Improving community vitality: spiritually informed
Journal of Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies
ISSN: 2053-4604
Article publication date: 16 October 2024
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to depict how entrepreneurs improve community vitality in the economic, social and environmental dimensions. The paper joins the conversation of business spirituality as the study participants were Sri Lankan Buddhist entrepreneurs from the emerging venture context (i.e. from enterprises which are less than 1–10 years old). The aim of the paper is to introduce spiritually informed entrepreneurial actions, thus contributing to a better understanding of entrepreneurial impact on communities.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper involves a qualitative, interpretivist research design. Data was collected by conducting 28 semi-structured interviews with 18 Sri Lankan Buddhist entrepreneurs. Research participants were selected from diverse business sectors. The research applied inductive thematic analysis for structuring and interpreting data.
Findings
For Sri Lankan Buddhist entrepreneurs, improving community vitality is an essential altruistic goal of their business agenda. During the operations of their ventures, this altruistic goal is translated into altruistic actions that improve the economic, social and environmental vitalities of communities. Research findings highlight that in the case of Sri Lankan Buddhist entrepreneurs, altruistic actions are informed by compassion, which is a fundamental value in the Buddhist religion. Drawing on the findings, an integrated model of community vitality, which describes the role of compassion and the mechanisms of entrepreneurial actions in a Buddhist setting was developed inductively.
Originality/value
Studying entrepreneurial actions to focus on the motivations behind improving community vitality is a new research topic. The paper provides valuable knowledge on business spirituality regarding the compassionate motivations of Buddhist entrepreneurs. The integrated model of community vitality, which describes the mechanisms of entrepreneurial actions to improve community vitality in a Buddhist setting could be an essential compass not only to entrepreneurs but also research scholars in the field of business spirituality.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Research funding: No funding was received for this study.
Conflict of interest: All authors declare that they have no conflict of financial and/or non-financial interests.
Author contribution: All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Srinath Dissanayake. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Srinath Dissanayake as the expansion of his PhD thesis. Kathryn Pavlovich and Gábor Kovács was making comments on the first draft of the manuscript. Srinath Dissanayake, Kathryn Pavlovich and Gábor Kovács were involved in writing, reviewing and editing the final manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Citation
Dissanayake, S., Pavlovich, K. and Kovács, G. (2024), "Improving community vitality: spiritually informed
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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