A Review on Research Perspectives on Social Entrepreneurial Intention Formation

Social Entrepreneurship (SE) has gained booming interest among both researchers as well as practitioners. Researchers have defined SE in various forms of businesses. This study briefly reviewed various studies defining Social Entrepreneurship by several authors that helped to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of the terms, ‘social enterprise’ or ‘social venture’, ‘social entrepreneur’ and ‘social entrepreneurship’. Through the initial review the paper attempts to define the social enterprise/entrepreneur/entrepreneurship. All the three concepts emphasise that social enterprise neither entirely belongs to ‘for-profit’ nor ‘not-for-profit’ enterprises. Hence, social enterprises can be positioned along a continuum between enterprises pursuing purely social goals and strictly backed by economic goals. The next section of the study reviews different kinds of ascendants of social entrepreneurial intentions found in the literary studies. The study revolves around the most common factors influencing the social entrepreneurial intentions by reviewing the relevance of selected studies considering the unit of analysis. The social entrepreneurial intention is found to be influenced by empathy, moral judgment, self-efficacy, social support, prior experience in facing and addressing the social problems. These antecedents were commonly found in those studies in which the responses were sought from the social entrepreneur as well as from students. Through the review, it is clear that there is a call to put through an extensive exploratory as well as empirical research to support the stated antecedents of social entrepreneurial intention in the existing literature.