Social Enterprises as a Means of Urban Poverty Mitigation: An Exploration

The first, eighth and tenth of the UN sustainable development goals focus on poverty alleviation, decent work and economic growth, and reduced inequalities. Fast developing nations are experiencing rapid urbanization leading to widespread urban poverty. Neoliberalism and the shrinking phenomenon of welfare state have drastically reduced governmental role in containing the situation, shifting the focus to nonprofit and private sector, making them more involved and responsible. This has led to rapid emergence of social enterprises as government mechanisms alone is not sufficient to address complex social issues like unemployment, poverty, or social exclusion. This study explores how social enterprises can be positioned as a viable solution towards mitigating the effects of urban poverty. This exploratory study starts off with an investigation of the different operational models of Social Enterprises (SE) with an objective of explicating the phenomena of social enterprises and arrive at a definition which suits the study. It further looks at the available literature on social enterprises and poverty leading to a detailed analysis of social enterprises - poverty alleviation (SE-PA) landscape. We found that the available SE-PA research is heterogenous in nature and hence lacks a solid theoretical foundation that can sufficiently explain the role played by SE in PA. Hence, based on the outputs of the review and analysis, a conceptual framework is proposed. By empirically testing the conceptual framework, we hope to provide a model that is capable of comprehensively depicting the SE - PA phenomena and that the findings will go on to influence policy and legislation to recognize the SE entity for what it is and their corresponding needs.