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This paper aims to extend social entrepreneurship theory by investigating the darker sides of innovation and enterprise. Entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship theories regarding shifting equilibriums are considered alongside other traditions. This research presents how individuals see enterprises as dark and light and discusses how such perceptions are important to building emerging theories of light and dark social entrepreneurship.

The study uses a survey of public perceptions (n = 631) regarding the social and economic impact of a total of 15 different enterprises to create a map of the darker variations of enterprises. An 11-point scale was used to evaluate perceived impact.

The mapping of each enterprise on a coordinate plane resulted in four thematic areas: traditional enterprises (light social, light economic), taboo enterprises (dark social, light economic), dark enterprises (dark social, dark economic) and alternative enterprises (light social, dark economic). Some enterprises crossed between the thematic areas.

This study opens up new directions for research on dark social entrepreneurship and research on enterprises that influence social equilibriums.

This study provides guidance for practitioners and policymakers to better understand phenomena such as dark, taboo and alternative enterprises and their nuances.

This study allows for a broader look at social entrepreneurship, innovation and enterprise to better understand dark and light nuances. Similarities between the lighter and darker forms of enterprises are noted.

This study builds on dark entrepreneurship and dark social entrepreneurship theories and concepts using empirical methods.

Entrepreneurship is ubiquitous, but it is not unequivocally a human force for social and economic good. Critical perspectives of the entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial success (and failure) are evolving in the scholarly literature. Dark side theory has emerged as a language for critiquing the dominant narratives of entrepreneurship portrayed in scholarship, education, planning, policy, and other forms of practice. This chapter draws from dark side entrepreneurship theory, Baumolian entrepreneurship, and exemplars of counterculture to craft language for an emerging theory of misfit entrepreneurship, which consists of misfit entrepreneurs and alternative enterprises. Alternative enterprises and misfit entrepreneurs are conceptualized, and literary examples (i.e., Robin Hood and Song Jiang) and modern-day examples (i.e., Hacker groups) are supplied. The unique actions and impacts of misfit entrepreneurs and alternative enterprises are offered for discussion. This new theory of misfit entrepreneurship leaves readers with exploratory questions that enhance critical perspectives and modern understandings of entrepreneurship today.

Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.

This research project aims to investigate Amish small businesses in North America to determine their success rate and the factors that explain their vitality. Amish entrepreneurs have developed some 10,000 small businesses despite taboos on motor vehicles, electricity, computers, the internet, and education. A theoretical model consisting of five types of socio‐cultural capital (human, cultural, social, religious, and symbolic) was conceptualized to explain and interpret the success of Amish enterprises. The model includes capital deficits that identify the hurdles that successful enterprises must overcome.

The research employed qualitative ethnographic methods that included participant observation, face‐to‐face interviews with business owners in eight states, and document analysis.

The paper finds that Amish businesses have a success rate above 90 percent, which is much higher than that of other American small businesses. Five types of socio‐cultural capital (human, cultural, social, religious, and symbolic) account for the high success rate of Amish enterprises.

The qualitative methods do not permit quantitative analysis or tracking the performance of businesses over an extended period of time.

Understanding the importance of socio‐cultural capital assets and deficits for business success is critical for entrepreneurs, consultants, and scholars.

The five concepts of socio‐cultural capital assets and deficits are a significant expansion of traditional social capital theory. These concepts offer a rich resource for understanding small business failure and success and merit inclusion in future research. Religious and symbolic capitals are especially pertinent for understanding enterprise building in religious and ethnic communities.

A pitch deck for Girlythings has been provided as a supplementary material for this case. Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes

In the light of the case and the accompanying case questions, the students should understand the following: socio-cultural perspectives in adopting the use of taboo products in an emerging economy and a conservative society such as Pakistan; role of government and non-governmental agencies in influencing policy framework; the application of the theory of planned behavior in channeling positive attitudes toward the use of personal hygiene products; peculiarities of formulating an expansion strategy for entrepreneurial ventures; and idiosyncrasies of developing effective business pitches.

