Abstract
Purpose Social entrepreneurship (SE) presents specificities that the entrepreneur must address. Entrepreneurial intention (EI) and entrepreneurial orientation (EO) in SE should reflect specific characteristics of behavior. The purpose of this study is to identify the intention of Brazilian university students to undertake SE, having individual social EO (individual entrepreneurial orientation (IEO)-social) as their predictive behavior. Design/methodology/approach This paper collected study data from Brazilian university students. To test the study’s hypotheses, this paper used confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation model, partial least squares and generalized linear regression model. Findings The results indicate that Brazilian university students positively respond to their intention to become social entrepreneurs in the future, regardless of gender, courses or types of universities. In line with the literature, IEO-Social proved to be a strong predictor of EI-social. Research limitations/implications This study was limited to understanding EI-social from IEO-Social. Besides, its sample is non-probabilistic, therefore, the findings of this study cannot be generalized. Practical implications The results encourage the inclusion of SE in entrepreneurial education programs. They guide the involvement of students from different areas of knowledge in activities aimed at higher education. Social implications Evidence indicates that including the SE theme in entrepreneurial education programs proves to be valuable for opening purposeful career opportunities for students. Originality/value The study contributes to eliminating the gap in studies on EI-social in Brazilian university students. It also offers the IEO-social scale, theoretically constructed and with superior psychometric quality.
Highlights
In 2018, Deloitte reported that young people within the millennial and Z generations, from 36 countries, are unhappy with business behavior regarding socio-environmental issues and would like to tie their career to a social purpose with a positive impact on society
The items eliminated are from the social innovation scale (“I am interested in new answers to social and environmental problems;” “I believe that the transformation of the world involves new ideas for old social and environmental problems;” “I am in favor of trying new activities, but not necessarily risky, to solve social and environmental problems instead of repeating what others usually do;” “I prefer the challenge of working in organizations that work with social and environmental projects and products than the routine of a traditional company”) and the social risk propensity scale (“I believe that bold action is necessary to take advantage of the opportunities that social entrepreneurship (SE) presents”)
individual entrepreneurial orientation (IEO)-social qualifies to be an important variable of analysis for the field
Summary
In 2018, Deloitte reported that young people within the millennial and Z generations, from 36 countries, are unhappy with business behavior regarding socio-environmental issues and would like to tie their career to a social purpose with a positive impact on society. The Map of Civil Society Organizations of the Institute of Applied Economic Research of the University of São Paulo presents 781,921 registered entities (IPEA-USP, 2019). Pipe Social (2019) mapped 1,002 businesses across the country. It is common to perceive its role as promoting the improvement of people’s living conditions through activities, products and services that result in the transformation of the entire social and economic system of society (Dwivedi & Weerawardena, 2018; Popov, Veretennikova, & Kozinskaya, 2018)
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