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Yunus Centre for Social Entrepreneurship (YCSE)

Promotes and develops social entrepreneurship models

About YCSE

YCSE is a research and academic hub for social business and social enterprises curriculums, inspired and follows the philosophy and principles coined by Nobel Peace Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus. Its major role is to promote and develop social entrepreneurship model among academics, corporates, social organisations, legal agencies and communities, in addressing society’s most pressing problems.

P1: A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signing between USM (represented by Professor Azlan Amran, Dean of USM Graduate School of Business) and Yunus Centre Bangladesh (represented by Professor Muhammad Yunus)

What is “social entrepreneurship”?

The concepts of “social entrepreneur”, “social entrepreneurship”, and “social enterprise” have been used interchangeably and hence have create some confusion. Defourny and Nyssens (2008, p.203) clarified this by proposing “social entrepreneurship” to be the “process” through which “social entrepreneurs” (people) create “social enterprises” (organisation).
Social enterprise and social business are concepts sharing almost the same characteristics. They both must have a clear social mission and adopt business approaches to be financially self-sustaining. The only difference is social business is a 100% non-dividend entity (Yunus et al, 2010), meanwhile social enterprise can bounce back parts of the surplus to the investors (UKCO, 2013).

How does it work?

The YCSE is a platform, which brings together people from various backgrounds, from academic to practitioner (commercial & social sectors), to develop social entrepreneurship model towards a better societal wellbeing. Its works to incubate social entrepreneurship ideas and concepts into practically implementable business solutions. Following were the example of recent initiatives:

1. USM-Industry Collaboration

USM-Industry Research Collaboration on “Building Social Business Model towards a Better Societal Wellbeing” 2019-2020

2. Public Talks & Dialogue

Nobel Laureate talk by Professor Muhammad Yunus on “A World with Three Zeros”

An inspirational dialogue between Prof Muhammad Yunus and regional social entrepreneurs

3. Seminar / Sharing

Invited by Malaysia CEO Group to share on social entrepreneurship.

Invited by leading corporations to share on social entrepreneurship.

4. Publication& Conference

  1. Cheah, J., Amran, A., & Yahya, S. (2019). Internal oriented resources and social enterprises’ performance: How can social enterprises help themselves before helping others?Journal of cleaner production,211, 607-619.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.11.203
  2. Cheah, J., Amran, A., & Yahya, S. (2019). External oriented resources and social enterprises’ performance: the dominant mediating role of formal business planning.Journal of Cleaner Production,236, 117693.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.117693
  3. Cheah, J., Amran, A., & Yahya, S. (2018, Oct 8). Social enterprise performance in Malaysia and Singapore: How they can perform and sustain better?Paper presented at Southeast Asian Social Innovation Network Conference, Kuala Lumpur: SEASIN.