Antecedents, prevalence and manifestations of social entrepreneurship

Abstract

Human capital and institutional factors explain the dynamics fuelling social entrepreneurial activity. Social entrepreneurs enhance social value by creating new social entities. The study investigates the prevalence of early stage social entrepreneurship activity amongst the Norwegian adult population. As much as 5.1% of the population is at any time engaged in nascent social entrepreneurship, as measured in involvement in the starting up non-profit volunteer organisations. Males, younger and better educated people are more inclined to engage in nascent social entrepreneurship. Institutional factors such as social needs and municipality centrality are linked to start-up of social entrepreneurial activity. Different structural frameworks link to different categories of social entrepreneurship. Social bricoleur activity aimed at creating social value more often appears in rural municipalities. Social constructionists and social engineers wanting societal change are negatively correlated with social requirements in their home municipality. This paper discusses how better to categorise nascent social entrepreneurship activity in order to improve our understanding of its drivers.