The nature of mentoring within the social entrepreneurial field An exploratory study of the South African context

(1)

The nature of mentoring within the social entrepreneurial field An exploratory study of the South African context

Authors:

Federica Bosi Alessandro Pichetti Marin Tudor

Supervisor: Cecilia Pahlberg

Date of submission: May 25^th 2012

(2)

(3)

ABSTRACT

The importance of social entrepreneurship has been growing for the last 3 decades and is recently accelerating. South Africa presents one of the most mature social entrepreneurial sectors among developing countries and the magnitude of its impact has become critical to national economic growth and society as a whole.

Many roles have risen through the spreading of this particular way of conceiving business, the role of mentors being a particularly meaningful one. Mentoring is usually related to the difficulties social entrepreneurs and operators within the field have in dealing with the variables present in a free market.

Most studies concerning mentoring have been focused on business organizations or entrepreneurs.

Literature approaches various interesting themes within these two contexts that can help as a guide to explore the nature of mentoring in the social entrepreneurial field. This study puts its focus on the nature of mentoring in the sole social entrepreneurial field as it is understood by its prime actors:

the mentors.

In doing so it adopts a qualitative approach characterised by semi-structured and open ended interviews with eight experienced mentors from as many different organizations.

The final results indicate that differences with the business sector are not extreme and the two fields often intertwine, with many beneficial outcomes for the social sector. However, they also illustrate that there are some aspects very specific to the sole social entrepreneurial field. Among those are the stronger sensibility toward others, the energy infused, the type of relationships, the unique motivations and a broader reach of outcomes for the mentoring activity itself.

All these aspects lead mentoring in the social entrepreneurial field not only to be a useful phenomenon for involved entrepreneurs, but potentially an activity spreading its beneficial consequences to entire communities.

Keywords: Mentoring, Social Entrepreneurship, South Africa, Mentors, Social Entrepreneurs, Social Enterprise.

(4)

(5)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to dedicate this study to our families for having supported us in these long years of study, having helped us in tougher times and having always believed in our potential. We would also like to thank the many people we came across during this study, the organisations they run, their managers and the mentors themselves for the overwhelming openness and kindness they have displayed every time we have come in contact with them. Day after day, one interview after another, we have grown more and more inspired by the way they are bringing positive change to this morally very complex world.

Uppsala 2012

____________________ __________________ ___________________

Federica Bosi Alessandro Pichetti Marin Tudor

(8)

1. INTRODUCTION

This section of the thesis is aimed at presenting the subject of the study as well as some background information and the purpose of the paper.

As we more deeply dive into this second decade of the third millennium, we are experiencing a slow but determined shift from a very neoliberal understanding of the markets to a more socially responsible one. Intellectuals from top universities and top business schools are starting to recognize the existence of this social phenomenon and some of them go as far as criticizing the classic way of developing a business. Eminent professors as Michael Sandel (2012) of Harvard University warn us that during the past three decades we have steadily slid from a market economy to a market society. They imply that while this has had positive effects on many issues, it has also eroded many useful social structures and has, as a consequence, sharpened a relevant number of social problems. Far from criticizing capitalist society as a whole, researchers like Sandel suggest that there are different ways of conceiving the creation of capital.

Globally academics are starting to suggest the need for a more socially active role of business (Harding, 2006). Deep in the 1990s corporations were still quite indifferent to the concept of social responsibility, but by the end of the decade the idea gained more visibility and many companies started to question the public image they have previously built for themselves (Michael Sandel, 2012). The idea of socially useful businesses started to flourish thanks to the commercialization of CSR for big and medium businesses and the concept of social entrepreneurship for small companies and start-ups. Social Entrepreneurship (SE, from now on) received significant publicity with the global fame a number of social businesses gained by producing positive impact over broad communities. It is in particular the case of Grameen Bank’s success that has eventually led to a Nobel Prize in Economics for its founder.

When the idea of SE firstly appeared, it brought a little revolution to the world of philanthropic initiatives, previously considered as a “giving away” activity. Building financial sustainability for social initiatives has been the smart intuition of a number of pioneers that arose in various countries throughout the developing world. Often practical characters operating “on the field”, social operators have perceived the many lacks of their societies. Among these pioneers, some would find their life vocation in trying to solve the social problems of their environment. Most often those are the ones that have understood all the limits of funding through institutions, through associations or philanthropic organizations.

(9)

That’s how the idea of social entrepreneurs and their social enterprises was born. Firstly seen as minor pioneers solving specific social problems and hardly framed as productive factors in economic sense, in the last decade they have been recognized by many academics as economic actors au pair with their business counterparts. But with the spreading of social business ideas, we have also seen the rising of challenges connected with their job.

One of the major problems in this field is the inexperience plaguing social entrepreneurs in the start-up phase of their enterprises. Actors within the SE field may have a good idea for a sustainable social business, but they may lack knowledge and intellectual tools to put their ideas into practice.

Thus, they may fail to survive in the market not because of their business, but because of their inexperience.

The need for business specific knowledge and skills are some of the most important reasons why entrepreneurs in all fields gain great benefits if they have someone to guide their professional growth and the development of their businesses. Entrepreneurs can find such a figure in what we call mentors. Mentors help a person learn, progress and ultimately be successful in her/his activity.

They are skilled people that leverage on their experience in entrepreneurship or expertise in a certain field, in order to help young entrepreneurs succeed through business and life.

This is particularly true in the case of SE, where mentors delivering practical knowledge become very often fundamental to the survival of their mentees. As a matter of fact, the success of mentors in the SE field becomes meaningful because of the additional social dimension all actions and choices have in this context.

Entrepreneurial mentoring and many of its aspects have been a subject for extensive research in the past twenty years. Nonetheless, very few studies tried to shed a light on mentors operating in the social niche of entrepreneurship. The importance of their work appears to us very valuable and we believe it is growing exponentially both in developing countries and, more recently, in developed ones too.

While examining which setting was more appropriate for our research topic, we asked ourselves where we would to gather the most significant experiences in this context. We realized that if the modern Social Entrepreneurial movement was born in the developing world, there we could find also some of the most meaningful experience in this field. Finally we opted to study SE in South Africa because it is culturally open and linguistically more approachable to us. It is also often cited as one of the countries with the most developed social entrepreneurial sector (Urban, 2008).

