Abstract
Different perspectives on which developmental approach is the best to tackle the problems of the poor have been debated, while change agents have been trying to address this issue in various ways. The answer lies in finding solutions to more fundamental questions including: What are some of the best ways to assist the poor in developing countries; which development strategies have better chances of success in a particular context and why; what are the strengths and limitations of these social change approaches; and what is the way forward?
Professor Steven G. Anderson, Director of School of Social Work at Michigan State University, draws upon his four decades of expertise as academician as well as practitioner and attempts to answer these questions in his latest book, New Strategies for Social Innovation: Market-Based Approaches for Assisting the Poor. His book takes the readers through four broad social development approaches that emphasize diverse market-based strategies to improve the life of disadvantaged groups. The book contains seven chapters and is just above three hundred pages in length. The chapters are organized around the approaches described by the author and towards the end an attempt is made to integrate these overarching approaches along with a comparative analysis.
The book starts with how social change approaches have been evolving in the recent past around the world and emphasizes the role of non-governmental actors and their importance in the overall process. The aim is to study and assess important social development approaches that have largely emerged outside the scope of government provisions. The author describes the four approaches as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Social Entrepreneurship (SE), Private Sustainable Development (PSD), and Fair Trade (FT) and also points out how some of these approaches have been used interchangeably in academic circles as well as in practice. But despite their similarities the author advocates that these approaches should be assessed distinctly and also provides the philosophical orientation of each. Anderson also provides reasons for assessing market based models and environmental factors, which can stimulate growth. He elaborates the context by describing major developing world social problems.
Despite the extensive research on these issues consistent criteria to assess social change models in academia are lacking. In order to fill this gap, the second chapter further develops a comparative framework that can be used to assess any social change approach. The same framework is used to assess popular social change approaches and in doing comparative analysis. Despite citing several relevant examples, this consistent conceptual framework needs empirical validation, which the author also suggests.
The next four chapters describe and critically assess each of the four development approaches. Descriptions of these social change approaches mainly include key conceptual components, their historical development, primary applications, primary strength and limitations, and the environmental conditions and skill sets required for the change agents. These four chapters set the stage for comparison between approaches using a consistent conceptual framework. The last chapter describes similarities, differences, strengths, and limitations through comparative analysis. Although the book talks mainly about alternatives to government driven development initiatives, towards the end it also suggests the potential for collaboration with government.
The first of the four approaches elaborated is CSR and how companies consider it from a strategic perspective. Anderson describes various types of CSR, explaining them through a consistent framework looking at the strengths and limitations of each approach. The issue of the emergence of external advocacy groups who demand that companies do CSR in a socially responsible manner is also raised. The author further explains that externally driven CSR is more meaningful and promising than internally driven CSR due to contradictory goals. Even in externally driven CSR the challenge of organizing sufficient resource and expertise remains. Although Anderson generally explains CSR very well, he does not adequately address how multiple actors at different level of analysis understand social change, which further affects outcomes of CSR (Aguilera et al. 2007).
The second approach is social entrepreneurship (SE), which has gained a lot of acceptance in academic and practitioner circles. However, no consensus exists about the SE concept, which the author acknowledges in presenting his synthesis. SE development happens when change agents think of innovative ways to address social problems. One of the limitations identified is the tendency to inflate claims of effectiveness and reach of SE, which makes it very difficult to differentiate between hype and reality. Thus, one of the main challenges identified is the proper documentation and analysis of success as well as limitations of the approach. Despite these limitations, SE remains one of the most notable-small scale and highly decentralized approaches for encouraging social change. It is bottom-up and mostly carried out by non-profit organizations. The book could have also included the market orientation aspect (Choi and Majumdar 2014), which sets SE apart from traditional not for profit social service provision.
The private sustainable development (PSD) approach is discussed next. PSD strategies are designed either to encourage the establishment and/or improvement of the productive capacity of small-scale, low-income businesses or to create and distribute products targeting poor consumers. Contrasting PSD to the other approaches, it differs from CSR, as it is not oriented to change the manner by which companies produce or distribute their products. Similar to the SE approach, PSD also focuses on development of innovative products and services for disadvantaged groups, but it differs in its stress on making profits.
The book further discusses PSD from three different social development perspectives. First, in the BOP (bottom of the pyramid) approach corporations/businesses develop solutions for low-income markets in order to make profits. Second, micro-enterprise development (MED) focuses on creation of small-scale business by indigenous entrepreneurs. It is a highly decentralized and bottoms-up social development approach. The third social development perspective is indigenous technology creation (ITC), a term coined by author. It is discussed at length to differentiate it from other social development approaches. In particular, ITC aims to improve the productivity of small-scale producers rather than enlarging consumption opportunities. This perspective suggests that product purchased is given more importance than product distributed freely. Author also suggests that the key strength of this approach is the potential for scaling-up which has been identified as a key requirement for a successful developmental initiative as has been shown in the case of IDE where over 3.5 million farmer could actually get benefited. He advocates PSD over other approaches like fair trade and CSR as the success is neither dependent on the developed world consumers nor on donations from corporations/business persons. However the limitation of this approach lies in the fact that it depends primarily on voluntary private actions. Moreover viability and income generation capacity of micro-enterprises is poorly understood. MED approach is similar to subsistence marketplaces approach (Viswanathan et al. 2014) which has gained popularity in the last decade.
The last approach is consumer-based Fair Trade that incorporates alternative or ethical trade norms. Examples include the retail chain, Ten Thousand Villages, and the child-labor-free organization, GoodWeave International. Fair Trade resembles many CSR initiatives in its appeal to consumers about social, economic justice and economic benefits to poor workers. However, it features much more grass-root and bottoms-up development effort and emphasizes establishing markets for small-scale entrepreneurs and producers.
Although academicians and practitioners have debated the value of CSR, SE, PSD, and Fair Trade, this book is an excellent attempt to explain how these approaches are distinct. While accepting that they overlap substantially in practice, the book highlights the need to think through these approaches systematically. Thus, the book explains with examples how these approaches are different from each other.
These market-based approaches are all about improving the lives of the most disadvantaged people, which eventually facilitate the well-being of society at large. Polak and Warwick (2013) also suggest that business solutions on large scale are the only way of transforming the lives of billions of poor across the world. The macromarketing literature includes research work on some of these approaches, but many of them lack a consistent framework and comparative study of various market based approaches. Therefore, this book is a timely addition to the development strategies literature. It fills in the gap by developing a consistent conceptual framework to assess these change approaches and also explains social, cultural and policy orientations behind in these approaches and thus makes a significant contribution to the macromarketing literature.
Overall, New Strategies for Social Innovation is well-written from an academic perspectives, but this strength is also a weakness because practitioners who might also benefit from reading the book might find it a little difficult to follow. In summary, the book suggests that it is important to choose the right problem, assess the expected outcomes, select the right target audience, pick the best fit strategy, engage with government, and monitor carefully. Moreover, it also sets the stage for academicians by providing an extensive literature review and numerous future research problems.