Abstract
Understanding the antecedents of social entrepreneurship is critical for unleashing the potential of social entrepreneurship and thus for tackling social problems. While research has provided valuable insights into imprinting of the conventional entrepreneur, research on differences between social and conventional entrepreneurship suggests that social entrepreneurs evolve differently. Using survey data of 148 social entrepreneurs, we draw on the concepts of imprinting and critical incident recognition as a framework for understanding how social entrepreneur’s childhood experiences and parental exposure to social entrepreneurship affect social entrepreneurial activity in adulthood. First, our results suggest that social entrepreneurs are imprinted by their childhood experiences but not by parental exposure to social entrepreneurship. Second, imprints tend to persist over time when they are linked to critical incidents regarding social entrepreneurship. These insights contribute to a deeper understanding of imprinting mechanisms in social entrepreneurship contexts and highlight the importance of making examples of social entrepreneurship tangible to children.
Highlights
Social entrepreneurship is increasingly valued as an effective means to tackle challenges such as climate change, digitization of operations and its social impacts, modern slavery, or the development towards a circular economy (Lumpkin et al 2018; Universitätsallee 1, 21335 Lüneburg, Germany1 3 Vol.:(0123456789)Rahdari et al 2016; Saebi et al 2019)
Model 2 encompasses the main effects of parental exposure to social entrepreneurship during childhood and personal experience with social entrepreneurship during childhood
This study investigates the role of early exposure to social entrepreneurship through personal experiences, as well as parental experiences in explaining the extent of social entrepreneurial activity in adulthood
Summary
Social entrepreneurship is increasingly valued as an effective means to tackle challenges such as climate change, digitization of operations and its social impacts, modern slavery, or the development towards a circular economy (Lumpkin et al 2018; Universitätsallee 1, 21335 Lüneburg, Germany1 3 Vol.:(0123456789)Rahdari et al 2016; Saebi et al 2019). 1), social entrepreneurship opens a unique and intriguing empirical context for the study of entrepreneurship phenomena (Parkinson and Howorth 2008). Social entrepreneurship has been receiving more attention in research (e.g. Kuhn and Weibler 2011; Schreck 2011; Salzmann 2013; Kraus et al 2014; Phillips et al 2014) and has been found to serve as a scalable role model for sustainable operations (Narang et al 2014). More and more corporations, such as the German producer of utility vehicles, MAN, aim at improving their reputation and CSR performance through stimulating social entrepreneurship. 286) stress that knowledge on the antecedents of social entrepreneurship is of utmost importance because “without an understanding of why people engage in social entrepreneurship [...], policies aimed at supporting the sector may be flawed” How social entrepreneurs emerge remains unclear (Chandra and Shang 2017). Parkinson and Howorth (2008, p. 286) stress that knowledge on the antecedents of social entrepreneurship is of utmost importance because “without an understanding of why people engage in social entrepreneurship [...], policies aimed at supporting the sector may be flawed”
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