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Social business as a sustainable business model: making capitalism anti-fragile

  • Special Feature: Original Article
  • People, Technology and Governance for Sustainability: The Contribution of Systems and Cyber-systemic Thinking
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Abstract

In the last two centuries, developed nations have had an unprecedented generation of wealth showing a strong economic progress. Unfortunately, such economic development has not been witnessed in all countries and it does not represent the holistic face of the social progress. The main reason stands in the ideological limitations of capitalism itself, often ignoring local communities and environment while focusing exclusively on profit maximization, market share, dividends and bonuses. This failure it is also because of the division between two basic entities: nonprofit and for profit sectors. The segregation created between the economic values and social values, has created a system where the two different entities have failed to capture and integrate the multi-dimensional nature of the human being to satisfy social needs. Because of this increasing tension, the society needs to find a common ground solution, where the social and economic benefits of these two entities are merged together to generate an anti-fragile system. This research is an attempt to determine if the social business (SB) is capable to solve the problems arose from the free market idealogy, nonprofit philosophy, and the consequent social and economic inefficiency. Thus, the boundaries between the private, public and nonprofit sectors need to be changed. In addition, it is aimed to show that SB can solve social, economic, and environmental problems by using the entrepreneurial engine and the profit instrument, proving at the end to be by default a sustainable business model that respects the triple bottom line approach. The investigation method is based on literature review and theory development from three different fields: economics, development studies, and nonprofit management.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business Administration, Epoka University, Tirana, Albania

    Xhimi Hysa

  2. Financial Operations Department, Vodafone Albania, Tirana, Albania

    Erald Zerba

  3. Department of Management, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy

    Mario Calabrese

  4. Department of Economic and Juridical Studies, Parthenope University of Naples, Naples, Italy

    Clara Bassano

Authors
  1. Xhimi Hysa
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  2. Erald Zerba
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  3. Mario Calabrese
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  4. Clara Bassano
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xhimi Hysa.

Additional information

Handled by Marialuisa Saviano, University of Salerno, Italy.

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Hysa, X., Zerba, E., Calabrese, M. et al. Social business as a sustainable business model: making capitalism anti-fragile. Sustain Sci 13, 1345–1356 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-018-0566-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-018-0566-1

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