Social Entrepreneurship Through a Complexity Theory Lens: An Inquiry into Generative Leadership

In this qualitative paper, we contend that the extant social entrepreneurship literature tends to depict individuals in leadership roles as personally attributable to organizational successes. This portrayal resonates with the view of commercial entrepreneurs as independent heroes. However, our empirical material from Greece—a country in chaos, facing prolonged economic, political, and social turmoil during our involvement—prompts us to rethink such perspectives. We subsequently develop the concept of “generative leadership” to explain our findings. We find that generative leaders are influencers who contribute to their organization’s development by creating conditions through which new ideas and approaches emerge, rather than engaging in top-down interventionism in a controlled fashion. In our inquiry, we use complexity theory as a foundational frame of reference. We argue that this system of ideas is suitable for studying social entrepreneurship in chaotic environments such as Greece. This paper makes two key contributions to the academic debate. First, we enhance the scholarly understanding of social entrepreneurship by conceptualizing generative leadership as an outward-looking rather than self-referential way of working. Second, we respond to calls to interpret longitudinal empirical data on social entrepreneurship through complexity theory, thereby complementing mainly theoretical work in this area."