1. Home
  2. Students
  3. Chapter 23 - Playing the Chords of Social Entrepreneurship

Chapter 23 - Playing the Chords of Social Entrepreneurship

Elena Gabor

Synopsis

This case study focuses on the challenges of adapting the vision and organizational mission of El Sistema Venezuela to the United States. El Sistema (The System) is a program that seeks to accomplish social change by offering free orchestral training to disadvantaged children. From an organizational structure perspective, the main difference between the El Sistema Venezuela and El Sistema USA is that the first is centralized, funded by the state and under the authority of its founder, while the latter is a network of programs distributed throughout the U.S., each dependent on its own leadership, administration, and fundraising efforts. The case reveals a young musician’s struggles, leadership, and anxiety as she develops a partnership with a local school to start her own El Sistema-inspired center.

Keywords: Leadership, Inter-Organizational Network, El Sistema, Social Change, Poverty

Key Takeaways and Take a Stand Form

Key Takeaways

  1. The decentralized way in which El Sistema is being adapted in the US provides an interesting opportunity to study the growth of an inter-organizational network with fewer layers of hierarchy than its monolithic, centralized Venezuelan counterpart.
  2. The work of a social entrepreneur is not limited to delivering a specific service to a group. It also consists of discursive work and engaging stakeholders. Because music education already had strong traditions in the US, the leaders of El Sistema-inspired centers had to construct their messages in such a way that other music educators would not be alienated.
  3. Classical music is certainly not the only way that disadvantaged children can develop self-esteem and become empowered. But classical music does have a unique impact on the body/mind unity (see Daniel Levitine’s book “This is your brain on music: The science of a human obsession”, 2006).
  4. The leadership experience of an El Sistema leader in the US is often characterized by ontological wisdom and anxiety. Wisdom, because these leaders are keenly aware of the macro-social factors that underlie the demand for their work; anxiety, because of the many challenges for their newly established programs.
  5. From the interviews with El Sistema leaders in the US, the author learned that some of them realized they needed additional training in order to be adequately prepared for the multiple role responsibilities of management, communication, and fundraising needed to lead a social entrepreneurship project.

Take a Stand Form