AI Unleashed: The Future of Social Entrepreneurship : A relational view on the intricacies between AI and social entrepreneurship

Sammanfattning: This thesis is positioned within the intersection of social entrepreneurship and artificialintelligence research streams and explores a timely topic and emerging phenomenon. Whileresearch has started paying attention to the role of artificial intelligence in various aspects oforganizational life, we turn our attention to how social entrepreneurs interact with artificialintelligence to achieve their social missions. We conduct a qualitative study and use aninterpretive research paradigm with an inductive approach to enrich the current understandingof the role of artificial intelligence in shaping processes through which social entrepreneursattempt to accomplish their social mission. Our primary data are collected through semi-structured interviews with social entrepreneurs who are located in different countries andemploy artificial intelligence in their daily work. The analysis revealed that social entrepreneursengage in creating new relations or building on existing relations to enable AI in four maindimensions during the social entrepreneurial process: AI implementation and management; AIdesign and development; AI ethics and openness; and community and collaboration. To betterunderstand the role of those dimensions, we discuss those findings in light of a framework thatis developed to further understand the processes through which social mission is achieved. Thefindings contribute to the existing body of literature on both social entrepreneurship and AI,providing a comprehensive understanding of the role of AI in social entrepreneurship, andoffering practical recommendations for social entrepreneurs who want to exploit AI. Further,they demonstrate how and where AI can be a powerful entity for social entrepreneurs inaddressing social and environmental challenges. However, we also shed light on thecomplexities and challenges that are inherent in AI management and showcase that AI is not asilver bullet to address social objectives.