We have felt the necessity for further research and understanding of mentoring in the SE field is a direct consequence to the growth of this way of thinking in recent years and we have eventually

(10)

opted for an explorative research based on qualitative primary data in order to provide a deeper uptake of the role of mentoring in the SE field.

1.1 PURPOSE

The purpose of this study was to investigate how mentoring works in the social entrepreneurial field of a developing country, as seen through the eyes of mentors.

1.2 RESEARCH QUESTION

What is the nature of mentoring in the social entrepreneurial field of a developing country as seen by mentors themselves?

(11)

2. LITERATURE REVIEW

In the following section we present the conceptual framework in which the subject of Mentoring in the social entrepreneurial field is set. We first investigate the meaning of SE and explain the South African environment in which it occurs. In the following part of the review we frame the different aspects of mentoring which set the logic guidelines on which we later build our contextualisation of mentoring social enterprises.

2.1 Social Entrepreneurship

Social entrepreneurship (SE) is usually described by academics as “any attempt at a new social enterprise activity or new enterprise creation, such as self-employment, a new enterprise, or the expansion of an existing social enterprise by an individual, teams of individuals or established social enterprise, with social or community goals as its base and where the profit is invested in the activity or venture itself rather than returned to investors” (Harding, 2006, pp. 5).

Frequently in the past, the idea of SE has been associated to the idea of "charity" in relation with non-profit organizations (Laspronga & Cotton, 2003) and with social institutions (Wallace, 1997).

In recent years the correlation between Social Entrepreneurship and charity has become weaker and an increasing number of scholars consider SE as real business that can generate profits and be completely independent. Social Entrepreneurs are nowadays specific business entrepreneurs, which in order to survive need to operate in accordance with market dynamics as any other entrepreneur does (Windsor 2001).

Social Enterprises do not operate in a different market from other business enterprises, on the contrary they compete daily among each other in order survive; the difference among the two categories lays in the aim pushing the entrepreneur to set up the company. Social entrepreneurs, triggered by their desire of non-acceptance of the world “as it is” (Erklington, 2007), give priority to social and wealth creation aimed at a positive impact for society (Giddens, 1998). Business entrepreneurs are focused on economic wealth creation.

It would be wrong to consider Social Entrepreneurs as simply driven by the perception of social needs or by their compassion, rather they are to be considered as being determined to set into reality their own vision, which is based on a long-term social return on investment (Dees, 2001).

Elkington (2007) further defines the persons operating within the SE field as individuals who have the desire to act and help in social, environmental, educational or economic sectors, motivated by different reasons. Focusing on economic conditions, for example, the social entrepreneur is driven by the main will of suddenly change his own social situation or the social situation of his

(12)

community; Anderson & Kent (2003) showed that social entrepreneurs care also to develop and solve problems surrounding his reality motivated by the idea that an immediate change is necessary and achievable.

A social business sees profits as a mean to keep running its activities. The purpose of its investors’

spending is the achievement of specific social goals through the operations run by the business, and most often there is no will for personal gain by the investors. It is therefore the impact that a company can have on society that is used as a measure of its own success, rather than the revenues it has in any given period of time. The idea does not collide with making profit itself, very much the opposite, as long as the profit stays within the company and is not picked by equity holders. This is not always a rule, and even if it is rare at the moment, some social enterprises can seek a double goal, profits and social development (Elkington, 2007).

Despite the importance and the high number of social enterprises operating in today’s market, only a young and limited literature is currently available on this subject. Some contemporary scholars have been working more actively on this theme in the last decade, but most aspects related to SE still have to be analysed in depth.

2.2 SE in the South African Context

In South Africa the importance of SE is becoming increasingly critical. Social Entrepreneurs concretely contribute in supporting the South African economy, because they are efficient alternative providers of public services such as health, education, housing and community development support. They offer new and sometimes original solutions to face a variety of socially problematic situations such as unemployment and poverty (Harding, 2006).

The panorama is particularly rich in South Africa, because community involvement is deeply rooted in the local culture. Several reasons bounding philanthropic activities and South African culture can be identified in the historical past and in the ancient native culture, which gave birth to social philosophies such as Ubuntu. According to widely accepted Ubuntu ideas the rights of the individual are subjugated to the rights of society as a whole, for the sake of the common interest (Bandura, 1997). The concept is based on the simple thought of “I am what I am because of who we all are”. It is a humanist philosophy that, focusing on the value of allegiances and relations among people, traditionally fights against the individualism of Western countries.

It has been proved that because it preaches a strong and essential connection between individuals, people who believe in Ubuntu tend to be more open and available to others and consequently more caring about the issues which plague society as a whole. This collectivist approach has been essential in strengthening the role of SE in South Africa (Sulamoyo, 2010), because Ubuntu

(13)

supports the changes that are necessary to create an economically and environmentally sustainable future (Bandura, 1997).

Beyond Ubuntu, South African people developed a particular sensibility toward social matters because of the difficult historical past of the country, devastated by almost 50 years of Apartheid.

The racial segregation enforced by the National Party between 1948 and 1994 led to an inhomogeneous distribution of economic wealth in favour of the white minority, creating huge economic, political and societal issues ranging from unequal distribution of income to devolution of social functions from national to local level and from public to private. In this context social entrepreneurship acquires the additional meaning of social reaffirmation on one side and of alleviation of guilt on the other side (Urban, 2008).

In more recent years, the reduction of public funding and the increasing complexity of social problems led to the definitive strengthening and affirmation of private social initiative (Christie &

Honing, 2006).

2.3 The concept of mentoring

Mentoring dates back to Ancient Greek times, when it was very common for young and inexperienced men to have a mentor who would deliver knowledge to them in order to turn them into mature men. Today mentoring has spread beyond the “personal sphere” and it has become widely used in business in order to bridge the gap between educational process and the real-world experience. Many scholars define mentoring as a complex relationship between an experienced person or organization and one that has less experience, with the purpose of achieving his goals (Barker, 2005).

