Local managers and social entrepreneurship: Case of Konya municipalities

In today's world, where social problems are increasing, social entrepreneurship emerges as a savior concept. Especially the acceptance that social entrepreneurship has an effect on the increase of social welfare has brought the phenomenon to the agenda of local administrators. At this point, managers interested in local development are in a position to build social entrepreneurship culture in the city with social entrepreneurial projects/applications. This research focuses on the perspectives of local administrators working in Konya Metropolitan Municipality, Meram, Selçuklu and Karatay Municipality on social entrepreneurship. The main questions of the research are how these managers evaluate the impact of social entrepreneurship on social life, whether they have a study on this and what their social outputs are. In addition, it is aimed to shed light on the neglected sociological aspect of the phenomenon by dealing with the subject/structure, social capital, social type, social change themes, unlike the studies generally presented in the literature on social entrepreneurship in a purely economic framework. Using the qualitative methodology, the data obtained from the in-depth interviews conducted through semi-structured interview forms between 5 May and 10 August 2022 were analyzed. Accordingly, managers accept the idea that social entrepreneurship produces a social value in society and think that it leads to social changes. For this reason, the participants stated that municipalities should take responsibility in this area. At the same time, it has been observed that managers produce social enterprise projects with the aim of creating social benefit and social entrepreneurial projects and practices differ according to social parameters.