instituições privadas brasileiras, cada uma representando um diferente grupo de agentes econômicos. O CPC emite um pronunciamento, que entra em audiência pública por no mínimo 30 dias. A nova versão é resultado da análise das sugestões recebidas. Utilizamos na tese a Teoria Tridimensional do Direito, de Miguel Reale, composta por norma, fato e valor, que estão sempre presentes e correlacionados de maneira funcional e dialética, e sofrem interferência do Poder, que determina quais os valores positivos, a serem preservados, e quais os valores negativos, a serem proibidos. Foram utilizados os pronunciamentos contábeis emitidos pelo CPC no que diz respeito a Conceituação Geral e Evidenciação, antes e depois da audiência pública, a norma internacional em que se baseia o pronunciamento brasileiro e as sugestões recebidas pelo CPC sobre os pronunciamentos contábeis. Os resultados apontam para uma forte associação entre sugestões que tinham como finalidade a aproximação das normas internacionais e a aceitação por parte do CPC. Além disso, os atores envolvidos no processo passam a aceitar a aproximação dos pronunciamentos contábeis brasileiros aos internacionais como realidade e aprenderam que o caminho para modificação de algum ponto do pronunciamento brasileiro é a alteração do pronunciamento do IASB.

Estratégia e prática de responsabilidade social corporativa : um estudo de caso no setor químico

Até a década de 1980 os temas sociais das grandes empresas não eram foco de interesse dos debates da área de estratégia. A globalização acirrou a concorrência e a competitividade entre as empresas. Todavia, existem aquelas que mesmo diante de um mercado mais competitivo não abrem mão do investimento na área social, seja por filosofia ou marketing. Essas empresas buscam contribuir positivamente para a melhoria do meio ambiente e com aqueles que estão envolvidos com seu negócio, como, por exemplo, funcionários, acionistas, concorrentes, entidades não governamentais e a sociedade de um modo geral. O discurso dessas empresas é a preservação do meio ambiente ao lado da emancipação social. Esta pesquisa se utilizou de uma abordagem crítica (foco social) em contraste com uma abordagem econômica (mainstream), para compreender como são elaboradas as estratégias de RSC através da voz dos atores envolvidos – “os praticantes de RSC” – observando se há predominância dos conteúdos críticos e/ou mainstream na prática da estratégia de responsabilidade social da empresa. Para que fosse possível atingir os objetivos inicialmente delimitados foi elaborado um estudo de caso único em uma empresa que declara ter em seu core business a prática de estratégia de responsabilidade social corporativa. A partir da revisão de literatura e através de dados coletados com gerentes internos, ex-funcionários, ONGs, entre outros, buscou-se compreender de que forma esta empresa lida com a dicotomia social e econômica na estratégia de responsabilidade social. Verificou-se que pode haver oportunidades para gerar valor tanto de ordem econômica como social, para os acionistas e stakeholders, nas quais a abordagem econômica e a abordagem social (utilizando os princípios do Critical Management Studies) podem conviver de forma interdependente sem se contrapor. Por outro lado, há que se ter cuidado para que a empresa não faça auto-regulação da estratégia social, legislando em causa própria. A RSC está presente no planejamento estratégico da empresa. O principal valor que estas estratégias têm dentro e fora da empresa é o reconhecimento da marca ligada a um forte envolvimento com a estratégia social e com o meio ambiente.

Growth process in business and social entrepreneurship: the case of Brazil

The purpose of the dissertation is to investigate in depth the difference between the challenges social and business entrepreneurs face in the growth phase of their business in the particular environment of Brazil. This objective has been achieved through a two-steps methodology. The first step is a set of in-depth interviews carried out with industry experts such as professors, venture capitalists, consultants, fund managers or people involved in the support of growing startups (i.e. accelerators). These interviews allowed, first, to build a general perspective on the environment entrepreneurs operate into and to identify a list of challenges entrepreneurs face in the growth process of their business. This list was completed with the additional challenges identified in the previous literature. The second step of the methodology was to test the relevance of these challenges in the mind and experience of social and traditional entrepreneurs. A questionnaire was then submitted to 145 social and 286 traditional entrepreneurs. The results were statistically analyzed to test the relative relevance of these challenges for one group of entrepreneurs with respect to the other. The outcome of the analysis was significant. The most relevant challenges identified were, for both groups, taxation, bureaucracy, finding the right employees, creating effective teams, measuring firm performance and social value creation and obtaining funds. On the other side motivation, innovation, competition and lack of market space for growth represented the least relevant issues in the minds of entrepreneurs. This rank however did not differ significantly from social to traditional entrepreneurs. This testifies that in Brazil social and traditional entrepreneurs face the same set of challenges despite the widespread belief of the opposite.

As distintas percepções sobre o empreendedorismo social

This dissertation is a literature review with exploratory and descriptive purposes, which aims to compile the different perceptions of the term Social Entrepreneurship, but not propon-being of an epistemological analysis on the topic. The main objectives of this research were: 1) to identify the convergences and divergences in the various perceptions of the Social Entrepre-neurship, from the perspectives: American, European and Brazilian; 2) identify whether Social Entrepreneurship can be considered as a new theoretical trend, or can be understood as a sub-category of an existing theory; 3) identify whether Social Entrepreneurship can be considered as practice of Social Management; 4) identify whether the "Social Business", proposed by Yunus (2010), can be considered as a completely new type of organization, as the author says. For this research were studied literary works available in the physical environment and elec-tronic database. The main concepts studied in this research were: Entrepreneurship; Social Management; Third Sector; Business Management and Social Entrepreneurship. The conclu-sions reached by this study were: 1-a) the main theoretical convergence is the Social Entrepre-neur ability to apply methods and process typically used in for-profit companies, in business that aimed social value creation; 1-b) the main difference is the different perceptions that the United States, Europe and Brazil have about what is Social Entrepreneurship. In the American perspective, these are private sector organizations operating according to market logic and that somehow generates social value. In the European perspective, closer to the social economy, emphasizes the activities of civil society organizations with public functions. In Brazil empha-sizes market initiatives aimed at reducing poverty and transform the social conditions of mar-ginalized or excluded individuals; 2) Social Entrepreneurship is an activity that incorporates much all the practices, methods and processes of commercial entrepreneurship and, as such, should not be considered as a new theoretical trend, but a subcategory of Entrepreneurship theory. 3) Social Entrepreneurship cannot be considered as a practice of Social Management, being much closer to the commercial entrepreneurship practices; 4) the "Social Business" pro-posed by Yunus (2010), closely resembled in its modus operandi with the Social Enterprises in Western Europe, thus, not supporting the author's claim.