Mentoring processes happen in a various range of social and business contexts, thus their role and form vary according to each circumstance. In this research we are focused on the sole role of mentoring as a support in developing social enterprises. Since literature resources are still quite limited in this field, we relied a lot on the research that has been carried out on mentoring in the classic entrepreneurial field.

The concept of mentoring has been broadly studied within the management field and while managerial processes are not purely linked with the entrepreneurial ones, some factors between the two fields happen to be shared. In the management field, the mentor serves as an experienced guide driving the mentee through a complex path until it achieves the success within his organization, success that would be very hard to reach alone because of the complex political construct that may exist within an organization (Carsrud et al, 1987). Most of this is true also in the entrepreneurial field, with the difference that the entrepreneurial activity does not happen within a structured

(14)

environment like an institution or an organization, thus it doesn’t feature any hierarchy to be climbed. The successful outcome of the relationship becomes therefore the achieved sustainability of the enterprise.

During our research of the literature we have identified 5 major themes and aspects of mentoring met by academics, which can be functional to an investigation of this subject. We have treated them as a guide in our exploration of the SE branch of mentoring.

2.3.1 Roles and functions of mentoring

Five are the major and more important roles identified for mentors by literature: the role of coach, the role of co-ordinator, the role of supporter, the role of monitoring the mentee, the role of organizer (Sullivan, 2000).

Because mentoring can develop through all various functions a mentor performs with positive effects, these functions can be used in order to understand the type of mentoring offered and received (St-Jean & Audet, 2011). The functions that have been identified in large organizations and confirmed for the entrepreneurial field are the following: psychosocial function, career function and role model function. The psychosocial function comprises actions that develop in the mentee a sense of competence, clarity of identity and effectiveness in his professional role. The career functions comprise learning of political and social skills, accompanied to other knowledge necessary to succeed (Sullivan, 2000). A successful mentoring relationship would therefore have to maximise upon this functions in order to be prosperous (St-Jean & Audet, 2011).

2.3.2 Style of mentoring

Literature tells us a mentor can carry out his role in different ways. St-Jean & Audet (2011) studied the effectiveness of a mentoring style based on a maieutic approach combined with a strong involvement of the mentor in the relationship. Sullivan (2000) confirms that entrepreneurs find linking new teachings with their previous experience to be the most helpful to develop their business. The maieutic approach is the one that allows a mentor to develop upon the knowledge and skills already present in the mentee’s experience. Thus, it allows the mentee to develop by his own pace the best solutions to his questions (Sullivan, 2000).

A maieutic approach to mentoring, combined with strong involvement by the mentor, would be more useful for the entrepreneur because it allows him to benefit more from the three mentor functions mentioned above and because it would further deepen the positive outcomes we have listed (St-Jean & Audet, 2011).

(15)

It also means that the mentor is not supposed to be directive as he would be a better lead by posing continuous questions to the mentee, letting him find his own. The mentor is also supposed to continuously meet the mentee and be near to him morally, in order to verify and support his progress (Sullivan, 2000). Ironically St-Jean & Audet notice that an antithetic directive- disengaged behaviour is usually displayed by many mentors (at least one third of them, according to their study). This has bad effects on the entrepreneur because with each directive intervention, the mentee becomes more dependent on the know-how of the mentor.

These styles of mentoring are obviously not granitic and they may vary even inside one mentor- mentee couple in different moments of time, so that the mentor can display all possible combinations of them.

2.3.3 Time aspect and phases of mentoring

The relationship between mentor and mentee develops throughout time, and so does the mentee.

According to Sullivan (2000), the transformation process from novice entrepreneur to experienced and independent entrepreneur can be explained thanks to a “life-cycle model”, matching with the different issues and challenges that enterprises encounter as they mature.

Sullivan relates the Churchill Phases of a management model with the learning and growth of a mentored entrepreneur. As the mentee grows and turns into an entrepreneur he will require differentiated assistance from the mentor (Sullivan, 2000). Churchill’s phases (namely conception, survival, stabilization, growth orientation, rapid growth, research maturity) which portray small businesses as they move through their life-cycle and mature in accordance to their own needs (Sullivan, 2000). Identified phases are: conception, survival, stabilisation, growth orientation, rapid growth, resource maturity. While those phases are well separated, they do not necessarily happen consequently, because each entrepreneur learns and progresses in base of his specific gathering of experience (Sullivan, 2000).

These phases combine well with the previously proposed roles of a mentor, because to different phases of the growth of an entrepreneur and his business, correspond different roles for his mentor (Sullivan, 2000).

2.3.4 The Mentor-Mentee relationship

According to Dal Forno et al (2009), social entrepreneurs must focus on building good relationships because it will eventually help them build the right skills needed to succeed in their business. As a matter of fact the success of an enterprise depends a lot on teachable skills, rather than on other

(16)

variables and these skills can be learned more easily from others that already have them (Audet, 2011).

Sullivan (2000) holds that expectations on both sides should be taken into account, since they may play a determinant role in shaping the relationship between the two parties. Mentee’s expectations usually include elements such as skilful communication, mutual personal commitment, expertise in the field and the ability to enhance his career and personal development (Barker, 2005). Mentor’s expectations tend to be similar. Among those shared expectations Barker includes skilful communication, the desire to learn from the mentee, the ability to analyse and synthesize, and most importantly, the ability to listen to suggestions and come up with constructive and doable solutions.

The strength of the relationship is tied to elements such as the amount of time, the emotional intensity, the intimacy and the reciprocal services that characterize the tie. Moreover the strength of these ties has to be considered related to other dimensions such as the social role, the normative content and exchange content (Berrou et al, 2011). Relationships are based on a combination of trust, tolerance of diversity and reciprocity, which enhance the formation and the sustainability of fruitful and strong ties (Baker et al, 2011).

Strong ties make the mentor very approachable, more reliable and ensure he shares more deeply and in a more risky way his resources with the entrepreneur and are even more useful to entrepreneurs that are in a vulnerable state, be it financial or psycho-social (Berrou et al, 2012).

