Every cloud has a silver lining : Swedish social enterprises making an impact in emerging markets

Throughout the history, different types of businesses have reflected the zeitgeist of the specific era. Today, the globalization has led to the rise of the third wave of internationalization, which has increased the importance of emerging markets in the global business environment. An additional global trend that reflects today’s businesses is to fulfill social purposes along with making profit. The latter global trend entails the rise of the social sector in industrialized countries, including social enterprises. There is currently no universal definition of social enterprises as well as a lack of theoretical contribution on those; however, there is a lot of passion for the topic. In Sweden, social enterprises are associated with work integration social enterprises (WISEs), although other types of social enterprises exist, for example those finding opportunities in social issues in emerging markets. The purpose of this thesis is therefore to increase the holistic awareness for a wider concept of social enterprises in Sweden. To be able to increase this awareness, the aim is to examine how Swedish social enterprises turn social issues in emerging markets into business opportunities. It is further interesting to emphasize the challenges social enterprises are facing, as well as how they use their business models and strategies inorder to cope with the challenges. This study is carried out through a qualitative case-study of three Swedish social enterprises that are or were operating in emerging markets to some extent. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with one representative from each enterprise. The findings show that social enterprises have the ability to turn social issues into business opportunities. In addition, being able to balance making social impact with profit-making is one main challenge for Swedish social enterprises, especially in emerging markets as the enterprises’ core mission might be questioned regarding who their operations will benefit. The findings of this thesis have also shown that social enterprises commonly are taking the whole value-chain into account. Furthermore, as emerging markets are fast-changing and uncertain, it is difficult to plan ahead for what to come. Finally, as this thesis’ purpose states, it is thus crucial to increase the awareness and knowledge of these kinds of social enterprises since this will help them improving and increase their social impact