Social entrepreneurship: interviews, journal surveys, and measures

Citation

Carraher, S. (2012), "Social entrepreneurship: interviews, journal surveys, and measures", Journal of Management History, Vol. 18 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/jmh.2012.15818daa.001

Social entrepreneurship: interviews, journal surveys, and measures

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Management History, Volume 18, Issue 4

Welcome to Issue 4 of Volume 18 of the Journal of Management History. As I write this editorial the number of citations for Journal of Management History papers has increased from 1,777 to 1,862 since the last issue. Our h index is now a 19 and our g index has increased from 29 to 30 thanks to the additional citations (Harzing, 2007). I just came back from a trip to Harvard University where 16 of my students presented 12 papers. It was a good experience for the students as they learned that they could compete with researchers from around the world. All but one of the papers was empirical, and all sought to move the field forward through normal science. I say this because of another project that I have one of those students working on. He is working in the area of social entrepreneurship. I have guest edited two journals on this topic – and it is quite a popular topic, – having been researched for around 25 years now however, the vast majority of the research has sought to define the topic, been non-empirical, and failed to provide a scale to actually measure the construct. I quickly took a look at 210 of the most cited papers on the topic – including multiple reviews of the topic – and found no scales for measuring the construct. Because of a survey that a student is directing I went to the most cited of the papers Dee’s “The meaning of social entrepreneurship” from the Kauffman Foundation (Dee, 1998) and came up with the following:

The following are descriptive of me in the social sector:

• •

  adopting a mission to create and sustain social value (not just private value);

• •

  recognizing and relentlessly pursuing new opportunities to serve my mission;

• •

  engaging in a process of continuous adaptation, innovation, and learning related to my mission;

• •

  acting boldly without being limited by resources currently in hand in the fulfilment of my mission;

• •

  exhibiting a heightened sense of accountability to the constituencies served by my mission;

• •

  caring deeply about the outcomes created by the fulfilment of my mission; and

• •

  I seek to be a “world changer” through the accomplishment of my mission.

It could use a five-, seven-, or nine-point Likert scale, or even be some other type of scale. Why do I add this in this editorial? It is not because I am trying to create some great new scale of social entrepreneurship but rather with management history we need to look at the history of concepts and fill in the gaps – not just examining the histories, but adding true value to field by suggesting gaps and how these gaps can be filled. We need to have an impact and be cited. We need to perform work that matters and that explores new areas in new ways. For instance, nearly all researchers in the social sciences are familiar with Harman’s one-factor test, for examining whether or not common method variance is influencing the results of statistical analyses but how many are familiar with Scarpello’s adaptation of Harman’s one-factor test (Scarpello & Carraher, 2008), or the standardized CNG Scree test, as opposed to Catell’s eye-balling scree test? (my students like to call this the Carraher, Nelson, & Gorsuch Scree test because I push it so much, along with the use of the parallel analysis criterion – and alternatives to LISREL, AMOS, and EQS – for performing CFA – the CNG scree test compares the slopes of the eigenvalues in order to more scientifically determine optimal dimensionality). Along these lines I would like to thank Dr Karl Moore for stepping up and coming up with the following:

Semi-structured questionnaire for interviews for senior scholars for the Journal of Management History

General questions, which would be followed up when answers suggest subjects to pursue further:

1. 1.

   Where do you grow up? Do you think that have any impact on your life’s work?

2. 2.

   Where did you go to school? Why there?

3. 3.

   What did you do after your first degree (– if second degree, where was that done, what did you do after that?) How did you get into your first major research area?

4. 4.

   Have you had any particularly significant mentor’s in your career?

5. 5.

   How has your research evolved?

6. 6.

   Looking back, what do you feel is your biggest contribution?

7. 7.

   What do the next ten years hold for you?

8. 8.

   How has your role in teaching evolved over the years?

9. 9.

   What problems or hurdles do you perceive in your area of study? How do you overcome/combat those problems/hurdles?

10. 10.

    How has the structure of our profession affected you career? (Tenure track, etc.)

11. 11.

    How did you use the freedom of tenure, of being a senior professor, if at all?

12. 12.

    Is there anything in your career you would have done differently? Any regrets?

13. 13.

    What advice would you have for today’s newly minted PhDs?

14. 14.

    There has been much criticism of business schools in the last few years, where do you think business schools should go from here?

15. 15.

    If you had not been a professor what career might have appealed to you?

16. 16.

    What one what one achievement do you believe is your greatest?

Please take a look at the questions above and let Karl know if you have any additional questions that you think we should have asked for interviews with leading management scholars for publication in the Journal of Management History. His e-mail address is Karl.moore@mcgill.ca and he looks forward to hearing from you. Please let him know by February 1, 2013 if at all possible. We want to capture useful information from as many of the Academy of Management Fellows and other academic leaders as possible. I have already completed an interview with John Fernandes, CEO of the AACSB, but I’ll plan to complete another one using the final set of questions for part of the interview. From the interview that I had with John he suggested that it is appropriate that each discipline decide how journals should be rated and that it would be useful to have surveys of journal quality across various disciplines. I have put together a list of journals and have already been researching this subject within the Academy of Management and am planning to have completed it within other disciplines as well by the time that this issue of the journal comes out. Please participate in these journal surveys and also please rate the Journal of Management History highly (as I write this I have 1,025 for 2012 from the macro-oriented divisions of the Academy of Management and have plans to survey the micro-oriented divisions soon). As talked about in the last issue, there exists a global citation market, and the JMH would like a larger supply within this market.

In this issue we have a group of very interesting – and disparate – papers that examine management history from a variety of perspectives. We have “A modern history of Japanese management thought” by Balázs Vaszkun of the Corvinus University of Budapest and William M. Tsutsui of Southern Methodist University, which is the first in a series of articles that they are doing examining Japanese and American management history, in both theoretical and empirical manners. We also have “A brief business history of an on-line distribution system for academic research called NEP, 1998-2011” by Bernardo Bátiz-Lazo of the Bangor Business School in the UK and Thomas Krichel of both Long Island University in the USA and Novosibirsk State University in Russia. In this paper the authors examine the application and use of information technology for the online distribution of recent additions to the broad literatures on economics and related areas. We have “The private life of Henri Fayol and his motivation to build a management science” by Jean-Louis Peaucelle of the University of Reunion Island, France and Cameron Guthrie of Université de Toulouse – Toulouse Business School, France, in which the authors examine why Henry Fayol contributed to management field in the manner in which he did. We have “Healthcare management education settings in the United States: history and perspective” by Peter E. Hilsenrath of the Eberhardt School of Business and Thomas J. Long School of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, University of the Pacific, in which he fills a gap in the literature with respect to graduate education in healthcare management education in the USA. In “Using history to comprehend the currency of a passionate profession” Deryk Stec of HEC Montreal examines the history of coaching. In reading this paper I was reminded of some of the work of Buciuniene and Kazlauskaite (2012); Kazlauskaite and Buciuniene (2010); and Kazlauskaite et al. (2006), in the area of Human Resources Management in different industries. In “Arthur Stinchcombe’s “liability of newness: contribution and impact of the construct” Gianpaolo Abatecola, Roberto Cafferata, and Sara Poggesi, all of the University of Rome “Tor Vergata” (Italy) the authors examine the liability of newness construct. I hope that you enjoy these articles. I also hope that you choose to cite these articles and to also use them as suggested readings in your classes and for your papers.

Shawn Carraher