It’s necessary to note that relationships built within a solidarity network are additionally important, because they function as a social insurance. Berrou et al (2012) conclude that a close relationship is extremely important, because it prompts the entrepreneurial success in markets dominated by uncertainty, such as the ones present in developing countries.

2.3.5 Knowledge acquired through mentoring

It was mentioned that successful mentoring leads to great results such as the positive outcomes of growth, positive work attitudes, and career commitment, whereas unsuccessful mentoring can result in anger, frustration and low job satisfaction (Barker, 2005).

In order to achieve such outcomes, St-Jean & Audet (2011) have identified the type of knowledge that is passed from a mentor to his mentee. A mentor helps potential entrepreneurs to develop the intention and purpose of a start-up. For novice entrepreneurs mentoring develops knowledge skills, mostly very practical ones, among whose are improving basic accounting capabilities, teach how to expand the client base and how to recognize business opportunities. Knowledge can also be of a more psychological kind, like improvement of self-confidence, growth in self-efficacy and

(17)

development of leadership skills. The mentee can learn how to gain a higher satisfaction from the entrepreneurial role he plays.

As Bisk (2002) identified, an even more interesting aspect is that mentees do not look for an industry specific knowledge, despite the fact that organizations specialized in entrepreneurial mentoring are often focused on specific fields. It results the mentee needs and looks for a mentor with a general business experience.

In more practical terms, mentors push the novice entrepreneur to reflect on his own actions, possibly modifying future activity and results, enabling behavioural and attitudinal change (Sullivan, 2000). Thus mentors assist the mentees in their professional, but sometimes also personal, development (St-Jean & Audet, 2011).

All of the concepts about mentoring mentioned above have been identified in different cultural settings and are more often related to business entrepreneurship. They are therefore subject to limitations regarding the different types and degrees of influence professional and cultural contexts may have in envisioning and enacting a mentor-mentee relationship. The culture, local traditions and relations between personalities, highly influence this relationship. It is possible to assume that mentoring within the social entrepreneurial field is different from mentoring within the business field, if nothing else because in the later most of the reason for mentoring is aimed to profit creation, while in the former a more complex set of aims is pursued.

And yet, despite the role of major importance the potential outcomes mentoring in the SE field have, our knowledge of this issue is limited. We would therefore like to explore the process of mentoring within this specific field and understand if all the previous categories may apply also in the case of SE, to which extent they apply, and why.

(18)

3. METHODOLOGY AND DATA

In this part of the thesis we present our choices in regards to sampling, data collection, data analysis and the limitations they generated.

The empirical part of our study relied on primary data collected through semi-structured interviews with open ended questions. The interviews have been carried out through video-conference software and have been audio-recorded and consequently transcribed. Contextual data is available in the appendix. To a small extent the study relies also on secondary data useful to gather supplementary knowledge about the treated subject.

Our qualitative approach fitted well with the explorative nature of the study, because we gained a more sensitive type of data from our respondents. The intrinsic flexibility of the method provided us with deeper knowledge and it allowed us to investigate the complex and dynamic processes involved in a mentoring relationship more appropriately.

The themes for our interviews derived from what the literature review showed as some of the most studied and fundamental themes in entrepreneurial mentoring research. We assume that such themes should have relevance also in the SE field, as long as we consider it as a branch of entrepreneurship.

3.1 Sampling

We have deliberately chosen to interview only one of the figures present in a mentoring relationship, the mentor. The reason for this lays in the fact that interviewed mentors are experts in their field, with years and years of practice. They developed sufficiently not only their mentoring techniques, but in a certain sense also a theoretical understanding of their job. This aspect suited our research aim, because we felt it guarantees the quality of data they could provide during the interviews. The choice was also backed by our awareness that mentors in the SE field may understand their work as a mission, and therefore they would be the most open actors to share their experience with us. This assumption eventually proved to be a correct one.

In a first stage of our research we would have preferred to include also the point of view of the mentees, as that would have made our research more comprehensive. However, we have very soon found many difficulties in the communication with local entrepreneurs. Some of them have not had the opportunity to receive higher education and others come from a very practical-oriented context and mind-set, often also from hard living conditions. We felt we simply lack the contextual

(19)

information and the intellectual tools to effectively link in a coherent way their point of view with the one of their mentors. Therefore our choice was to leave this part to future researchers.

We have chosen 8 mentors from 8 different organizations, which have between 6 and 21 years of experience in the SE mentoring field:

 Christophe Labesse of Township Group

 Noel de Villiers of OpenAfrica

 Ernest Boateng of the South African Institute for Entrepreneurship

 Jeri Du Plessis of Siykholwa Development Foundation

 Tony Pick of Black Umbrellas

 Gary Grahman of Futurefit

 Anthony Rocchi of Awethu Project

 Maphalle Maponya of the National Youth Development Agency

We have stopped at 8 interviewees although we had more contacts, because at that point we felt saturated with information on the subject of our research.

South Africa has been chosen as the setting for our research for a series of significant reasons. We desired a comparable set of data within one national context, which would not span across many diversified cultures and understandings of the processes studied. We felt that because of the very

“local” solutions social entrepreneurship develops, proposing a study that spans across different cultures would have scarce validity and too broad a scope.

A second point that pushed us to choose South Africa was the language factor. One of the official languages of South Africa is English, which is spoken perfectly by most of its educated population.

This factor allowed us to communicate in a much better way not only with social enterprises in big cities, but also those operating in more rural and local contexts. It also opened up the possibility to reach a deeper level of understanding with our interviewees. Thus, the only linguistic bias in this research was put on the side of the interviewer, although we tend to believe this bias was minimized by our decent knowledge of the language.

Moreover, the choice of South Africa as a context for our research has been influenced by another important factor: the presence of one of the most developed social entrepreneurial sectors in the world. Because of reasons cited in the literature, South Africa is now living a profound push aimed at uplifting the poor of the country. This aspect relates to our study in the measure that it made much easier to find professional social entrepreneurial mentors. A developed mentoring environment offered much more experienced, well trained and self-aware mentors. We believed such mentors would be able to provide us more useful data.

