Motivation plays an important role in the formation of an organisation (Shane, Locke, & Collins, 2003). It refers to the ongoing behaviour that is characterised by willingness and desire to act. Doing an entrepreneurship is often viewed as an aversive choice where one is faced with everyday life and work situations that are fraught with increased uncertainty, hindrances, failures, and frustrations. However, entrepreneurs accept the personal financial risks that are associated with it with a motive of being independent and benefiting directly from the potential success of the business (Starcher, 1995). Social entrepreneurs also accept the risks to start new venture, but in contrary to entrepreneurs they do not get direct financial reward from the success of the social business. Their earned economic profit goes back to the reinvestment for social development (Germak & Robinson, 2013).
Motivation of commercial entrepreneurship has received significant empirical attention in entrepreneurship literatures. Whereas, motivation in social entrepreneurship is a new phenomenon for both practitioners and academics and has received little empirical attention (Germak & Robinson, 2013). Therefore, it becomes important to study the social entrepreneurship motivation and to know what keeps a social entrepreneur motivated to pursue its aspiration?
This paper presents an exploratory investigation to understand the motivation for social entrepreneurship and to study the intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors responsible for doing social entrepreneurship. A face to face in-depth interviews with 12 social entrepreneurs from Portugal were carried out by following phenomenological qualitative research method. Respondents indicated that social entrepreneurship was not aimed to gain any profit from the business or to channel secondary income source, they indicated influential intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors that motivate them to tackle social or environmental challenges in Portugal.
The central idea of this paper highlights that social entrepreneurship involves intrinsic and extrinsic motivations or synergy of both to pursue the social mission. This paper contributes to social entrepreneurship and knowledge management researchers, practitioners and organisations supporting social entrepreneurship.
References:
Germak, A. J., & Robinson, J. a. (2013). Exploring the Motivation of Nascent Social Entrepreneurs. Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, 5, 5–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/194206...
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations: Classic Definitions and New Directions. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25(1), 54–67. https://doi.org/10.1006/ceps.1...
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. The American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-0...
Shane, S., Locke, E. A., & Collins, C. J. (2003). Entrepreneurial motivation. Human Resource Management Review, 13(2), 257–279.
Starcher, G. (1995). Ethics & Entrepreneurship: An Oxymoron. In European Social Venture Network conference, Tuscany, Italy.
2. Social innovation and social entrepreneurship
A_study_of_intrinsic_and_extrinsic_motivation_in_social_entrepreneurship.pdf 