Socialt entreprenörskap – informations- och kommunikationsteknologi för lokal handlingsgemenskap

In English The theoretical findings of the thesis is composed of three parts, it consists of (i) a framework for social entrepreneurship, (ii) some pitfalls and success factors and (iii) a perspicuous design guide. These findings was a result of field research during a long time – more than 5 years, 2000-2005 – and the scientific purpose was to give a broad description and understanding of the research problem, which was: How should (i) social, (ii) pedagogical and (iii) technical components be arranged and aligned in a process to develop, uphold or vitalize a social and learning context by help of ICT-supported dialogue and discussion – e-democracy and e-participation – between ordinary participants/members and their representatives?

The thesis describes a dialogue and discussion-based social entrepreneurship for the development and use of a similar like socio-technical ICT-artifact. The social entrepreneurship is presented as a mezzo process having as its aim to develop and maintain participative action (a community of action). In the thesis, the participative action is a function area that combines a dialogue-based community with an action-oriented workshop. Furthermore, the thesis has described the social entrepreneurship’s relations and dependencies on other function areas with their specific means and goals for the matter of social-individual and social-cultural influence. By using different metaphors for these function areas – community, workshop, arena, market (internal and external), court –, the thesis describes the social entrepreneurship as a process of social learning. These descriptions in the thesis constitute all together the framework for a social entrepreneurship.

The thesis' description of pitfalls and success factors takes up contributions and elements of a special importance in the social entrepreneurship in order to develop a social organization by help of an ICT-artifact, which is characterized by solving social problems in democratic dialogues and discussion meetings between selectors and selected representatives.

The thesis follows up the learning-oriented understanding of a social entrepreneurship with a description of overall guidelines – a perspicuous design guide – in order to educate technicians to fulfil the role as social entrepreneurs in our community.