Business schools appear to be engaged in a transformational quest. Notably, Akrivou and Bradbury-Huang (2015) comment on the ways in which western business schools socialize students into a “fragmented” executive self. They emphasize that students learn instrumental rationality as a single, core value, even if the resulting practices are at odds with what those students would do as their “true” selves. Like Petriglieri and Petriglieri (2010), Akrivou and Bradbury-Huang (2015) suggest that students’ identity is at the heart of their learning process and that business schools should facilitate conversations (Baker, Jensen, & Kolb, 2002), both internal and with others, to discuss and reflect upon the transformational aspects of the educational journey. In other words, those authors encourage teaching approaches that support students’ capacity for integrating their “self” (micro) with others in teams (meso) and broader communities (macro).
Interestingly, it echoes the literature on social entrepreneurship education (SEE), which calls for a holistic perspective of students’ identity development(Smith & Woodworth, 2012) when they enact competing logics in team projects (Pache & Chowdhury, 2012) and engage with communities to produce social impacts (Plaskoff, 2012). However, SEE initiatives are not immune to (self)criticism and obstacles, which raises questions about their capacities to nurture aspiring social entrepreneurial identities. Students might face peer pressure, the initial expectations of their family, societal expectations and even their own doubts (Jarrodi, Byrne, & Bureau, 2019; Pache & Chowdhury, 2012). Recently, Zhu et al. (2016) warned of “identity threats” where student shift from a SE identity to a "decidedly commercial identity" (p. 612) and suggest pedagogical approaches - such as dialogue and narrative practices - that would help students integrate both commercial and social logics.
Given the identity challenge in SEE, as well as the emerging teaching proposals developed to tackle it, we care about “how published scholars in the SEE literature make sense of their field in terms of teaching objectives, concepts and methodologies”. Beyond this description, we also explore “to what extent such proposals support the students’ capacity to reveal their “self” and integrating it to meso- and macro levels”, thereby addressing Akrivou and Bradbury-Huang (2015)’s call for a “new normal” in business schools.
Our study organizes what we know about SEE as an articulation of cognitive and social learning processes at the three levels of analyses covered by SEE, i.e., the micro (individual), meso (organization) and macro (community) levels. We identify the potential for supporting self-integrated students’ development as well as extant proposals that do not fully unleash the self-integrating potential of students. We highlight two main gaps. The first gap is the topic of collective (and especially organizational) identity when team members reflect on their joint motivations and intentions. The second gap is collective efficacy as a way to discuss students’ perceptions regarding what their team (and themselves as team members) has developed in terms of expertise when expressing their intention in action.
To date, SEE has been theorized as education about and for SE: a model of social entrepreneurship education that “allows students to understand and make sense of the world in which social entrepreneurs operate” by developing bridging skills (Pache & Chowdhury, 2012: 495). We recognize the need to train students in enacting and bridging logics in project and broader communities. Yet, we complement Pache and Chowdhury’s model by outlining the skill needed to unleash the transformational capacities of SE: beyond bridging capacities, aspiring social entrepreneurs require binding skills, i.e., the skill of integrating oneself into other- and system levels while respecting personal intentions and moral values.