Toward a Complexity Context for Social Entrepreneurship: A Complex Systems Leadership Perspective on Social Enterprise

The growing field of complexity leadership argues that leadership emerges from within interactions. The specific nature of the interaction dynamics that enable organizing to emerge in social entrepreneurial enterprises provides a context for leadership in these projects. Three dimensions of this complexity context are identified and described. A gene rative context for leadership is present when new knowledge or other resources in the environment are plentiful; in this case, encouraging new ideas and innovations becomes a focus of leadership attention. A unifying context exists when organizational decomposition, time, space and bureaucracy complicate organizing efforts as they scale up; information, knowledge and other resource flows become a focus of leadership in this context. Finally, a convergent context exists as solutions to pressing problems are sought; choosing direction and promoting efficiency become important when resources are constrained. Propositions are developed about the nature and implications of these dimensions at three levels of analysis.