Motivations of social entrepreneurs: Blurring the social contribution and profits dichotomy
Abstract
Purpose
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.
Design/methodology/approach
The method used for the paper is content analysis. Research using qualitative content analysis focuses on the characteristics of language, talk and conversation (Sarantakos, 2005) with attention paid to the content or contextual meaning of the text. Thus, a qualitative content analysis is concerned with an examination of the uses of language. According to Downe-Wambolt (1992, p. 314), the aim of content analysis is “to provide knowledge and understanding of the phenomenon under study”.
Findings
The findings indicate that the informants do have additional motivations with respect to their business ventures including lifestyle motives, receiving acknowledgement and generating profit.
Originality/value
Few published papers investigate the motives of social entrepreneurs and explore if there are indeed any additional motivations aside from community interests. The results in this study identify that indeed social entrepreneurs are motivated by an array of motivations. The motivations we discovered in our research illustrate an individual who is mutually concerned with their communities, the environments in which they live in, lifestyle interests, acknowledgement and profit which may suggest that such community contributions could be sustained over time.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors extend special thanks to Trinity College Dublin, Ireland and specifically the Centre for Non-profit Management for providing Karla with an office space during the time of writing this paper.
Citation
Aileen Boluk, K. and Mottiar, Z. (2014), "Motivations of social entrepreneurs: Blurring the social contribution and profits dichotomy", Social Enterprise Journal, Vol. 10 No. 1, pp. 53-68. https://doi.org/10.1108/SEJ-01-2013-0001
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2014, Emerald Group Publishing Limited