Touching Lives: Social Responsibility Model of a Nigerian Entrepreneur

Abstract

Dees (1998) defines entrepreneurship as characteristic of people who adopt a mission to create and sustain social value; recognize and relentlessly pursue new opportunities to serve that mission; continuously innovate, adapt, and learn; act boldly and beyond their resources; and exhibit a high sense of accountability. He sees it as a solution to social issues left unresolved by government and philanthropists. Given the success of the social work carried out by Nike Davies Okundaye, a female Nigerian artist and entrepreneur, this paper investigates how her brand of social entrepreneurship measures up beside the extant literature, and whether it is replicable, especially in developing countries. If it is a good model, then it should be emulated and funding. The approach used is phenomenology, using secondary data about Nike’s work and parameters synthesized by Dees (1998) and Light (2005) seven years apart after deep analyses of the work of earlier scholars.