Social entrepreneurial motivation

Abstract

While social entrepreneurship is proving to be a complex and promising form of organization, using market-based methods to address seemingly intractable social problems, its motivations remain underestimated. In social entrepreneurship, solving a social need is the main motivating factor for the entrepreneur. According to research in the business literature, the motivation of entrepreneurs is based on the relationship between risk and profit. Despite the fact that the social entrepreneur has a self-sustaining system of income generation in his or her business model, profit is not the main objective. Social entrepreneurs have a crucial role to play in addressing social problems that are unmet by the public sector and neglected by the private sector. Research on social entrepreneurial motivation has received little attention in relation to entrepreneurial motivation, especially in developing countries such as Morocco. It is difficult to map the motivations of social entrepreneurs. Much effort has been made to understand the motivation for addressing social disadvantage rather than profit and profitability. Research argues that compassion can complement traditional self-centered motivations to encourage social entrepreneurship. Based on the research on compassion and prosocial motivation, a model of three mechanisms has been constructed by the authors, namely: integrative thinking, pro-social cost-benefit analysis and commitment to alleviating the suffering of others, which transform compassion into social entrepreneurship, and we identify the institutional conditions under which they are most likely to do so.  The search for motivation to create a social enterprise is an ongoing concern in the field of entrepreneurship, which has been expressed in previous studies. Therefore, the objective of this work is to shed light on the motivations of social entrepreneurs according to the literature.