Business social entrepreneurs: Working towards sustainable communities through socially responsible business practices

The purpose of this Master's Degree Project (MDP) is to explore business social entrepreneurship as a means of working towards sustainable community development. Based on this exploration, I will propose recommendations to the Canadian Centre for Social Entrepreneurship on how best to support business social entrepreneurs and to develop the field of business social entrepreneurship. In the theoretical framework, overlapping the concepts of sustainable community development, business social responsibility and social entrepreneurship creates the business social entrepreneur criteria: values driven, works toward sustainable communities and has an entrepreneurial spirit and business approach. These criteria are applied to four Calgary businesses. The common themes from these businesses helped to produce the following recommendations made to the Canadian Centre for Social Entrepreneurship: (1) create a supportive business social entrepreneur network; (2) integrate the theory of business social entrepreneurship into university classrooms; and (3) publicize and disseminate business social entrepreneurship information.