Founded in early 2018, Girlythings was a young startup spearheaded by Tanzila Khan. It aimed at not only improving the availability of sanitary products in the emerging Pakistan market but, over and above, also removing the stigma attached to the topic of menstruation in the society. While the startup was still nestled at an incubation center, the protagonist faced the utmost challenge of deciding the fate of the venture due to the taboo nature of the product. This case is a rich description of the stigma that prevails on the topic of women health in conservative societies like Pakistan. It will help students appreciate the idiosyncrasies of operating in emerging markets and spearheading ventures that deal with sensitive issues.

This case is geared toward undergraduate students enrolled in courses of strategy, strategic marketing and entrepreneurship.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship

This paper aims to consider the exam timetabling of the re‐sit session in the Faculty of Economics and Management Sciences of Sfax. The objective is to find a timetable which minimizes the number of timeslots for exams required by the enrolled students.

Two heuristic procedures based on graph colouring are developed and tested on real data to solve the exam timetabling problem at the faculty.

These heuristics were tested on a simple example which shows the out‐performance of the second heuristic compared with the first one. When tested with the real data of the faculty, exam size heuristic provides a timetable with a shorter timeframe; however, the timetable obtained from the second heuristic is of better quality.

The main contribution of this paper is to create an automated exam timetabling that helps the faculty to manage its own enterprise system.

After completion of this case study, students will be able to understand about characteristics of urban poor in the city of Mumbai which will aid in understanding about other emerging markets as well, to apply Health Belief Model to help students analyse behaviour change model, to apply social marketing strategies to popularize a social marketing cause, to learn about non-traditional intermediaries and apply to promote a social marketing cause, to apply Ansoff matrix and evaluate various strategies for growth and to analyse various challenges faced by social entrepreneurs and enable learners to arrive at solutions (applicable for social entrepreneurs and marketing executives).

This case study looked at a Mumbai-based organization, Medow Brite Enterprises, which sold sanitary napkins under the brand FeelOn to women particularly from urban poor background. The protagonist Mrs Ameeta Neel Ramesh was at the helm of the organization and was stuck with a dilemma – whether to enter rural markets or focus on selling incinerators and aid in disposing used sanitary napkins which was adding to the volume of non-biodegradable waste in the city. In 2019, Neel Ramesh made her first investment in Medow Brite. The organization had seen turbulent times during COVID-19 outbreak. However, Neel Ramesh with her astute strategy, helped the company get back on its feet. Medow Brite instead of manufacturing started procuring quality sanitary napkins from specific vendors. In contrast to many other sanitary napkins available in the market, FeelOn had cotton sanitary napkin variant without presence of plastic in the pads. Neel Ramesh had taken a different route for sale of her sanitary napkin, she conducted awareness sessions with the help of non-governmental organizations in various locations of Mumbai as well as Maharashtra. Post these sessions she sold her sanitary napkins among the attendees of the awareness sessions.

The case study can be included in marketing management course, consumer behaviour as well as social marketing courses in both undergraduate level and postgraduate level. In addition, the case study is also suitable for social entrepreneurs and marketing executives to discuss about non-traditional sales and marketing approaches, identifying unique segments and understanding behaviour change theories.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.

This case can facilitate students to develop a deeper understanding of the social mission-based business enterprises, startups, solopreneurship, one-man companies, women-led businesses, benefits and challenges associated with service innovation and design thinking, along with the competitive forces and funding problems in scaling up a social enterprise. It can be used for the BBA, MBA or Executive MBA programs for courses on entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, design thinking, business strategy and service innovation.

This case is suitable for both the undergraduate or graduate-level programs in the area of entrepreneurship, innovation and startup management.

