Scholarly Works

Where does business theory meet business practice? What happens when the pursuit of profit and the pursuit of meaningful purpose intersect? Explore an array of scholarship inspired by Another Way of Doing Business, the SPU School of Business and Economics' unique business-as-service philosophy, and focused on the integration of faith and ethics in the world of business.

Don Summers, Ed.D.

SPU Clinical Instructor
Biography

Donald B. Summers & Ross E. Stewart, "Cultivating Character:  Savvy Students with Big Hearts," The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences. Volume 5

  • Refereed Publication
  • Abstract
    • Seattle Pacific University School of Business and Economics annually conducts a social enterprise competition. Student teams conceive enterprises that address social problems, formulate business plans, wrestle with practical ethical questions, balance business and social issues, and manage team dynamics. Through their projects, student competitors learn how to use business planning to address social problems, deepen their convictions, and increase their skill in helping others. This paper examines how the competition contributes to the formation of personal character.

D. Summers and B. Dyck (2011).  "A Process Model of Social Intrapreneurship Within a For-profit Company: First Community Bank." Advances in Entrepreneurship, Firm Emergence and Growth series on Social and Sustainable Entrepreneurship. (forthcoming)

  • Advances in Entrepreneurship, Firm Emergence and Growth Series on Social and Sustainable Entrepreneurship
  • Refereed Publication
    • This chapter develops a model and provides an exemplary case study of social intrapreneurship within a for-profit organization. The model has two components. The first looks at the antecedent conditions enabling social intrapreneurship, identifying three deinstitutionalizing mechanisms that ready a traditional for-profit organization to embrace a social enterprise: 1) changes in extra-organizational environment that disconnect sanctions and rewards; 2) disassociating existing institutional norms and practices from their mooring in a moral foundation; and 3) undermining core assumptions and beliefs. The second component of the model suggests that the social intrapreneurship process unfolds in four phases associated: 1) socialization (conception of social enterprise idea), 2) externalization (development), 3) integration (implementation), and 4) the internalization (institutionalization). We use the model as a lens to examine the history and development of the First Community Bank in Boston, and end with a discussion of the implications of our research for theory and practice.

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