Document Type

Article

Rights

Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence

Disciplines

5.2 ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS, Cultural and economic geography

Publication Details

Social Enterprise Journal Vol. 10 Is 1 pp.53-68

Abstract

Research has typically identified social entrepreneurs as characteristically superior to conventional entrepreneurs as they are motivated by making a contribution to society rather than by profits. Yet, few published papers investigate the motives of social entrepreneurs and explore if there are indeed any additional motivations aside from community interests. The aim of this study is to empirically investigate the additional motives, aside from the social interests that motivate social entrepreneurs. This paper does so by using an inductive approach and specifically carrying out a re-examination of two pieces of research examining social entrepreneurship that were carried out independently by the two researchers in South Africa and Ireland. During various discussions between the researchers it became clear that the findings were similar. Accordingly the researchers re-examined the transcripts of the twelve interviews carried out together. The findings indicate that the informants do have additional motivations with respect to their business ventures including lifestyle motives, receiving acknowledgement and generating profit.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1108/SEJ-01-2013-0001


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