Fostering Resilience in the Rural Context Through Sustainability Agency in Social Entrepreneurship

There are social enterprises operating in rural areas in developing countries with solutions and practices that address economic, social, and environmental challenges, all at once. The founders of these enterprises build close connections with communities, create collectives, and demonstrate potential for transforming the enterprise and the very context in which they operate to create social, economic, and environmental value. This fosters resilience for their individuals, the organizations, and the communities. This chapter offers a case study that illustrates how a sustainability-oriented social enterprise, or a ‘sustainable social enterprise’, is fostering resilience in rural India. The agency-context enactment combines social sustainability through human development, environmental sustainability through circular economy, and economic sustainability through livelihood generation, thereby strengthening resilience at the individual level, organizational level, and community level. Future research needs to dig deeper into how sustainability agency in social entrepreneurship in different developing countries foster resilience in rural settings by combining social, environmental, and economic sustainability.