初創社會企業最佳化資源分配決策與最小投資量之研究

Abstract

社會企業能夠利用創新的商業模式解決社會問題，如通過營運獲利以交叉補貼的方式為非營利活動提供必要的資源，從而為社會持續性地提供非營利服務，但是其發展受限於所能籌集到的初始資源數量以及無法在營運時有效率地使用這些資源。本文從社會企業的定義與本質特徵出發，以交叉補貼方式營運的社會企業為研究範疇，結合初創期食物銀行社企的資源分配流程，發展切合實際的資源分配決策理論模型，研究初創社企在最大化社會效益目標下如何制訂最佳的資源分配決策以維持盈虧平衡、實現自給自足，以此改進過往只針對非營利組織主體所建構的資源分配決策模型，彌補針對社會企業進行量化分析的空白。此外，本文從新角度出發，建構成立社會企業的最小初始投資金額線性規劃模型，探討社企營運所需要的最小初始資源投入量與初始資源的利用效率，讓社會創業家瞭解成立社企的最小籌款額度，並為從事公益創投的機構提供投資社企的參考基準。 根據資源分配決策模型的數值分析結果發現，社會企業需要在權衡社會效益目標與利潤目標後，才能確定最佳的初始資源投入量，因為增加初始總資源投入量可能會出現讓總社會效益增加但總利潤減少、總社會效益與總利潤同時減少的情況。此外，社企如果不預先限定非營利活動資源的留存比例，投入非營利活動的總資源比例也會一直維持在較高水平。而不同類型的社企如果其解決社會問題的緊迫性程度不同，社會企業則需要通過大幅度改變年社會效益折現係數才可以反映社企前期投入非營利活動資源量之間的差異性，但對後期資源分配結果的影響程度會越來越小。當社企決定不向外界額外募集資金從而實現自給自足時，其可以通過減少各期需要支付的固定成本來增加非營利活動總資源的投入量，從而增加產生的總社會效益與總利潤，但會降低最終能夠實現的總資源數額。而根據最小初始投資金額模型的研究結果，社企仍需要根據不同的目標，如決定以總利潤增長為目標，還是以實現初始總資源的成倍增長為目標，來設定合適的總社會效益目標值與最終期的總資源額度值，用於計算最小的初始總資源投入量。

Social enterprises can use innovative business models to solve social problems, such as through the operation of profit activities to provide necessary resources for non-profit activities in a cross-subsidized way in order to provide continuous non-profit services for the community. However, the development of social enterprises is limited by the amount of initial resources raised and the inability to use these resources efficiently at the time of operation. Based on the definition and nature of social enterprises, this paper takes the cross-subsidized operating social enterprises as research object and develops the resource allocation decision-making linear programming model in accordance with the real resource allocation process of the food bank's social enterprise startup. The research sheds light upon how to make best resource allocation decision to maximize social impact objective and in the meanwhile to maintain break even and self-sufficient. This will broaden the research arena of resource allocation decision models which solely focus on non-profit organizations and private enterprises before and will also make up for the insufficient quantitative research for the social enterprises’ operation. In addition, this paper constructs a minimum initial investment linear programming model from a different and new perspective and tries to discuss the minimum initial input of social enterprises and its resource utilization efficiency. The new model will make the social entrepreneurs know the minimum fundraising amount and will provide an investment reference point for venture philanthropy and social investment. According to the numerical analysis of the resource allocation decision model, it finds that social enterprises need to balance the social impact goal and profit requirement before determining the initial input resource amount because investing more initial input resource may increase the total social impact with reduction of total profits or even decrease the total social impact and total profits at the same time. In addition, if the social enterprises do not pre-limit the retention ratio of resources specialized for the non-profit activity, the optimized proportion of resources distributed for non-profit activity will still remain at a high level. If some kinds of social enterprises have different degree of urgency to solve the social problems, they need to significantly change the annual social impact discount coefficient to reflect the degree of urgency. This will lead to the difference between the amount of input resource for non-profit activity in the early periods, but this effect will attenuate in the later periods. When social enterprises decide not to raise funds from outside to achieve self-sufficiency, they can reduce the fixed costs that need to be paid in each period and then it will increase the total amount of input resource for nonprofit activity. Thus, social enterprises can increase the total social impact and total profits but on the contrary will reduce the amount of total resources acquired in the final period. According to the results of the minimum initial investment model, social enterprises need to base on the different targets, such as the total profit growth or the initial total resource growth, to set up an appropriate total social impact value and an appropriate number of total resources in the final period in order to calculate the minimum initial input resource.