Abstract
While social entrepreneurship scholars in the past have focused much on the building blocks of robust social entrepreneurship business models and sustainability factors including supportive ecosystem elements, it is not clear ‘what’ categories of the interactive ecosystem in which social entrepreneurs are located influence the choice of business models even before they operationalize their social ventures. Accordingly, this study espouses a mixed-method research design to address this issue. The authors collected data from 24 and 112 social entrepreneurs in two study phases, respectively. Four support factors—business, market, financial and policy were considered important by social entrepreneurs in India that they believe influenced their choice of business models. While policy and financial support factors were considered most important by social entrepreneurs with a pure social mission/impact orientation, market and business support were considered significant influential factors by social entrepreneurs with a profit orientation. Social entrepreneurs who sought a balance between social and economic missions, however, considered the presence of financial and market support to be crucial for choosing a relevant business model. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that investigates the inherent priori influence of prevalent ecosystem factors on social business model selection. It uniquely brings out an empirical association between ecosystem factors and business model preferences, affirming that factors pivotal to choice also underpin sustainability. Moreover, this study also unveils an interactive framework encompassing entrepreneur traits and their orientations, ecosystem factors, feedback and performance. Offering multiple actionable implications, this study offers key insights for policy decision-makers and practitioners.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.