Building a Network for Social Enterprise in Latin America
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| Angela Serino, manager of corporate
responsibility for Natura, a Brazilian cosmetics
company, and Maria de Graça Fernandes Branco,
principal of Matilde Elementary and High School.
The pair are subjects of a case produced by the
SEKN that examines how their alliance created a
strategy and support system for the school. Photo by Tania Casado |
HBS SEKN Partner Universities Instituto Centroamericano de Administración de Empresas (INCAE), Costa Rica Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey—Escuela de Graduados en Administración y Dirección de Empresas (EGADE), Mexico Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile Universidad de los Andes, Colombia Consortium between Universidad de San Andrés, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, and CEDES (a public policy think tank), Argentina Faculdade de Economia, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil |
The HBS Initiative on Social Enterprise (ISE) was founded in 1993 with the goal of expanding the body of knowledge and teaching about the management of social-purpose organizations and business involvement in the social sector. In June 2001, HBS globalized its efforts in this area by organizing the Social Enterprise Knowledge Network (SEKN) in Latin America. The SEKN seeks to generate knowledge, teaching materials, and educational programs in social enterprise with the partnership of AVINA, a foundation that supports sustainable development in the area; the HBS Latin America Research Center (LARC); and six cooperating universities throughout the region.
“The SEKN is based on a very simple premise,” says Ezequiel Reficco, a postdoctoral fellow in the HBS Social Enterprise Group. “We believe that societies don't reach their full potential unless they have a socially committed private sector and a strong nonprofit sector working together in tandem. That was an area that required strengthening in Latin America.”
In addition to Reficco, HBS professor and ISE faculty chair James E. Austin, Senior Lecturer Diana Barrett, Professor Allen S. Grossman, and LARC executive director Gustavo Herrero provide support to partner faculty as they research and develop new cases. Leadership of the group rotates among the participating universities, with Austin chairing the project for the initial two-year period.
“Our goal is not only to generate intellectual capital through field-based research that will produce books, cases, and courses, but also to assist our sister institutions to strengthen their capacity in the social enterprise area,” Austin explains. “SEKN is about knowledge generation and institution building. We are harnessing the power of a learning network that can engage in crosscountry comparative research, which is very hard to do but very valuable.”
The network is halfway through its first two-year research cycle, which focuses on the collaborations between businesses and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). For example, in 1997, the supermarket chain H-E-B expanded its regional base from Louisiana and Texas across the border to Mexico. It was the sort of companydefining moment that cases are made of, a fact not lost on professors Gerardo Lozano and Carlos Romero at Mexico's Escuela de Graduados en Administración y Dirección de Empresas (EGADE). Rather than focus on cross-cultural marketing or management issues, however, their case examines the relationship developed between H-E-B and the Monterrey Food Bank, a program administered by the Mexican branch of the nonprofit organization Caritas.
The outcome? The nonprofit, which received sporadic support in the past, suddenly had access to the organizational expertise of H-E-B's long history of involvement in the United States with food banks and distribution networks. For its part, H-E-B realized its corporate values of contributing to the communities in which it operates and generated goodwill and brand enhancement in this new market. Other case subjects range from the Young Nicaraguan Entrepreneurs program to Agricola Aritzia, a leading Chilean poultry producer that formed a partnership with Corporación Municipal de Melipilla, a public health and education nonprofit. “When companies engage in cross-sector partnerships, they reap unsuspected benefits while becoming agents for social change,” Reficco notes. “It's been wonderful to see some of these programs snowball and extend their range of influence.” The network will produce 28 cases documenting various experiences with cross-sector collaboration as well as a book comparing the experiences across the region.
In addition to supporting case development and social change in Latin America, the SEKN expects the organization to create a long-term forum for ideas between partner universities. “We're facilitators,” Reficco says. “We want to show that social enterprise can work — that this is not just a passing fad imported from the North.” The SEKN's first research cycle will conclude in August 2003 with a conference on the HBS campus that will include faculty from partner universities as well as business leaders and nonprofit managers from Latin America.
“As in all its other functional areas, HBS also takes a global perspective on social enterprise,” Austin notes. “NGOs are critical actors in the global arena that play an increasingly important role in shaping the business environment and in enabling companies to more effectively address social issues through collaborative actions. Finding innovative ways to increase the capacity of managers to address the needs of society is central to the HBS mission of developing leaders who make a difference in the world.”