Dr Anita Sharma was a solopreneur who started a car driving school in Amritsar, Punjab, deploying specially designed, retrofitted cars to train People with Disabilities (PwDs). She demonstrated exceptional prowess in defying the social taboos and popular stigmas associated with PwDs by establishing “Drive On My Own” (DOMO) as an innovative project, a first-of-its-kind car-driving training school in India to provide an accessible car-drive learning experience to PwDs. She ignored the extreme sensitivity displayed in the social behavior of people around her, who were either were too sensitive for the PwDs by treating them as Person with Special Abilities (PwSAs) or were completely insensitive toward them or their problems thinking that their disabilities are their misfortunes. This continuum of insensitive to overprotective societal attitudes and lack of infrastructure concerning travel for PwSAs made this service innovation possible by design thinking. This entrepreneurial initiative enabled solo as well as group travel and tours possible for PwDs, by bringing in new inclusive modes of communication and solutions for self-mobility. It has also paved a path for social inclusiveness and livelihood sustainability by bringing positive change in the lives of PwDs and their family members. Moreover, a new design implementation is in her plans, as she wants to redesign these cars further to be accessible for people using wheelchairs too. The potential growth of this solopreneur’s social enterprise calls for scaling up the business, but it may also attract competition as the existing big tech-travel automobile companies may enter this domain soon with their driver-less or self-drive cars. Considering all these factors, Dr Anita Sharma faced multiple dilemmas: Can she formalize her project? What can be the type of business she can proceed with? How can she sustain and scale up her women-led project, better qualifying as a PwD-led social enterprise? How can she resolve the challenges related to the design implementation, funding the project and facing competition while scaling up DOMO as her social and service innovation?

Thus, this case study enables the application of concepts and theories of business enterprise, business funding, service innovation and design thinking. It also helps recognize and understand the challenges related to social entrepreneurship.

CSS: 3 Entrepreneurship.

With the increasing awareness of global warming and the important role of last mile distribution in logistics activities, the purpose of this paper is to build an environmental and effective last mile distribution model considering fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emission, vehicle capacity and two practical delivery service options: home delivery (HD) and pickup site service (PS). This paper calls the problem as the capacitated pollution-routing problem with pickup and delivery (CPRPPD). The goal is to find an optimal route to minimize operational and environmental costs, as well as a set of optimal speeds over each arc, while respecting capacity constraints of vehicles and pickup sites.

To solve this problem, this research proposes a two-phase heuristic algorithm by combining a hybrid ant colony optimization (HACO) in the first stage and a multiple population genetic algorithm in the second stage. First, the HACO is presented to find the minimal route solution and reduce distribution cost based on optimizing the speed over each arc.

To verify the proposed CPRPPD model and algorithm, a real-world instance is conducted. Comparing with the scenario including HD service only, the scenario including both HD and PS option is more economical, which indicates that the CPRPPD model is more efficient. Besides, the results of speed optimization are significantly better than before.

The developed CPRPPD model not only minimizes delivery time and reduces the total emission cost, but also helps logistics enterprises to establish a more complete distribution system and increases customer satisfaction. The model and algorithm of this paper provide optimal support for the actual distribution activities of logistics enterprises in low-carbon environment, and also provide reference for the government to formulate energy-saving and emission reduction policies.

This paper provides a great space for the improvement of carbon emissions in the last mile distribution. The results show that the distribution arrangement including HD and PS services in the last mile adopting speed optimization can significantly reduce the carbon emission. Additionally, an integrated real-world instance is applied in this paper to illustrate the validity of the model and the effectiveness of this method.

In order to reduce the high failure rate of enterprise resource planning system (ERP) projects in Indian retail, project managers need to analyze and understand the impact of risk factor on ERP implementation. The purpose of this paper is to identify the key risk factors solely or primarily for the Indian retail sector. Furthermore, this study also analyzes the impact of risk factors in ERP implementation using the structural equation model (SEM) approach. “User risk,” “project management risk,” “technological risk,” “team risk,” “organizational risk,” and “project performance risk” are the examined factors.

A theoretical model is created that explains the risk factors which may impact the success of ERP implementation. Hypotheses were also developed to evaluate the interrelationship between risk factors and success of ERP implementation. Empirical data are collected through survey questionnaire from practitioners such as project sponsors, project managers, implementation consultants, and team members who are involved in ERP implementation in the retail sector to test the theoretical model.

Using the SEM, it is found that 40 percent of the variations in ERP implementation success can be explained with the help of the model suggested in the research study. The results of the study has empirically verified that “user risk,” “project management risk,” “technological risk,” “team risk,” “organizational risk,” and “project performance risk” factors are positively impacting ERP implementation success. All six hypotheses were supported by the results of the study.

The findings from this paper can provide greater understanding of ERP implementations. Researchers, practicing managers, and those seeking to implement ERP in retail organization can also use the findings of this study as a vehicle for improving ERP implementation success in the retail sector.

The study integrates the impact of risk factor on ERP implementation. Very few studies have been performed to investigate and understand this issue. Therefore, the research can make a useful contribution.