(20)

Ultimately, we have chosen South Africa because we have been inspired by this country and its people. One person from our team lived and worked in South Africa for a significant period of time.

His rich experience and the many stories he was almost daily sharing have made us awe-inspired by South African people. In particular the ones working within the social entrepreneurial field and acting in order to create that much needed national social uplift we mentioned before. We may claim that we have firstly discovered South Africa and almost as a consequence we have discovered the SE field, thus sensing the important role mentors may play within it.

3.2 Data collection

Our data collection method was semi-structured, open-ended interviews. In order to prepare the interview structure we have used Saunders’ guide, literature themes and data provided by the organisations themselves. While usually explorative studies use in-depth interviews, we have opted for semi-structured interviews with open ended and follow-up questions, because it allowed us to better pilot the interview through the knowledge of the topic we previously gained. This choice offered the possibility for a more coherent analysis later. Despite this piloting, semi-structured interviews provided also a lot of freedom of speech and intellectual wandering to our interviewees and that suited the explorative part of our research.

Moreover, the semi-structured nature of the interviews allowed shaping the questionnaire in order to comply better with the processes of mentoring as they are understood within each involved organisations. The open-ended character of the questions let the interviewee explain better their answers and allowed us to dig deeper into aspects of the interviews we were considering more interesting.

We have pushed the mentors to present their experiences and talk as broadly as possible about them. It enabled them to build their own narratives and provide their own understanding of the story they have been part of.

3.3 Data analysis

Analysis of the data has been based on a mix of inductive and deductive approaches aimed at the identification of themes and their harmonization with reviewed theory. Data has consequently been structured as narrative because we desired to safeguard its conceptual integrity. It is hard to say if this was due to their enthusiasm, their commitment or simply their long experience, but most of our interviewees proved to be good story tellers, thus facilitating this process. Moreover, our research focused on the subjective interpretation mentors have of the issue we research. It was logic to

(21)

explain this through their point of view, allowing us and the reader to better contextualize their statements with the broader social and organisational environment in which they operate.

Finally we have triangulated all the ideas and points of view our respondents provided and tested the applicability of the reviewed theory with their answers. Thus, we identified to which extent and form literature may apply to our findings. The choice to relate research findings to theory provided the study with theoretical meaning. In our view this contributes in underlining the importance of our findings.

3.4 Limitations of the study

- Literature. The scarcity of literature on this topic made its critical review limited. We could not really confront many different opinions for each topic encountered, except for the idea of SE as a whole. This may have led to a low degree of thoroughness and understanding of the concept of mentoring within the SE field, since during the interviews, even mentors who have consistent experience had difficulties to define all the various aspects of the topic. We have found ourselves in the uncomfortable but interesting position of exploring a new land. But in some way, such a limitation provided us the motivation to focus exactly on the themes we have chosen.

- Sampling. The number of chosen interviewees may have been higher in order to make the study more relevant. Moreover, all organizations are limited to their particular field of activity and region, and so are the mentors we have approached. What we provide in this study is only the mentor’s opinion and we believe further research in particular from South African colleagues may explore more easily the mentee’s point of view and compare the findings with our study.

- Geographical limitations. South Africa is a very specific culture and society and the study is bounded within the limits this context provides. It is therefore bounded to a developing country where some financial restrains may be relatively eased by a fast growing economy. We may assume that mentoring in the SE field shall have different characteristics in a poorer society or in a completely developed one.

- Cultural bias. There may be a factor of bias in the significant distance between the researchers’

and the interviewees’ culture. We are aware of it and we tried to minimize this by having the best possible knowledge of the differences and their possible implications to our study.

- Interviewer bias. We have strived to reduce as much as possible the bias on our side. Comments about the subjects treated have been completely avoided until the end of each interview, when the atmosphere would suddenly ease. Possible bias may have risen during our interpretation of the responses and because of a certain personal feeling of admiration for the interviewees that all of us

(22)

share. We feel both these aspects have been minimized by the way we have analysed our respondents’ answers guided by the literature.

- Interviewee bias. While all possible disturbances for the interviewee have been minimized, the video-conference format of the interviews may have influenced the interviewees. Nevertheless, we believe it may have also favoured a relaxed atmosphere, allowing the interviewees to talk in a familiar environment. Consequently the conversation has not been exaggeratedly formal. The interviewees were very fond of expressing their views and share their experience, most probably because of the general enthusiasm they put in their job.

- Media limitations. The choice of the media was obliged because of the extremely long distance separating us from the interviewees and the financial impossibility to cover it physically. This may have caused a lack of personal contact between the interviewer and the interviewee. We are confident that the issue has been mitigated by the video feature of the software and, above all, by the openness and availability showed by each mentor involved in this research.

- Generalizability of the study. Our aim with this research is not to offer a comprehensive understanding of mentoring in the SE field. On the contrary, our study is specific because of its many limitations. These limitations contribute to better define the meaning of our findings. We could not find a generalized response to the nature of mentoring in the social entrepreneurial field and we are aware that by studying the South African context we will have only a glimpse into this very complex subject. Moreover, we are also in part limited by the main themes we have identified through the literature review. This has been compensated by extra-thematic findings and the identification of new themes needing further research.

Ultimately, we believe the real value of this study stands in the fact we are tackling the issue on one of its most interesting battle fronts, through the eyes of some its most experienced professionals.

(23)

4. EMPIRICAL FINDINGS

In this section we present our findings through the use of a narrative format.

4.1 Noel De Villiers of Open Africa (OA)

Noel de Villiers is the founder of OA, a non-profit organization supporting the development of responsible tourism in South Africa and creating sustainable enterprises for rural people. One of OA’s main goals is to offer free mentoring services to small entrepreneurs operating in this context in order to save them from the very high failure ratio which plagues rural start-ups in South Africa.

De Villiers had been working as a commercial entrepreneur for many years before he decided to turn his interest toward the social sector. His choice of founding a non-profit mentoring organization was linked to the fact that South Africa is a territory full of contrasts where social interaction prevails and inspires people to develop a strong social attitude. He revealed that he was pushed by his will to “do something good” for the society and to experience something new, but equally rewarding as business in terms of personal satisfaction.

