Creative social enterprises in Indonesia: The creation, legitimization, and institutionalization

Abstraksi

Purposes - The article attempts to address the gaps in knowledge and theory concerning understanding the process of the creation, legitimization, and institutionalization of creative social enterprises to foster creative social enterprises. This is aiming not to define social or creative enterprise up front but to take an inclusive approach across the country that ultimately helps the businesses to reach recognise themselves. Method - This study used a qualitative approach by examining multiple case study approaches. The first case demonstrates a group of diffable, which produced handicraft in Bandung. The second one is vulnerable women in Malang, which attempts to seek income from painting batik. Last is young people, who produced a board game to promote the local culture. The case study involves observation of the organizations and interview with the key players. The analysis uses interpretative approach by involving the respondents to explain the phenomena. Results - The findings indicate that the creative industry provides a low barrier to entry and job generation to social enterprises, however, it becomes fierce competition especially for the vulnerable communities. The creative social enterprises expected to be acknowledged for their creativity instead of getting sympathy for their vulnerability. Secondly, the creative industry allows the vulnerable groups to harness the collective creativity, emotional and social skill by adopting market-driven product development. As the concept of creativity has differed so widely following certain types of society, the creative social enterprises demonstrate the sense of community that organized collective creativity. Third, the creative social enterprise brings new energy and pride to communities, reflecting their local culture and changing how people feel about themselves by generating social capital. Value – This study develops the concept of social capital theory by comparing the practices of creative social enterprises to the emerging proposition of the theory, which mainly concerns to build trust in the community under market competition.