Social Business: A Step Toward Creating a New Economic and Social Order

The concept of social business flows from a firm conviction that profit or benefit is not the only motivating factor for an entrepreneur and an entrepreneur can also be motivated by social goals and enjoy success. Social business, as advocated by the author, is essentially a non-loss, non-dividend business aimed at social objectives like education, health, environment, etc. Yet another type of social business is business that is profitable but is owned by the poor and the disadvantaged, who can gain either through receiving direct dividends or some indirect benefits.Seeing the effectiveness of social business, governments may decide to create their own social businesses or partner with citizen-run social businesses and/or incorporate the lessons from the social businesses to improve the effectiveness of their own programmes. [Second Professor Hiren Mukherjee Memorial Annual Lecture]