He believes rural areas to be the key to the development of his country and rural people to have a very innovative entrepreneurial spirit. But their lack of schooling and business experience makes it difficult, if not impossible, for their enterprises to survive alone in the market. Entrepreneurs coming from a rural background have an inescapable need to be supported by someone who is though, convinced and experienced and able to make up for their strong lack of self-confidence.

At OA, mentors should not only provide their mentees with specific knowledge about the business environment and technical financial and marketing skills, but they should also offer psychological support in order to grow trust and self-confidence in the mentees. De Villiers tries to push the entrepreneur to develop his own skills. He is inclusive in his approach and fully involved in the relationship, offering a comprehensive and personalized support to each mentee.

In De Villiers’s words, being able to build a close personal relationship with the mentees is an essential factor for the success of the relationship and creates chemistry between the parties. He argues that mentor and mentee must in fact share the same expectations over the mentoring relationship and cooperate to achieve the same goal, which in OA’s case happens to be the survival of the enterprise. As a consequence, it is reasonable for him to come up with a participative style of mentoring built more on suggestions, open communication and critical incident.

Relationships develop with the mentee’s progress: in the initial stages they require a lot of support, while later the mentor can slowly distance himself. De Villiers notices his past mistake of cutting the ties with a couple of mentees, which has brought them to go back to some bad business habits

(24)

and therefore he now keeps the bounds with the mentee even after their enterprise becomes sustainable.

De Villiers is aware of the fact that despite the process of building up a close personal relationship with the mentees is a slowly developing one and demands a big effort, it is essential for the personal development and for the success of the entrepreneur.

His mentees’ progress is assessed at a personal level, by comparing the attitude of the mentees at the beginning of the relationship and their attitude at the end of it.

He admits to be very passionate about his role of mentor, because it makes him feel the involvement in the community and gives him the opportunity to get in contact with many smart and energetic entrepreneurs, and this tends to develop also his skills.

4.2 Gary Grahman of FutureFit

Gary Graham is the founder and managing director of FutureFit, an organization delivering tailored entrepreneurial mentoring and enabling entrepreneurs to generate and sustain new impact opportunities. For most of his career Grahman used to be an entrepreneur, therefore he has grown a wide experience in enterprise sustainability. He also developed a consistent professional network, which he now uses to help his mentees.

According to him, three are the basic functions mentoring must accomplish to be effective: encouraging a platform of knowledge sharing, developing leadership skills and providing expertise in accordance to the needs of each mentee.

Grahman recognises that people he mentors struggle the most because of cultural factors and are particularly unconfident due to previous bad business experiences. As a consequence the mentor has to offer moral support needed to turn them into confident leaders. This can be achieved by firstly challenging the mentee, then championing him and finally providing him the intellectual tools needed to be independent.

Beyond the moral support, mentors also deliver economic knowledge, especially in the financial area, but also decision-making skills, time management and some basic marketing skills. According to Grahman, the major challenges in this field are represented by the financial constraints both for him and for his mentee, and by the difficulty to match appropriately mentors and mentees for his organization. A major issue is also the confusion of the mentee around what mentorship really should be and the necessity to pass the correct message.

He argues that the relationship between mentor and mentee must be balanced in order to avoid a major domination by one of the parts. The behaviour would undermine the effectiveness and the authenticity of the mentoring relationship. In mentoring, business issues mix with private ones,

(25)

formality mixes with informality, turning very often the relationship into a personal connection, which usually survives the end of the formal mentoring program.

Grahman identifies the main key factor of success being the “brutal honesty” that characterises every well-functioning personal relationship,

He notes that the greatest satisfaction for a mentor is to watch as his entrepreneurs develop and live at the top of their possibilities, since he considers them as smart, skilful and energetic people who have to engage themselves in some kind of successful activity not only to get out of poverty, but also to find themselves and their role in society.

4.3 Tony Pick of Black Umbrellas (BU)

Tony Pick is the founder of BU, a non-profit organization offering mentoring support to small social entrepreneurs in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria regions. The aim of the organization is to address the high failure rate of black owned emerging businesses in South Africa and to fight against the high unemployment rate among poorer social classes. BU deals with a variety of commercial and cultural projects, which involve positive social outcomes. Pick decided to give his contribution to the SE field, because he noticed these projects tend to be managed with the best of intentions, but with bad business processes.

He identifies the role of the mentor with two main functions: firstly the financial support, meaning that mentors shall make sure mentee’s business works sustainably and secondly, they must open their network to entrepreneurs and attract the interest of the community. In every case, all the actions performed by the mentors must always be in the interest of the enterprises, tailored to every single case to meet the needs and the expectations of each entrepreneur.

Pick identifies four major problems that occur very frequently: firstly, the entrepreneurs’ ability to adapt to a new lifestyle before their business becomes sustainable; secondly, the difficulty of providing help customised for every enterprise; thirdly, the real feasibility of some of his mentees’

projects, even when based on great ideas. The last issue concerns the fact Pick has the need to find a common ground with each mentee and that may take significant amounts of time.

According to the interviewee, mentors are responsible for teaching their mentees business basics for enterprise development, from financial to commercial skills. What mentors can learn from the mentee is the knowledge of the environment they operate in. Pick highlighted also the importance of developing those skills that are already part of the mentee’s experience, since they can become important factors of success for the personal and business life of the entrepreneur.

He points out that communication with the mentee should be spontaneous, open and friendly in order to set the basis for an honest and mutual relationship. Only the initial phase happens to be a

(26)

more formal one, due to the reticence of some mentees to open up and share their personal problems. Nonetheless, it turns more informal with time, through a step-by-step process of growing trust and reciprocity between the parties, by slowly overcoming all barriers.

As a mentor Pick does not perceive himself as a model for his mentees, but more as a source of technical assistance, since this key function is actually the one that determines the success of mentoring relationships. He decided to approach the SE after meeting many social entrepreneurs in his travels abroad and getting inspired by them.

4.4 Ernest Boateng of the South African Institute for Entrepreneurship (SAIE)

The SAIE is a non-profit organization established in Johannesburg back in 1996. Since its foundation, the SAIE was set up as a trading organization, whose activity included programming micro MBA courses and mentoring for small and micro entrepreneurs.

Boateng decided to join the SAIE, mainly to contribute to the improvement of the South African education system, whose failure he considers one of the biggest issues for the country. He works in the “School Entrepreneurship Program”, which provides people who want to start a small enterprise with needed business and social skills.

At SAIE, both teaching and mentoring are delivered by experienced former entrepreneurs.

According to Boateng, mentors must be flexible enough to customise their approach and their mentoring style in accordance with the needs of each mentee. Mentees in fact make up a very motley group of people, having different cultural backgrounds, different educational levels and different customs, therefore it becomes necessary to address diversity in order to succeed.

Mentoring has also to be well adapted to the industry the mentee wants to operate.

At SAIE, the mentoring process is conducted through four simple steps: In the first stage mentors assess the feasibility of the project idea; during the second stage mentors define the real needs of the entrepreneurs; most of the mentoring takes place in the third stage whereas the fourth and last phase is more based on controlling and supporting.

Teaching is usually delivered through training procedures and it is based on a learning by doing approach, therefore the skill transfer might take more time, but the results are extremely successful.

Moreover according to Boateng, it is very important to make entrepreneurs be fully independent from the beginning, in order to develop their own critical view over business and show that mentors will not be there holding their hands forever.

In Boateng’s mentoring experience, there are three main factors that may determine the success or the failure of the mentoring process: time, patience and the mind-set.

(27)

The most challenging issue is dealing with mind-set, especially because mentees tend to be resigned and doubtful about their opportunities in business. SAIE tries to motivate the entrepreneurs providing additional moral and psychological support in order to enhance self-confidence and develop the right mind-set to succeed.

Boateng stated he sees himself more as an agent, a counsellor that provides handful solutions to solve the problems faced by entrepreneurs.

Finally, he is doing his part in this field because he thinks social entrepreneurs are a big source of inspiration and learning for him, and finds personally formative to be in contact with the mentee.

4.5 Christophe Labesse of Township Group (TG)

Labesse is the founder of TG, an organization created to socially uplift women from poor suburbs of Cape Town. Their aim is pursued by pushing women to create 7 hierarchically independent sawing cooperatives, which produce fashion inspired by the township street style and following fair trade values. The coops work for TG and various other clients.

Labesse and TG provide business mentoring to each coop shaped on an empowerment based model, personalizing mentoring for leading figures in each coop. Labesse’s mentoring is aimed in particular at making the mentee’s business sustainable financially and operationally. He laments a lot that sustainability is neglected in projects supported by institutions.

For Labesse the mentoring can be divided in phases following the different sets of skills he tries to pass on his mentee: first he teaches group work dynamics and capabilities which are considered by him most critical for the success of the coops. In a second phase he teaches technical skills linked to his mentee’s activity. Last come good business practices and understanding of the market, in particular in regards to challenges and opportunities.

He tries to leverage on the leadership skills, but also on the values of township women, in particular on their resilience, their courage and the collective spirit of Ubuntu. They are all good reasons for him to insist on the coop model, as it fits well with the mentees cultural background. Concretely he tries also to develop his mentee’s knowledge of informatics, marketing and financial skills, as well as a set of useful social skills for the mentee and his family. He insists a lot on the importance of the network, both within a coop and within the TG framework. He only verifies the technical skills of the mentee by looking at the output of her specific cooperative, but the group of mentors is now developing a formalized social impact evaluation process for the mentee’s coop.

Providing moral support is also very important. Mentees have to feel good while doing something together. While TG mentors keep a very professional behaviour, he says the relationship with the

(28)

mentee is almost a parental one. The relations are long term oriented and trust building is an extremely critical element in mentoring people with a sensitive social background.

For Labesse mentors should always be at their mentee’s disposal, but he usually keeps one fixed monthly meeting and pushes his mentees to support each other. This is part of making them grow independent and as time passes he is less involved in mentoring them. His final goal is to have mentees which simply do not need him.

Labesse worked long years in a big American corporation and claims SE changed his life, made him involved and became his passion. The humanity gain is source of big motivation for him.

Moreover, he finds that SE should be driven by a business mind-set, as he states the NGO model showed all of its limits in South Africa. In fact, Labesse sees his mentoring as playing a true bridging role between the first and the second economy. A major advantage he finds in mentoring SE is the straight communication process: In SE it is easier to deal with issues, because there are no games or role playing involved.

4.6 Anthony Rocchi of Awethu Project (AP)

AP is an organisation two young people passionately believing in Nelson Mandela’s idea of creating a fair and equal society. They systematically identify the most gifted entrepreneurs in under-resourced communities and provide them mentors with top university and business background that make them compete with the best. They developed a model that has the ambition to be replicable in the whole continent and they are working to exponentially increase its impact.

Rocchi mentors in this contest and he follows mentees both at AP and on a personal base.

The relationship he keeps with mentees is very professional, although sometimes he develops a closer one. This relationship grows following AP’s 3-step mentoring process: First mentor and mentee come together with the aim of making the entrepreneur independent. In the second teaching and support are aimed at developing the business itself. In the third the mentee can be professionally coached and helped with fund raising via AP and education provided by mentors is more complex.

He meets with his mentee during the weekend, when he is free from his job at an investment firm.

Every week he teaches different things, from business planning, how to solve a plan and accounting linked to the plan. Each week he goes a little bit further in his teachings. Then he keeps in contact with his mentee in case problems arise.

Some skills he has to teach are more general, aimed at business planning and solving basic problems, others more specific to each enterprise. To achieve this Anthony can rely both on his own network and the AP’s one. Most skills he teaches contribute to build his mentee’s confidence:

(29)

Despite being very bright his mentees have rarely been given job-related moral support before.

There is also a need to teach social skills, like professional presentation, mostly related to improving confidence in a business setting. He keeps track of their progress by following the AP’s phases system.

Rocchi believes the main functions he fulfils are giving sound advices and continuously being a cheerleader. He is expected to provide much needed know-how. For him problems lay in his young age and the different cultural and social background from his mentees. He believes there is a big need for mutual comprehension rooted in the cultural difference, and a need to avoid patronizing behaviours, which would cause misunderstandings.

A good fit with the entrepreneur is extremely important for the success of the relationship, and it can be achieved by keeping in continuous contact with mentees, talking a lot to understand each other better.

Rocchi decided to enter the SE field because he felt SE can bring the right type of change to his country. By living in South Africa poverty is constantly in front of his face and through SE he has the possibility to actively do something about it by helping his poorer neighbours.

4.7 Maphalle Maponya of the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA)

The NYDA helps young entrepreneurs starting businesses that contribute to local social development. These may vary from construction, catering, gaming outlets and many more.

When an entrepreneur asks for advice by NYDA, they welcome him and work on building his confidence and skills. Maphalle sits with his mentees and listens to their experience, trying to come up with the right answers for their particular situation. Communication allows building ideas together for the best of the mentee. He leads by example, because most of his mentee’s challenges have already been faced by Maphalle himself before.

He provides the financial and business experience he matured in consulting, teaching what he considers fundamental to the mentee’s success. His main function consists in assisting them and providing advices. It may sometimes even involve helping in small tasks.

The skills he teaches are both academic (accounting, auditing) and practical ones. They are aimed at helping the enterprise and qualifying mentees for better career opportunities later. Giving moral support is integral part of his job, in particular in order to build confidence and consequently make the entrepreneur more independent. He empowers him by teaching a positive attitude and stops mentoring an entrepreneur only when he is ready to walk alone.

(30)

Communication is extremely important for success, because it allows him to track his mentee’s progress day after day. Maphalle spends at least 1 hour per week with his mentee, and he relies on a monthly control of income statements in order to check the entrepreneur’s work.

His mentoring develops in three major steps: knowing each other, building the relationship and becoming friends. Moreover, a friendship with the mentee appears to be paramount, because it creates essential trust. It takes on an average 6 months for mentees to learn the most important aspects and become more independent.

Maphalle finds that the biggest challenges are linked to funding and the amount of time he can devote to each mentee. He may also experience problems in maintaining the professional aspect of mentoring, because of the friendship character of the relationship. Further, the social dimension adds one more direction to manage, making his role more complex.

Maphalle decided to enter the SE field because it adds value to society. He is personally happy to see his mentee succeed, because he believes these entrepreneurs can benefit enormously the South African economy and make a difference in other people’s life. He finds their work good and noble, making him very passionate about it. He ultimately feels mentoring is the least he can do for them.

4.8 Jeri Du Plessis of Siyakholwa Development Foundation (SDF)

SDF is an NGO operating in a rural area of the Eastern Cape where unemployment rates reach the 87%. The foundation identifies the most prospective leaders among locals and works with them to create successful agricultural coops, which employ and support local farmers.

Miss Du Plessis mentors her mentees by providing them guidance and encouragement. Among the main skills she teaches to her mentees are some accounting basics, leadership, project and HR management, computer skills. She also tries to pass some more creative competence, like the ability to work with budgetary and time constraints, or diplomacy. Other skills may be learned by leveraging on their previous knowledge, for example negotiation and facilitation ability can be developed when the mentee intercedes in his local language between SDF operators and employees of the coops.

Moreover, she offers her experience as a mentor and tries to turn her mentee in a good teacher for his own employees.

The relationships she develops with mentees are extremely close, almost mother-son like. She is really committed at making them advance in life and tries to make them learn as much as possible.

She tries to develop the mentoring first around small and easier concepts. Then make it more and more advanced with time, finally reaching managerial and financial topics. Such a process can take

(31)

years to unfold, depending on the mentee’s ability to learn and become truly independent. It starts first as an everyday mentoring activity and it gives more and more space to personal initiative.

Jeri is always in contact with the mentees, but she also keeps track of their progress by asking for monthly project reports. She notices that the major problems she has encountered are the long time it takes to mentor social entrepreneurs and the necessity to avoid directive and patronizing behaviour with the mentee. She believes that, apart from a lot of encouragement, what really makes the difference is showing respect for the mentee’s person, his culture and in particular for his ideas and opinions.

She is part of SDF because she really believes in the usefulness of the foundation’s job. She sees South African rural areas as a part of the country that nobody cares of and that in fact can be a motor of change for the whole nation.

(32)

5. DISCUSSION

In this section we discuss the implications of our findings within each identified theme.

5.1 Roles and functions of mentoring

Interviewees confirm in part Sullivan’s (2000) ideas when they claim mentors shall always embody the following functions: technical guidance, support, organizer, monitor and provider. They also add a more specific role of moral supporter, since especially in the South African social entrepreneurial context, the majority of the people who apply for mentoring services are young people aged around 25 to 35 with lack of education and confidence. They need encouragement to fully commit to their projects and overcome difficulties.

Furthermore, in assonance with what already argued in the literature, the interviewees stated that mentors should adapt their mentoring style according to the personality of the mentee and to the different phases of growth of his enterprise (St-Jean & Audet, 2011). A good mentor should be able to give expertise, providing business skills that are tailored to fit with the needs of the mentee.

More interestingly, through all the interviews the idea that in order to mentor in the SE field it is necessary to be knowledgeable of classic business was always present. People that have already experienced the issues and the challenges typical of business can come up with valid suggestions and push the mentees toward success.

Also the cited functions correspond mostly with the literature ones: psychosocial function, career function and role model function are all present in the SE field. To these we add a role that appears to be vital in the field: Networking function. We claim that one of the most basic mentor’s functions is to provide a well-developed and open to help network of personal contacts. External contacts appear to be very important to enhance a mentee’s possibility to succeed, learn and find support beyond a mentor’s limits.

5.2 Style of mentoring and involvement

Mentors have largely confirmed the benefits of a maieutic approach for their mentees. In fact, some stated this is the only possible approach they can allow themselves in order to convince their mentees. Moreover, a directive approach is out of question for all of the interviewees. We may assume it is mostly due to the big social and sometimes cultural difference between mentors and mentees in South Africa.

The nature of mentoring within the social entrepreneurial field An exploratory study of the South African context